Boys, Young Men and Violence

Masculinities, Education and Practice

Ken Harland, Sam McCready

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137297358
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

This book draws upon data collected over an 18 year period with over 1000 boys and young men across Northern Ireland. Providing critical reflections on violence, masculinity and education, it uses the voices and experiences of young men to inform and influence research, practice and policy.

1

Context for Our Research Work with Boys and Young Men

At this point it is important to acknowledge the context in which our work with boys and young men has developed over the past 18 years. For over 40 years boys have grown up in Northern Ireland facing particular difficulties that have impacted upon their development and behaviour. The sphere of cultural, political and individual identity has been fiercely contested with young people developing their sense of ethnic identity in the midst of widespread social, economic and political upheaval through a period of prolonged conflict. The fact that young people growing up in Northern Ireland live in a multi-problem, multi-stress and divided region has been well documented (Cairns and Cairns, 1995; Muldoon, 2004; Browne and Dwyer, 2014) with 93 per cent of children attending schools that are wholly or predominantly Catholic or Protestant (Sommers, 2015).

During the latter part of the 20th century, the history of Northern Ireland, like many other regions, was profoundly affected by acute social, political and economic change. The decline of traditional industry, a weak economy and high levels of regional unemployment alongside an articulate voice of feminist argument clashed with the onset of what became known as the ‘Troubles’ (Ashe and Harland, 2014). With a population of just 1.74 million living in Northern Ireland, few lives have been unaffected in some capacity by the conflict and the extremities of violence that was inflicted upon quite a small geographical region. During the Troubles there were some 3,700 deaths. In terms of population size this would be the equivalent of 115,000 fatalities in the United Kingdom as a whole or 600,000 in the United States (Hargie et al., 2003). In essence, the prolonged political conflict was primarily inflicted upon working-class communities by working-class men and entailed young men dying at the hands of other young men (Shirlow and Coulter, 2014). Typically these men were members of paramilitary organisations who instigated brutal forms of violence that struck terror into the heart of communities throughout Northern Ireland. This is not surprising as during the Troubles there were around 34,000 shootings, 35,000 injuries, 14,000 bombings, over 3,000 punishment shootings and over 2,500 punishment beatings/paramilitary style attacks administered by paramilitary organisations. Of the deaths 91 per cent were male with 32 per cent amongst young males aged 17–24 (Smyth and Hamilton, 2003; Muldoon et al., 2008). Of all paramilitary punishment attacks 25 per cent were on those 19 years old and younger, a form of child abuse which has received insufficient attention (Kennedy, 2001) and which, as our studies will show, still appears to be tolerated to this day.

In 1994 there was a breakthrough towards peace when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) announced a cessation of military operations that was later reciprocated by some of the Loyalist paramilitary groupings. This was followed by the ‘Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement’¹ in 1998 when the Irish and British governments and the political parties in Northern Ireland reached a consensus. Shirlow and Coulter (2014:716) note that ‘while the Agreement sought to deal with the totality of relationships between the peoples of Ireland and Great Britain, its principal concern was to mend the troubled relations between the two main ethno-national communities within Northern Ireland’. The Agreement included a devolved, inclusive government; prisoner release; troop reductions; targets for paramilitary decommissioning; provisions for polls on Irish reunification; civil rights measures; and parity of esteem for the two communities in Northern Ireland. In a referendum held in May 1998, 71.2 per cent of people in Northern Ireland and 94.4 per cent of people in the Republic of Ireland voted to accept the Agreement. The definitive end of the troubles came in 2007 following the St Andrew’s Agreement in October 2006. This was followed by elections in March 2007 and the formation of a government in May 2007 by the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. In July 2007, the British Army formally ended their mission in Northern Ireland which began 38 years earlier in 1969.

Northern Ireland now entered its peace-building phase. This is not to say peace-building did not exist before these events in either the government’s or the people’s agenda up to this point, but the vocabulary relating to the Troubles has changed and Northern Ireland has become a place referred to as post-conflict and in transition from conflict to peace. Peace-building processes encompass security, demilitarisation, humanitarian assistance, power-sharing governance and elections, human rights, minority protection and reconstruction aid (Wallensteen, 2002). In countries such as Bosnia and Kosovo peace-building was assumed by external stakeholders whereas in Northern Ireland there was a functioning state and administration to facilitate it (Oberschall, 2007). The pathway towards peace has necessitated engaging in post-conflict transformation work. This process has included addressing complex issues such as reconciliation, reintegration, decommissioning, police reform, prisoner release, security, an end of paramilitarism, economic investment and the administration of a new Local Assembly. It was clear from the start of the ceasefires, however, that resolving these issues would not be straightforward. For example, Northern Ireland continues to find it difficult to establish acceptable ways to help victims feel that they have obtained justice from atrocities that occurred throughout the Troubles. There is also the issue of segregation. Northern Ireland remains a polarised society with its population continuing to live in areas that are either exclusively Catholic or Protestant (Northern Ireland Census, 2011).

The concrete barriers constructed between communities divided on religious grounds are known as peace walls. This is largely an urban phenomenon that affects the way in which people move and interact and directly impacts upon daily activities such as going to work, meeting friends and relatives and getting access to health and recreation services (Murtagh, 2003). As in other parts of the world, such as China, Israel and Palestine, Mozambique, South Africa and East and West Berlin, these structures were erected to keep people and communities apart. Towering peace walls built to keep Catholics and Protestants safe from attack from one another remain in many areas as a cold reminder of the physical barriers still necessary in a deeply divided and contested society. Research into peace walls by Byrne et al. (2012) shows that 58 per cent of people would like to see the peace walls come down now or at some point in the future. However, 58 per cent of people were very or fairly worried about their personal safety if they were removed, and 69 per cent believed that they are still necessary because of the potential for violence. These findings concur with a previous study (Belfast Telegraph, 2008) with long-term residents which found that, while 81 per cent of people said they would like to see peace walls demolished, 60 per cent believed it was not safe enough to remove them at present. This trend highlights the fact that, despite the optimism of a peace process, old fears and distrust still exist amongst people living in areas most affected during the Troubles. As noted by Shirlow and Coulter (2014:717), ‘twenty years after the cease-fires, Northern Ireland may no longer be at war with itself, but nor does it feel quite like a society that has genuinely found peace’; and as cautioned by Aughey (2014:822) while Northern Ireland is now perceived as a region at peace, its future is ‘inextricably linked to uncertainty’.

While violence is by no means a Northern Ireland phenomenon, the province does have a unique voice in attempting to understand political and community violence and more recently the drive towards peace-building. In 2013, Northern Ireland experienced the lowest record of crime for over 20 years (Nolan, 2014). However, the Northern Ireland Crime Survey 2012/13 claims that only 52 per cent of crimes are actually reported to the police (Nolan, 2014). To suggest, however, that Northern Ireland is a society at peace is to ignore the continued high levels of political violence and paramilitary activity (Gormley-Heenan and Monaghan, 2012) and the fact that so many young people face continued risks and high levels of marginalisation within a supposedly post-conflict society (McAlister et al., 2009; Haydon et al., 2012; Browne and Dwyer, 2014). More than 20 years after the 1994 ceasefires, paramilitaries, particularly dissident republicans, continue to be a ‘severe’ and viable threat to peace-building (Nolan, 2014:37). Certain young men also remain susceptible to certain forms of paramilitary assaults (Lloyd, 2009; Harland, 2011; Harland and McCready, 2014) in what Topping and Byrne (2012:1) term ‘new paramilitary policing’ in the post-Troubles era of Northern Ireland. Throughout the Troubles there was a highly localized distribution of deaths and other forms of violence in urban areas (i.e. Derry/Londonderry and West and North Belfast) which correlated to those areas with the highest levels of family poverty, social deprivation, educational under-achievement and higher rates of drug and substance misuse (Browne and Dwyer, 2014:801). A Review of Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland (2011) revealed that levels of death by suicide increased by 64 per cent between 1999 and 2008, mostly carried out amongst young men. In 2010, 77 per cent of all suicides in Northern Ireland were male, with 40.5 per cent amongst those aged 15–34 (Scowcroft, 2012). Tomlinson (2012) in a detailed study of suicide in Northern Ireland found strong links between suicide levels and the legacy of the Troubles. In particular he found that ‘children and young people who grew up during the Troubles had the highest and most rapidly increasing suicide rates’ (cited in Nolan, 2014:111).

It had previously been argued that the extent of sectarian and paramilitary violence suppressed other forms of violence and contributed to the under-reporting of violence against the person, intimate partner violence, vandalism, and race and hate crime (Connolly, 2002). The Chief Constable’s Annual Report (Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), 2009) further indicated that increases in the use of knives, race and hate crimes, and continuing sectarianism were particular concerns. This trend is also reflected in PSNI statistics showing that between 1970 and 2013 total recorded crimes relating to violence against the person had risen from 737 to 30,305, remaining at around 30,000 since 2005 when it had jumped from around 20,000 in the late 1990s (Police Service of Northern Ireland, 2013). In 2014, the Chief Constable’s report noted that ordinary people may be at increased risk from organised crime such as counterfeit goods, laundered fuel, illicit cigarettes, fraud, identity theft, drugs and human trafficking. In a further statistical report published in 2014, it was reported that violence against the person continues to represent the highest proportion of convictions in Northern Ireland with young men aged 18–25 accounting for almost 90 per cent of those convicted (Graham et al., 2014).

Appreciating the changing yet complex social, political and economic context of the region is critically important as it helps us to understand better the backdrop through which our work with boys and young men has been carried out over the past 18 years. Our findings reveal the extent to which the local context of these boys and young men’s lives had a strong bearing upon their thoughts, beliefs and attitudes towards their communities, education, experiences of violence and what it means to be a man.

Spano et al. (2010:1161) argue that ‘exposure to violence is a strong predictor of violent behaviour for children and adolescents’. Internationally, young people who live in areas of high and protracted conflict are, by virtue of their residence, exposed to a range of ecological influences that gives rise to an increased propensity towards violence (Goeke-Morey et al., 2013:244). One common argument is that exposure to violence leads to the ‘assimilation of aggressive attitudes, as well as the replication of aggressive behaviour’ (Meghan-Davidson and Canivez, 2012:3662). Witnessing violence during the formative years of adolescent development has a ‘direct impact on the perpetration of violence’ (Flood and Pease, 2009:131). What is witnessed is learned and what is learned is more likely to be practised.

The Troubles, the political arrangements, the peace process, the underpinning uncertainty represent the backcloth to the lives of the boys and young men from Northern Ireland that we met and interviewed over the 18 years of our work. A society in transition from conflict to peace offers hope of normality, but the long reach of conflict, its pervading influence and legacy sits uncomfortably and heavily on the shoulders of the young men in this study as they are asked to reflect on being a man, masculinity and violence.

The Centre for Young Men’s Studies

The Centre for Young Men’s Studies is located in the field of Community Youth Work which resides within the School of Sociology and Applied Social Studies at Ulster University. It was set up by the authors in 2004. It aims to promote the voice, needs and interests of boys and young men through research that will inform practice, training and policy. The Centre also aims to raise awareness of boys’ and young men’s issues through their life stories, experiences, opinions and issues.

Our work before and within the Centre for Young Men’s Studies has focused heavily on boys and young men who are perhaps recognised as marginalised or vulnerable within society. In preparing to write this book we have spoken to over 1,000 young men, over a period of 18 years, in different contexts including schools, communities, young offenders’ centres, prisons and youth clubs. We talked with victims and perpetrators of violence, in particular young men vulnerable to the brutal manifestations of paramilitary² ‘justice’ as a form of community policing that strikes fear into those boys and young men who do not comply with their sense of law and order. We have spoken with young men of their enjoyment of fighting, being involved in riots and being the ‘hard man’. These are typically young men who find ways to exist despite carrying negative labels that can potentially block their future development and life opportunities. These are young men who present themselves as ‘troublesome’ to adults in authority roles: young men who do not seek emotional support and exist without male mentors and therefore look to their peers and other perhaps more sinister individuals for guidance. However, we have also spoken to young men who, on first appearance, would appear to be doing well: those from middle-class backgrounds who perform well at school and do not necessarily present themselves as ‘problematic’.

Across all of our studies young men speak of the normality of violence. Some boys also speak of the excitement of violence and the ‘buzz’ they get from engaging in certain forms of violence. They also talk about everyday life experiences and about what it is to be a man and what they understand about masculinity.

Common to all our studies however, regardless of backgrounds, are boys and young men who are struggling to find their place and value in this world. Their experiences appear to be full of complexities and contradictions. As we will see, young men increasingly find it difficult to find their way in a world that they perceive as being ‘out of touch’. A world where they feel disconnected from adults, fearful about their personal safety, vulnerable within their communities and often left clinging to outdated notions of what it means to be a man.

Our research and the setting up of the Centre for Young Men’s Studies

This section highlights some of the earlier research that shaped, influenced and continues to influence the work of the Centre for Young Men’s Studies. Both authors had extensive previous experience of working directly with boys and young men as practitioners in communities throughout Northern Ireland. An ethnographic study carried out by one of the authors (Harland, 1997, 2000) attempted to contextualise masculinity in working-class areas of inner city Belfast with adolescent boys. The findings highlighted the extent of complexities, paradoxes and contradictions that were part of contemp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Context for Our Research Work with Boys and Young Men
• 2. Taking Boys Seriously (2006–2012): A Longitudinal Study
• 3. Research with Boys and Young Men: Critical Reflections on the Theme of Violence
• 4. Research with Boys and Young Men: Critical Reflections on the Theme of Masculinity
• 5. Critical Reflections on Education and Learning
• 6. The Voices of Boys and Young Men (1997–2015)
• 7. Critical Reflections on Practice
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index