An ‘Anti-Sectarian’ Act? Examining the Importance of National Identity to the ‘Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act’

Plucky Little People on Tour: Depictions of Irish Football Fans at Euro 2016

The recent history of the policing of Scottish football has been tempestuous. The enactment of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 subjected those attending regulated football matches to a range of new forms of control, and mobilised significant fan resistance that resulted in the Act’s eventual repeal in 2018. By this time, however, significant damage had been inflicted upon fan-police relations, with a concomitant impact on communication and fan engagement. Drawing upon the findings of qualitative research conducted in Scotland, the analysis herein documents a recognition on all sides of the poor state of fan-police relations following the implementation of the original Act. This research traces an emergent shift in some policing sensibilities towards more constructive forms of police-fan engagement and communication following the Act’s repeal. However, the study also highlights significant challenges to such emergent sensibilities, acknowledging, via a case study, that they exist in parallel with still highly problematic practices and approaches in the policing of football fans in Scotland.

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which language policy, planning and practices shape national and social identity. The research was conducted in the young nation of Timor-Leste, which achieved independence in 2002 after 24 years of illegal occupation by Indonesia. The Constitution of the new republic declared the former colonial language, Portuguese, and the indigenous lingua franca, Tetum, to be co-official languages. English and Indonesian were allocated the special status of working languages. The Constitution also allocated the 15 endogenous languages the status of national languages, to be protected and developed by the State. The thesis is structured around three classic language problems for developing nations, (i) dealing with the legacies of colonialism, (ii) reconstructing national identity, and (iii) managing the language ecology. The thesis is theoretically grounded in the ecology of language paradigm, which is founded on the assumption that languages exist and work in ecological relation to each other. Using multiple methods within an ethnographic design, the thesis provides a qualitative, holistic description and analysis of language policy, planning and practices in their cultural context. Taking a dualistic approach, the thesis studies language policy discourses at the macro (state) level and the micro (community) level. A sociolinguistic profile identifies the features of the language ecology; an historical study highlights the symbolic violence to the East Timorese habitus as a result of four distinct periods of language policy, planning and practice, the consequence of which was the fragmentation and hybridisation of identities. A qualitative analysis of contemporary language policy development discusses the issues and implications of the current trajectory for language policy-making, planning and use. The evolutionary study design culminates in a grounded theory analysis of data collected from 78 participants in semi-structured interviews and focus groups, in an effort to understand the relationships between language dispositions, language policy, and national and social identity. The narratives in the participant discourses were compared to those of official language policy. A key finding is that, while older participants in the research were willing to accept Portuguese as the language of national and international identity, younger participants tended to acknowledge a role for Portuguese as the primary source language for modernising and enriching Tetum and as a language of international communication. The participants were divided in their attitudes towards Indonesian. Older participants saw it as the language of the invader while many younger ones saw it as just another way to communicate. Whilst interest in English was high, it had little capital for the participants as a language of identity. In contrast, across much of the sample, there was deep and enduring loyalty to Tetum as the symbol of national unity and identity. However, negative, disparaging attitudes towards Tetum and doubts about its readiness to function as an official language were also elicited from certain participants. The thesis concludes that this has negative implications for reconstructing social and national identity and for achieving true parity between Portuguese and Tetum in the ecology. The data indicate that linguistic identities in Timor-Leste are multiple, situated and contested, particularly amongst the younger participants. However, the data also show that, in spite of these contestations, there is higher congruity between official and popular language policy discourses than might be expected, given the negative reporting East Timorese language policy has received in the Australian media. The thesis concludes that a more socially accommodating conception of identity would imply stronger efforts to promote respect for Tetum as the language of national unity and identity. This involves promoting it as a language fit for schooling and use in high-status domains. A socially accommodating approach to language planning would also imply a substantive commitment to indigenising literacy and promoting the national languages as symbols of local identity. The thesis presents the case for a consistently maintenance-oriented promotion policy approach that moves beyond mere tolerance and symbolic recognition of the endogenous languages. A language-as-resource ideology and a bottom-up approach to language planning which grants agency and voice to traditionally less powerful social actors and communities are advocated as essential to policy success. This is the first doctoral study of language policy, planning and practices in Timor-Leste. The methodological significance of the thesis lies in its respecification and integration of analytical tools from critical discourse analysis and ethnographic approaches in order to understand the effects of language shift and reform on language communities and their speakers. The theoretical significance of the thesis lies principally in its contribution to a theory of ecological language policy and planning in producing a set of principles for sustainable ecological language management.

The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 – Assessing the Case for Repeal

In 2012, the Scottish Parliament voted through anti-vilification legislation known as the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act. Among those most prominent in opposing this have been supporters of Celtic Football Club. This paper looks at the history of the term ‘sectarianism’ as a means to understand the act and to consider some of the rationale behind Celtic supporters' resistance. It includes reflection on aspects of the social, cultural and religious context within and without football, which have contributed to the act's construction and opposition.

The Formation, Existence, and Deconstruction of the Catholic Stage Guild of Ireland

Reports of violence and injuries to staff and patients in acute psychiatric inpatient settings have led to the development and implementation of training courses in the Prevention and Management of Violence and Aggression (PMVA). The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between PMVA training of acute psychiatric ward nursing staff and officially reported violent incident rates. A retrospective analysis was conducted of training records (312 course attendances) and violent incident rates (684 incidents) over two-and-a-half years on 14 acute admission psychiatric wards (5,384 admissions) at three inner-city hospitals in the United Kingdom as part of the Tompkins Acute Ward Study. A positive association was found between training and rates of violent incidents. There was weak evidence that increased rates of aggressive incidents prompted course attendance, no evidence that course attendance reduced violence, and some evidence that attendance of briefer update courses triggered small short-term rises in rates of physical aggression. Course attendance was associated with a rise in physical and verbal aggression while staff were away from the ward. The failure to find a drop in incident rates after training, coupled with the small increases in incidents detected, raises concerns about the training course's efficacy as a preventive strategy. Alternatively, the results are consistent with a threshold effect, indicating that once adequate numbers of staff have been trained, further training keeps incidents at a low rate.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessClinical Assessment of Dangerousness: Empirical ContributionsHarold Carmel, M.D.Harold CarmelSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Jan 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.54.1.116-aAboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Georges-Franck Pinard and Linda Pagani, of the University of Montreal, are to be congratulated on this solid, useful summary of the clinical understanding of dangerousness. Clinical Assessment of Dangerousness: Empirical Contributions includes up-to-date reviews by many of the masters of the field—John Monahan on major mental disorder and violence, including recently published information from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study; Kenneth Tardiff on axis I disorders, in a chapter that contains sensible guidance for an examining clinician; and J. Reid Meloy on threats and stalking—and a prologue by Paul S. Appelbaum. Pinard and Pagani conclude with a sound summary of the clinical components of assessing dangerousness.This book includes reviews of basic scientific, developmental, and criminological perspectives on violence. There is a trio of articles on homicide among intimate partners, parents who kill their children, and children who kill their parents—variations on the theme of how loving relations can become deadly. And two chapters discuss evidence of the effects on violence of alcohol and drug abuse.Some take-home messages: Tardiff discusses how a clinician should evaluate an individual's risk of violence "in the near future"—that is, in the next few days or a week at most. "If there is violent ideation the clinician should determine: How well planned the threat of violence is; available means of inflicting injury; past history of violence and impulsive behavior with attention to frequency, degree of past injuries to others and self, toward whom and under what circumstances; alcohol and drug use; presence of other organic mental disorders; presence of schizophrenia, mania, or other psychosis; and noncompliance with treatment in the past."J. Reid Meloy "suggest[s] a brief protocol for the assessment of threatening communications: (1) Is the threatening communication primarily instrumental or expressive? (2) If other psychological data are available, does the threat illuminate the current state of mind of the threatener? (3) Does the threatener demographically and clinically fit within any of the known samples of threateners, thereby providing frequency data for true and false positives? (4) What has been the threatener's behavior following threats in the past? (5) What are the stakes (consequences) if the threat is carried out? (6) Given the totality of known information about the case, should the threatening communication change the risk management strategy, and, if so, in what way?"Clinical Assessment of Dangerousness is a worthwhile book with valuable summaries of the literature. Forensic trainees and practitioners as well as those who need compact, up-to-date reviews of the literature on the clinical evaluation of dangerous behavior will be interested in this volume.Dr. Carmel is associate counseling professor of psychiatry at Duke University and clinical director at John Umstead Hospital in Butner, North Carolina.edited by Georges-Franck Pinard and Linda Pagani; Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2001, 336 pages, $59.95 FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 54Issue 1 January 2003Pages 116-a-117 Metrics History Published online 1 January 2003 Published in print 1 January 2003

Celtic Football Club, Irish Ethnicity, and Scottish Society Joseph M. Bradley John Hoberman observes in Sport and Ideology (1984) that "sport has no intrinsic value structure, but it is a ready and flexible vehicle through which ideological associations can be reinforced,"1 and Eric Hobsbawm asserts that "the identity of a nation of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people."2 Implicit in these comments is the belief that sport has the capacity to embody and express identity and community—in its national, cultural, ethnic, religious, social, political, and even economic dimensions—in a way that few other social manifestations can match. Celtic Football Club in Scotland, a professional soccer team based in Glasgow, offers a vivid case study of these observations and assertions, including aspects of the nature of community and supporter associations involved in Scottish football. For countless supporters, Celtic is far more than "merely" a football club.3 As an institution founded by and for the Irish Catholic immigrant diaspora in the West of Scotland, the role of the Celtic Football Club in the cultural and ethnic identity of this part of the Scottish population warrants attention for a number of reasons. As Thomas Devine notes, the Irish community in Scotland has not, until recent years, "been effectively integrated into the wider study of Scottish historical development."4 Nevertheless, what has been overlooked in academic research has received extensive attention in the domain of popular commentary, particularly within the Scottish sports media. Sport can echo and reproduce ethnic and national distinctiveness, as well as reflect social tensions [End Page 96] and cleavages. While the dominant discourses present the idea of Scotland as "one" people on a range of cultural and identity indicators, the case of Celtic partly demonstrates how that dominance is manufactured as a social reality and norm by discounting, marginalizing, demeaning, or corrupting minority distinctiveness and difference: in effect, by disempowering a minority community. Among second- and third-generation Irish populations for whom white skin, local accents, and assumed cultural similarities have traditionally been taken to reflect a community effortlessly assimilated to the "white" Scottish (British) majority,5 the resolute Irish identity of Celtic and its fans challenges those assumptions. The act of supporting Celtic is involved in the reproduction, maintenance, and expression of Irishness in Scottish society, and thus, important to understanding the processes of identity formation in a multi-ethnic Britain. This occurs within the context of ongoing debates concerning multiculturalism in Britain as a whole, as well as within animated, and occasionally acrimonious, deliberations regarding the contested subject of "sectarianism" in Scottish society.6 Much of the research reported on here arose from the Irish 2 Project conducted in the first years of the present decade, a sociological inquiry that looked at questions and issues of identity among people born in Britain of at least one Irish-born parent or grandparent. In addition, a web-based review of all mainstream Scottish newspapers over the period of research since 1990 shows that the discourses and narratives appearing in the print media problematize the Irishness of the Celtic Football Club and its supporters. Several hundred direct and indirect references and comments on Celtic—as well as hundreds in other media outlets—leave no doubt that a particular sort of commentary is dominant, all-encompassing, and recurrent, threading through editorials, letters pages, popular articles, news columns, and radio and television discussions.7 In other print media, the commentary on Irishness in Scottish society unambiguously demonstrates the links between sport and cultural and national identities. [End Page 97] In a word, discourse that is deeply critical of the club's Irish identity is embedded in Scottish society. The interview-based research centered on ideas of self, family, community, and nation among persons living in Britain for whom some, most, or all of their family originated in Ireland. Questions on sport and football formed a portion of the overall study, along with examinations of notions relating to history, religion, politics, health, work, family, and social life. Regardless of gender, age, and social class, all respondents in Scotland—with only one exception—reported that Celtic was their favored football club, and further, that this...

Chants add color and atmosphere to football (aka US soccer) games and constitute an integral part of the spectator experience. However, chanting cheers for a favorite football team and fans or hate songs against opposing teams and fans may play a more significant role in the football scene than providing mere entertainment. The current phenomenological study focuses on the perception, meaning, and mechanisms of hate songs in football games as seen through the eyes of nine Israeli football fans. Analysis of semi-structured interviews shows that, while in the stadium, participants identified with the atmosphere of hegemonic masculinity that emphasized chauvinism and patrilineal transmission (“father-to-son”) of racist views and dehumanization of rival fans and players. Participants rationalized the collective values expressed in the hate songs by applying techniques to neutralize their feelings of guilt. The findings point to intergenerational transmission of actual hatred through hate songs, whereby fathers serve as role models for continuing this legacy. Finally, the chapter’s original conception, the entrapping loop of hatred, reflects the mechanisms involved in creating hatred that is passed down from one generation to the next.

The article discusses Irish-Americans’ journeys to Ireland in contemporary movies. In the movies Ireland literally enables: the journey affords couples, enlightens characters, and brings families together. Although the narratives at times self-consciously address stereotypes and cliches, Ireland’s beautiful scenery and charming people serve as a retreat from the American city and its postmodern vexations. Conflicts within contemporary US-American society are thus resolved by appropriating Irishness and ethnicity. By recurring to stereotypes about Irishness, the movies present the homeland as an alternative and corrective to the daily strife of modern life in the US. The protagonists’ identity crises are solved through contact with the Irish community or research into family history; and women find their role by embracing Irish traditionalism and finding an Irish husband. The movies thus illustrate the interdependence of discourses on gender, national identity, and ethnicity.

List of contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Part I. Introduction: 1. The trials of the chosen peoples: recent interpretations of Protestantism and national identity in Britain and Ireland Tony Claydon and Ian McBride Part II. England: 2. 'I love my King and my Country, but a Roman Catholic I hate': anti-catholicism, xenophobia and national identity in eighteenth-century England Colin Haydon 3. Confessional state or elect nation? Religion and identity in eighteenth-century England Jeremy Black 4. 'To protect English liberties': the English nationalist revolution of 1688-1689 Steven Pincus 5. A history of variations: the identity of the eighteenth-century church of England Brian Young Part III. Britain and Ireland: 6. The British dimension, religion and the shaping of political identities during the reign of Charles II Tim Harris 7. The bible and national identity in the British Isles, c.1650-c.1750 Scott Mandelbrote 8. Protestantism, Presbyterianism and national identity in eighteenth-century Scottish history David Allan 9. Protestantism, ethnicity and Irish identities, 1660-1760 Toby Barnard 10. 'The common name of Irishman': Protestantism and patriotism in eighteenth-century Ireland Ian McBride Part IV. Britain, Ireland and the World: 11. The island race: Captain Cook, Protestant evangelicalism and the construction of English national identity, 1760-1800 Kathleen Wilson 12. A transatlantic perspective: Protestantism and national identities in mid-nineteenth-century Britain and the United States John Wolffe Index.

LANDSCAPE AND SOCIETY IN CONTEMPORARY IRELAND. By Brendan Mcgrath. ix and 248 pp. Maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog., index. Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2013. $39.47 (cloth), isbn 97819090057...

This study investigates the construction and positioning of Irish national identity in social media discourse during the 2018 referendum campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment and introduce abortion legislation. The referendum marked a pivotal moment in the Republic of Ireland's history, reflecting a shift in public perception and national identity. Historically, Irish identity was closely tied to Catholicism, with abortion debates often centring on a collective national identity rather than individual rights. This study employs a corpus-based qualitative examination of Facebook comments on articles from major Irish news outlets, using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to explore how national identity was represented, contested, and repositioned. The analysis identifies four main groups: Yes supporters, No supporters, undecided or neutral voters, and others. The findings reveal two conflicting visions of Ireland: one that is future-forward and embraces modernity, and another that clings to traditional values and laments a perceived loss of morality. The study highlights the role of language in enacting social change and the ongoing struggle over national identity in Ireland, particularly in the context of gender and social inequality. The results underscore the complex interplay between national identity, religion, and political discourse in shaping public opinion and policy.

The national identities of thirty-six young adults who reside in Melbourne, Australia were examined. Aided by qualitative data, this study shows that young people in Australia have developed a complex understanding of their national identities. Through the influence of family, place, education, language and appearance the respondents reflexively (Giddens, 1991: 53) constructed their national identities. Many of their national identities were hybrid (Nederveen Pieterse, 1994, 2001) recognizing their residence in multicultural Australia as well as their diverse heritages. These hybrid national identities were varied as the respondents’ attachment to their heritage national identity existed along a continuum (Nederveen Pieterse, 1994: 172). The respondents’ national identities were also fluid (Noble, Poynting and Tabar, 1999: 42) as the respondents adjusted and modified them to adapt to the circumstances in which they found themselves. Yet these hybrid and fluid national identities are not indicative of fractured and unstable national identities. Rather the respondents’ national identities appear to be solidly constructed and they have a strong sense of who they are. The fluidity and hybridity of the national identities allowed them the flexibility to combine the disparate aspects of their national identities and utilize them to serve them effectively in various situations. The respondents’ fluid, hybrid identities are indicative of contemporary Australia where the population is made up of people with heritages from all areas of the globe who live together in a multicultural society. However Australia’s past including its White Australia and assimilation policies retain some resonance. Social constructions of Australian national identity as being white and Anglo and the expectation that migrants ‘fit into Australian society’ remain. Whilst people from any background were perceived by the respondents to have access to an Australian national identity, a hierarchy (Hage, 1998) was evident where those with more social capital had preferential access to this identity. The respondents noted social activities and political values as making up this social capital. However the most valuable form of cultural capital for recognition of an Australian national identity was a white-Anglo appearance.