Identity and Difference: Does Canadian Multiculturalism Have Lessons for Northern Ireland?

Abstract

As Northern Ireland at the beginning of 2007 still struggles to restore devolved government in what is a 'post-conflict' society, the argument has been made that modifications are necessary to the Belfast Agreement of 1998, which was based on the explicit recognition of entrenched difference between the two main cultural identities in the North of Ireland. The argument that institutional arrangements have tended to freeze people in their differences, leaving insufficient room for the development of common civic identity (Wilford and Wilson 2003), bears a similarity to the strong criticism of Canadian multiculturalism policy that the cement between the tiles in the famous 'cultural mosaic' proves a barrier to the development of a shared sense of Canadian identity (Bissoondath 1994). Reflecting on the Canadian experience, this article argues that Northern Ireland, given the persistence of intense ethnic division, for the foreseeable future has little choice but to acknowledge in governance structures the existence of two distinct 'cultural tiles'. While cultural division in Canada can be transcended in common definition against an outside 'Other' (the United States), no common 'Other' exists in Northern Ireland, thus making the management of cultural difference more difficult. The article proceeds by way of a consideration of some theoretical issues related to cultural identity, criticisms of a multicultural approach emanating from Canadian experience, the present 'cultural war of position' in Northern Ireland and, finally, lessons that should be drawn from reflection on Canadian experience. Identity in Question To say that individual identity is only possible in relation to a cultural context is to state a truism. Hence, while Jenkins in his book on the social construction of identity cautions against the very use of the term 'cultural identity' because of the multiplicity of contested meanings to which the word 'culture' is attached (Jenkins 1996: 179), the term, nevertheless, can be said to have valency because it calls attention to the fact that collective cultural identities imply a much greater sense of meaning for the social actors involved than the traditional sociological concept of 'role' (Castells 1997: 6-7). As put by Inglis, reflecting on identity at the Centre for Canadian Studies at Queen's University Belfast: 'identity is constituted in terms of what is ultimately important to an individual. It situates a person in moral space' (2001: 8). A common-sense starting point for getting to grips with identity is suggested by Hall in seeing identification as 'constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation'. Hall is quick to point out, however, and to endorse the view that identity must not be reduced to some 'essentialist' and unchanging core but rather that it is always discursively formed and always in process (1996: 2-3). This social construction of collective identities uses varied cultural building materials from history, geography, religion, sexuality and so forth (Castells 1997). Identity is importantly 'marked out by difference' (Woodward 1997), implying the marking of symbolic boundaries and the generation of frontier effects. It requires what is left beyond the boundary, its 'constitutive outside', as Hall calls it (1996: 3). Differences marking the boundaries of identity may be small or great. Sameness can indeed threaten our individual identity and cause us to hate. As Kohler puts it: 'the more strongly we sense how like us the other person is the more threatening it seems that he is close to us' (Kohler 2000: 24). Ignatieff in his study of ethnic hatred in the Balkans drew attention here to Freud's notion of the 'narcissism of differences', which certainly can be said to have potency in Northern Ireland: 'The common elements humans share seem less essential to their perceptions of their own identities than the marginal minor elements that divide them. …