Seeing/Being Orange: Perceptions and the Politics of Religion in County Armagh, Northern Ireland

Abstract

We each of us focus on our own perceptions (anthropologists included) and often remain ignorant of the affect inherent in others’ perceptions. In Northern Ireland, perceptions are often shaped by shared memories and histories of violence, as well as by shared concepts of ancestry and homeland—but these perceptions are shaped on either side of the bicommunal divide between the two majority communities, Catholic-Irish-Nationalists and Protestant-British-Unionists. In this article, I draw on my early experiences collecting data in County Armagh at the Orange Order’s July Twelfth parades to analyze the interplay between such perceptions of politics and religion. Framing my preliminary data through Veena Das’s (2007) study of how violence influences daily life and Anthony Smith’s (2009) arguments on the role of ethno-symbolism in nationalism, I reveal how the continued every-day divide between Northern Ireland’s two largest communities shapes not only how members of the Protestant community who support the Orange Order “be” in everyday life and during the rituals of the Twelfth, but also how others “see” them. For while being is ordinary-- whether cultural and/or religious-- seeing is risky, controversial, and threatening. Through this distinction, we understand that the political possibilities of violence are still a part of everyday religious life in Northern Ireland.