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Orange parades are political rituals which reveal the nature of relations between Protestant and Catholic communities in Ireland. They also expose key political divisions within Unionism and the relationship of the Protestant community to the British state.

Based on unprecedented access to the Order's internal documents, this book provides the first systematic social history of the Orange Order - the Protestant association dedicated to maintaining the British connection in Northern Ireland. Kaufmann charts the Order's path from the peak of its influence, in the early 1960s, to its present-day crisis. Along the way, he sketches a portrait of many of Orangeism's leading figures, from ex-Prime Minister John Andrews to Ulster Unionist Party politicians like Martin Smyth, James Molyneaux, and David McNarry, and also includes the highly revealing correspondence with adversaries such as Ian Paisley and David Trimble. Packed with analyses of mass-membership trends and attitudes, the book also takes care to tell the story of the Order from 'below' as well as from above. In the process, it argues that the traditional Unionism of West Ulster is giving way to the more militant Unionism of Antrim and Belfast which is winning the hearts of the younger generation in cities and towns throughout the province.

Northern Ireland is a country of two distinct identities politically, socially and culturally. This text traces the two identities' implicit inner contradictions and how they have manifested within Northern Ireland.

The book examines the evolution and current significance of the parading tradition in Ireland. Since 1995, confrontations over parades have existed side by side with the Northern Ireland peace process. The most bitter of these have occurred over the Drumcree church parade at Portadown and the Relief of Derry parades. Using a range of historical and anthropological perspectives, the book traces the parading tradition from the seventeenth century to the present.

The religion of Orange politics offers an in-depth anthropological account of the Orange Order in Scotland. Based on ethnographic research collected before, during, and after the Scottish independence referendum, Joseph Webster details how Scotland’s largest Protestant-only fraternity shapes the lives of its members and the communities in which they live. Within this Masonic-inspired 'society with secrets', Scottish Orangemen learn how transform themselves and their fellow brethren into what they regard to be ideal British citizens. For many Scots-Orangemen, being British means being ultra-Protestant and ultra-unionist, but also frequently comes to be marked by pointedly anti-Catholic sentiments, and by a wider set of often deliberately sectarian political, cultural, and footballing loyalties. It is from this ethnographic context – framed by ritual initiations, loyalist marches, fraternal drinking, and constitutional campaigning – that the key questions of the book emerge: What is the relationship between fraternal love and sectarian hate? Can religiously motivated bigotry and exclusion be part of human experiences of ‘The Good?’ What does it mean to claim that one’s religious community is utterly exceptional – a literal ‘race apart’?

Up to now, ritual has been under-utilised for studying human behaviour. This book narrows the gap in our understanding of the social causes and consequences of our actions by focusing on the ritualised behaviours that define much of our daily lives. Knottnerus breaks new ground by comprehensively describing structural ritualistic theory. He shows how structural reproduction has occurred throughout the world, how rituals can be strategically used and how power can influence rituals, and how the disruption and reconstitution of ritual is of crucial importance for human beings. This book shows that ritual provides a missing link in sociology and helps us better explain the extreme complexity of human action and social reality.