“Functions of collective victimhood: Political violence and the case of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.” by Orla Lynch and Carmel Joyce

In this article, Orla Lynch and Carmel Joyce, who both have a background in sociology and psychology, provide a theoretical overview of the functions of collective victimhood, and apply it to Northern Ireland as a case study, specifically from a sociological and psychological perspective. The authors argue that collective victimhood must be analyzed as a psychological tool individuals involved in a conflict use, a line of analysis that has not yet received sufficient attention, according to them. Specifically in Northern Ireland, group identities are (partially) based on competing narratives of victimhood, which results in conflict identities (Nadler and Saguy, 2003). This problematizes the boundaries of the category of victimhood, and blurs the victim-perpetrator boundary, as each group has different opinions on who has which role. 

As the authors exemplify, using Wohl and Branscrombe’s (2008) theory, conflict identities can engender involvement in violent conflict, as well as provide moral justification after the fact. Understanding (competing) narratives of collective victimhood are thus essential to comprehending how groups within a society come to see certain groups as perpetrators and others as victims, how malleable these groups are, and how this relates to the occurrence and aftermath of violence. Additionally, understanding this term in all its complexities, which this article aims to do, is important, because understanding how a society’s groups experience victimhood and subsequently assign perpetration will help to discover how to move away from strict group identities, and to further a process of reconciliation. The authors mainly call on work by O’Sullivan (2009) to see how the different conflict identities have taken shape in Northern Ireland, and how their boundaries are continuously negotiated to this day. As conflict identities serve important psychological functions, namely protection against the effects of inter-group violence, the authors emphasize the importance of not banishing them, but instead transforming them. Specifically, they discuss the potential for collective victimhood to serve as a superordinate category that will reduce intergroup tension, and replace subgroup identification, and argue common victim and common perpetrator identities can increase forgiveness and decrease competitiveness between groups. The authors thus argue that it is important to consider how victims actively use their identities as a conflict transformation resource, and that more research should be done about identity construction and internalization, as well as how this process can serve to create identity categories that go beyond fixed conflict identities. 

This article is thus useful for those looking to understand how identities of collective victimhood form in societies, how hostilities between groups in a society evolve, and how to move on from these and reconcile the competing narratives of victimhood. Aside from providing a good theoretical scope of the term collective victimhood and its complexities, this article is especially useful for those studying this phenomenon in the context of Northern Ireland, as well as those interested in transitional justice, and how negotiating collective victimhood can serve the reconciliation process in a post-conflict society, without undermining its history and the experiences of its people.

Author of this entry: Nienke Veenstra

Lynch, O., C. Joyce. “Functions of collective victimhood: Political violence and the case of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.” International Review of Victimology, 2018, 24.2, p. 183-197.