Everyday Life Peacebuilding and Family Motherhood During and After 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland

This book offers a novel approach to studying war and peace by foregrounding motherhood in times of conflict and peace processes from a sociological perspective. Through qualitative research resting on individual and focus group interviews with 55 mothers who had lived through the Northern Ireland conflict, this book examines the gendered nature of coping with conflict and its aftermath in peace processes. Drawing on the idea of everyday life peacebuilding, it discusses how the family is located in the processes of social transformation in conflict-affected societies, and illuminates that mothers play central yet largely unnoticed roles in maintaining and restoring sociability in a conflict-affected society. The book illustrates that mothers have been hidden and underappreciated ‘everyday peacebuilders’, as well as hidden and trivialised victims of the conflict.

Chapter 1:Introduction: Motherhood, Everyday Life and Peace Processes.- Chapter 2:Motherhood during ‘the Troubles’.- Chapter 3:Motherhood in the Peace Process: Maternal Perceptions of Risks in the Shifting Political Landscapes.- Chapter 4:Motherhood and Reconstruction of the Social Order in the Peace Process.- Chapter 5:Comparing Stories of Motherhood in a Deeply Divided Society: Intergenerational and Intergroup Contrast.- Chapter 6:Conclusion: Mothers’ Spaces in Social Peace Processes.

Yumi Omori is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She was recently awarded a PhD in Sociology from School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland. Before undertaking her doctoral studies, she served as a Researcher and Adviser in the Political and Economic Section at the Japanese Embassy of Ireland. She holds an MA in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice (Distinction) from Queen's University Belfast, along with an MA in International Studies and a BA in English and Area Studies, both from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.