When Conflict Is (Not) Elsewhere

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the dynamics of teaching international relations (IR) in Northern Ireland, and proposes the need to challenge dominant narratives of abstraction when teaching in post-conflict societies. Traditional approaches to teaching international studies, through the discipline of IR, is imbued with processes of containment and abstraction (that reflect a Western-centric and colonialist history. In the post-conflict society of Northern Ireland, these narratives combine with the abstractions already present in the local curriculum to estrange students from the way the conflict is represented and taught. This inhibits them from seeing themselves and their experiences without distortion through the lens of the discipline. Recognizing such dissonances, and confronting them with critical pedagogy, helps students to challenge the dominant narratives of the discipline, seeing themselves and others as complex and as participants in the conversations of the international.