Explain how the layout and organization of space can symbolise the basic principles of society, such as organization, segmentation or hierarchy.

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Thomas Grome        Page         5/7/2007

Explain how the layout and organization of space can symbolise the basic principles of society, such as organization, segmentation or hierarchy.

For this essay, I have chosen to look into the Northern Ireland ethnography in terms of how spatial organization symbolizes basic principles of society. Basic principles of society, such as social organization, ethnic segmentation and political hierarchy can be symbolised by the physical organization and layout of space with the ethnographies provided by Buckey and Kennedy (1979) and Larsen (1977). Here, they engaged in fieldwork in towns in Northern Ireland.

The mentioned anthropologists studied the ethnic conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants, determining how these ethnic communities kept ethnic boundaries and why after centuries of tension, have been able to persist as two separate groups. The basic principles of Northern Irish society are based on this ethnic dichotomization , where among other forms of layout and organization of space, territory and territorial organization layout has assisted in the maintenance of the ethnic conflict up to today.

Territory entails a primordial aspect of Catholic and Protestant ethnicity. The Catholics legitimise their presence in Northern Ireland, as well as their existence as an ethnic community, in territorial terms. During the “plantation” (late 16th/17th century), Catholic land ownership was replaced with Protestants, and the Catholics were disenfranchised as confronting a disrupted industry and trade. This historical series of events has become rhetoric in Irish teachings as basic ideas of reciprocity (Catholics want their right to land ownership back i.e. to remove protestants from Northern Ireland) and morality (Protestant invasion was wrong) are still very strongly held in the Catholic community.

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As a result, the towns affected by the “Plantation Period” now populate a majority of Protestants in urban areas and the majority of Catholics in rural areas. First, this reflects the power structure of Northern Irish society; because Protestants are Marjory populated in cities, they have power over the industrialization of the society, as well as government. The Catholic ethnic groups are therefore a minority, although not “ethnically suppressed”, as both Catholics and Protestants indulge in a “siege mentality” e.g. the Protestants refer back to the siege of London-Derry and the Catholics from the “Plantation period”. This idea of ...

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