Eleanor Carey

Peace, Conflict, Social Justice Concentration Rationale

I have been interested in this concentration for a while now. I went to a Quaker
elementary and middle school in Detroit for nine years when I was younger. While
there, I learned what peaceful resolution for problems was, and learned about
alternative dispute resolutions that didnt involve violence. I have been interested in
social justice for as long as I can remember. Both of my parents are attorneys, and have
both spent most of their careers working for legal aid-type organizations. My mother
worked as an attorney representing Michigan women prisoners throughout the 1980s
and 1990s, which ended up making large-scale changes in how women prisoners were
treated in Michigan and around the country. My father represented migrant workers
and low-income clients at a legal service organization. So having people like that as
parents, it would have been hard not to get interested in social justice.
I have been particularly interested in social movements, and am also interested in
terrorism, and how some these two things sometimes intersect.
I have taken a few courses already which I think will count towards this
concentration. My first semester at Bryn Mawr, I took an Emily Balch seminar entitled
Poverty, Affluence and American Culture, which really piqued my interest in social
inequality, and resulting social movements. This is one of the courses that helped me
decided to major in Sociology. My freshman year I also took a Sociology class taught by
David Karen called Movements for Social Justice (SOCLB350). This was a wonderful
opportunity for me to learn more about social movements which I had learned about
earlier in my education. I really enjoyed this class, and it inspired to look for more
classes similar to it in the Tri-Co. My sophomore year, I found a class that I was so
excited to take, which was also about social movements, but more specifically, the
Sociology of the U.S. Labor Movement at Swarthmore (S036) with Steve Viscelli. This
continued my education about social movements and how people organized themselves
and others in an effort to improve their lives. I absolutely loved this course. This
semester I am taking two courses which have a more obvious direct link to this
concentration. First, I am taking a course at Haverford titled History and Principles of

Quakerism with Emma Lapsansky (HISTH240A). I am excited to be taking this course,

because I attended a Quaker school for nine years, but dont know very much about the
history of Quakerism, and I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. I am also taking a new
Sociology course here at Bryn Mawr called Sociology of Terrorism and Counterterrorism
with Bridget Nolan (SOCLB313). I am especially enjoying this terrorism class. I have
already been interested and plan on doing a case study on one terrorist organization, the
Irish Republican Army. I find the intersection fascinating between social movements
and terrorist groups as exemplified with the IRA or the Weather Underground in the
U.S. I also plan on taking more courses in this discipline, including an introductory
Peace course.
The past two summers I have worked for an organization that has taught
me a lot about social justice. I worked for the United Community Housing Coalition in
Detroit, which is a nonprofit comprehensive housing assistance organization, which
works with tenants, homeowners, the homeless, and community organizations
rebuilding neighborhoods, and works to improve, preserve and expand affordable
housing opportunities for low-income Detroiters. I specifically worked in the TaxForeclosure Prevention Project, helping tenants and homeowners keep their homes out
of the tax foreclosure auction in the fall. Working at UCHC has definitely helped me
develop a much better understanding of the practical, real-world ramifications of things
I learn about in sociology like social inequality, housing discrimination, the cycle of
poverty, and more.
After I graduate, I hope to work in the non-profit or social work field. I
think doing this minor will help me in the long run my providing me with more
opportunities to learn about social justice, alternative dispute resolution, and human
rights issues and violations. I hope in future to work someplace where I will be dealing
with and helping to combat some of these issues.
Recent Courses:
This semester I have been incredibly lucky because Ive been able to hone
in on one area of peace and conflict studies that is particularly interesting to me. In
three of my classes this semester I have focused on the Troubles and Reconciliation

process in Northern Ireland. Firstly, in my Sociology of Terrorism and Counterterrorism

class, I did a case study on the Irish Republican Army (IRA). I researched them along
with a partner, and wrote a paper about their history, tactics, and recruitment tools. I
also did a presentation in class about the IRA. This was a unique experience to be able to
study that conflict through the lens of a sociology of terrorism course. As someone who
has a personal interest in the conflict, it was a different approach to look at the IRA as a
terrorist group, and not a freedom-fighting group. I think that I was most drawn to this
topic because of my familys personal history. In the 1860s (approximately), my greatgreat grandfather owned a hotel in Dublin. He was discovered by the British to have
been publishing a nationalist, revolutionary newspaper, encouraging Irish
independence, and he had been housing members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
(one of the predecessors of the IRA) in his hotel basement. After this discovery, the
British government gave him the option to either leave the country with his family, or be
hung for treason. He left Ireland (with the British seizing all of his land and holdings)
and came to America. Fun fact: his hotel is now the Irish Yeast Company, which opened
in 1894, and now sells baking supplies like cake pans and wedding cake decorations.
In my Junior Seminar this semester, Ive also been able to focus on one
aspect of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Since the beginning of the semester when we
had to submit six mini proposal topics, I had an inkling that I wanted to do something
with Northern Ireland. My topic evolved a lot over the semester, though. I started out
wanting to study the relationship between music and the Troubles, and reconciliation.
However, that eventually morphed into studying the murals in Belfast and Derry. It is
something that I have grown very passionate about.

Excerpt: I will be looking at art in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and afterward,
from the start of this period during the civil rights protests in 1969, through the end of
the armed conflict in the 1990s, and into the 21st century. The political murals which
sprang up all over Northern Ireland at this time, but mostly concentrated in Belfast and
Derry, are a fascinating window into the evolving beliefs and sentiments of people in
these communities. Therefore, I am most interested in the public political murals and
how their use changed over time. The murals were used as a tool for recruitment of
young, likeminded individuals into the different paramilitary organizations, and as a
device meant to antagonize the opposition. During the conflict, the murals were also
used as a means of communicating with the broader global community, not only to
attempt to establish connections with other nationalist causes, but also to present a
different account of events than what was being reported in the media. However, the
murals eventually became an instrument of cross-community growth and healing. I
would like to study the murals specifically in terms of their relation to the development
of the peace and reconciliation process (and the end of the conflict), and the continuing
use of murals in this process. This will hopefully show how these murals were forms of
community self-expression and an outward statement to the opposition as well as the
world.
After compiling the data and analyzing it according to the above listed criteria, I
will begin my analysis. By using this analysis of the different criteria present in mural
themes, I hope to draw conclusions about how the murals changed over time, more
specifically, how they changed in relation to the changing political landscape. When
doing the analysis itself, I was thinking of using Google maps, specifically the custom
mapping tool. Luckily, the database that Bill Rolston has amassed over the last few

decades is also online. I would then go about making two custom Google maps, one in
Belfast, and one in Derry, and putting pins in the location where a picture of a mural
was taken, and then inserting the photograph of the mural, as well as my own caption
with the date the mural was taken and whether it was a loyalist or republican mural.
Google custom maps also allows you to make different layers on the map, so I would
then enter each mural and its location on the map, starting chronologically, and having
a different layer on the map for every decade. This would enable me to distinctly see the
changes in location and frequency of republican and loyalist murals in Belfast and
Derry. By being able to sort the murals locations, dates, and affiliations, I will be able to
digest and analyze all of the information much more easily.
The purpose of this study therefore is to examine how the symbols and
themes in the murals in Northern Ireland changed in correspondence with the changes
in the political climate. This study will also look at how murals are involved in the
ongoing peace process and how they are now used as tools in reconciliation and crosscommunity healing and understanding. Part of this change in the murals recently also
has to do with a government-funded re-imaging program, which replaces older, more
sectarian and violent murals with ones of more idyllic imagery. I will be looking at the
official Re-imaging Communities Programme created by the Arts Council in Northern
Ireland to see how effective the effort was to be part of the building of a shared future
for Northern Ireland, which was peaceful, inclusive, prosperous, stable and fair, founded
on partnership, equality and mutual respect as a basis of good relationships
(Independent Research Solutions 3). These topics present interesting sociological
questions about changing symbols and the ethics of state-sponsored art. I am interested

in researching if this government intervention promotes more community healing and

reconciliation or if it just makes the community and cultural divide deeper. (end)
I have also been able to study the conflict from yet another angle in my History
and Principles of Quakerism class at Haverford. For this class, we have to do a big,
bibliographic essay at the end of the semester. After having read a few of the different
religious pamphlets and tracts, I decided that I was interested in studying Quaker
peacebuilding. I read one pamphlet by a man named John Lampen, who lived and
worked in Derry from 1983-1994, with the Derry Peace and Reconciliation Group there.
It was fascinating, and made me want to study the involvement of Quakers in Northern
Ireland. I have been having some difficulty finding enough secondary sources about this
for my paper, and so I am thinking that I might have to broaden the topic a bit to
something about Quaker peacebuilding in general, and not just in Northern Ireland.
I have been very grateful and fortunate to be able to examine a topic that is
so interesting and important to me from so many different angles this semester. I am
particularly glad because in less than a month (!) I leave to study abroad in Galway,
Ireland for five months. Having spent this semester getting so much more
knowledgeable about Northern Ireland and the history there, has been absolutely
invaluable, and I cant wait to take courses while in Galway. I am looking forward to
taking a few different courses while there, one of which being Revisiting Violence:
Aggression and Abuse in Contemporary Irish Family and Institutional Life. This
sounds incredibly interesting, and well-suited to both my sociology major and this
concentration. I also am extremely excited about a course that they offer called
Exploring the Indigenous Arts, which explores all different kinds of Irish arts

including music, dance, song, language and more. It consists of some lecture, but mainly
is interactive with lunchtime concerts, masters workshops, and two trips to the
Connemara region of Ireland to learn more about the culture. Since 2011 I have been the
Youth Officer for the Detroit/Windsor branch of Comhaltas Ceoltir ireann (an
international Irish music and culture organization), and have been playing fiddle for
about eleven years. I also studied Irish dance for about six years when I was younger. So
I am very excited to go and continue my studies from Bryn Mawr in Galway.