Northern Ireland Society Under Siege | Sociology

The troubles in Ireland are not new. They have taken a heavy toll in lives and perhaps more importantly in psychological health. From testing and interviews with the children women and men of Northern Ireland beginning in 1969 Fields has developed a case study of the long-term effects of stress on a population. She identifies certain social control mechanisms which produce a mixture of chaos and docility in the troubled North and argues that England has established these in order to destroy the identity of the people-a process of psychological genocide. This volume applies social-psychological theory to a concrete and ongoing situation in a way that is illuminating for the general reader and for the specialist. Fields has done what might appear obvious: to find out the effects of stress on a population by going to that population and observing what their lives are like. The remarkable fact is that until now no one has done so. |Northern Ireland Society Under Siege | Sociology