ABSTRACT
Deeply divided societies are those places where ethnicity contains ‘permeative propensities’ (Horowitz 2000: 7-8) in which virtually all political and social issues align on the dominant ethnonational rather than the socio-economic cleavage. Social movements here play a key role in advancing sectarian interests, fomenting inter-communal antagonism, and even spawning collective violence. Some movements may take to the streets to defend their cultural capital, while others emerge to petition for various group-based rights, or to press for an enlarged share of public goods to be distributed among co-ethnics. In such societies, it is often assumed that there is little space for alternative modes of politics that cross-cut ethnic cleavages. In such discussions, non-sectarian movements are either invisible or rendered as actors that are marginalized, co-opted, stripped of agency, and disempowered. Yet - as this chapter will highlight - non-sectarian social movements in divided societies, like Northern Ireland and Lebanon, represent important forms of mobilization that can even foment policy and social transformation. Such movements include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups, environmentalists, trade unionists, housing tenants, the global justice movement, feminists, anti-racists, and peace mobilizations.
