Introduction

The title of this series, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, reflects the triple foci of its volumes. These three issues that are so central to the identity of this series – social movements, conflicts, and change – are also prominent features with regard to the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Thus we open this 27th volume of the series with three papers analyzing various aspects of Northern Ireland's civil rights movement, a social movement working for political and social change in a society marked by protracted conflict. The first paper, by Gregory Maney, innovatively analyzes the interrelationships between the Irish Republican Army's campaigns of armed violence and the nonviolent civil rights movement.