Peace, Temporality, and Generations: How Young People Make Sense of Northern Ireland’s Long Peace Process

There is relatively little research on long-term peace and the implications for a peace process of generational change. This article advances the sociology of peace by using the lenses of temporality and generations to understand the attitudes of people living within an enduring political transition. The article begins by developing the concept of peace time, meaning subjective perceptions of time and change during a post-conflict period. It then outlines four divergent varieties of peace time identifiable in interviews with 27 young people who were born around the time of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. With reference to Mannheim’s sociology of generations, the article proposes that the varieties of peace time can be understood as interpretations of the interviewees’ generational inheritance of peace. The policy implications for peacebuilding – conceived of as a permanent endeavour – are discussed.