Polarising Divisions

Kath Browne is Professor at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is the co-author of Liveable Lives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), After Repeal (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and Polarising Sexualities and Genders (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). Carol Ballantine is a postdoctoral researcher at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is a critical feminist sociologist who researches everyday reproductions of gender normativities, with a focus on violence against women, refugees and gender and sexual minorities. Katie Young is Assistant Professor at Concordia University, Canada. Her research examines experiences of music, sound, and listening practices in everyday spaces, including as they relate to gender and sexuality in diverse regional contexts.

While there has been much public interest in the topic of radicalization online, particularly in youth and often focused on young men, the process of radicalization and engagement with and embedding into positions that seek to rollback human rights gains are happening in all parts of society. LGBTQI+ rights are important, women’s reproductive rights are important, all these areas are subject to successful legal and cultural rollback, in actual court cases and in attitudinal change. It is vital to research how these processes happen, and to disrupt simplistic binary explanations that trap everyone into one bunker or another, an explanation that only further sharpens the violence of the binary in the first place. A commendable and insightful book, ethically significant, a readable and engaging text for anyone following the un-linear road of rights and justice.

• List of TablesPrefaceChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: ‘What was it like interviewing “them”?’: Reflections on interviewing within divisionsChapter 3: ‘Lumped under one umbrella of hate’: Recreating two sides through polarising divisionsChapter 4: Polarising divisions in work, public spaces and homesChapter 5: (Re)producing polarised divisions: Finding support, political positionings and making social changeChapter 6: Conclusion: ‘We exist’ AfterwordAppendix