The moral boundaries of the nation : nation, state and boundaries in the Southern Irish border counties

This article argues that nationalism is more varied in the way that it constructs its
boundaries than contemporary scholarship suggests. In an interdisciplinary, multistranded
qualitative study of ethno-national identity on the Southern side of the Irish border, it shows the moral repertoires that qualify, conflict with, and on occasion replace,
territorial-ethnic and state-centred aspects of national identity. It refocuses attention on
the cultural and normative content of imagined national communities, and the different
ways in which general norms function in particular communal contexts. It casts a new
light on Southern attitudes to Irish unity. More generally, it suggests that a form of moral
nationalism is possible, distinct from the forms more typically discussed in the literature:
ethnic, civic, trans nationalism or even banal nationalism.