| Summary: | This study sought to examine a peripheral loyalist working-class community's complex transition from conflict and paramilitarism. To date, academic literature on loyalist communities has, in general, focussed on conflict-era loyalism or the experience of interface existence, particularly, in inner-city Belfast. This study added another dimension to this canon of work by, instead, focussing on a homogenous and spatially detached community where the primary foci are class disadvantage and the consequences of negative social capital. The academic neglect of these hinterland estates is, often, mirrored by statutory abandonment in a policy environment where the over- riding aim remains to ameliorate the worst effects of internecine violence in the communities which straddle the city's many peace-lines. Grounded on the principles of interpretivist research, this project comprised a case study examination of a peripheral loyalist housing estate and enta iled semi-structured interviews with residents, para militaries, politicians, and statutory agencies. Social capital was adopted as the theoretical framework and a context-s pecific social capital framework model was developed to capture the unique experiences and perceptions of a community still struggling to address the legacies of conflict, in particular, paramilitarism. In broad terms, the data from these interviews demonstrate the following key points: firstly, that two important contexts needed to be co nsidered - specifically, loyalist para militarism and urban transformations in Belfast; secondly, that there is a definite class dimension to social capital which, invariably, leads to less desirable outcomes in poorer communities than are, commonly, expected in more affluent areas; and, finally, that social capital is as likely to produce as many negative outcomes as positive ones. More specifically, this study explored and expla ined the historical narrative of Ballybeen in terms of a microcosm of the wider loyalist community, in particular, their attempts to address the highly complex issues of both historical and extant paramilitary influence. This enabled an evaluation of the roles played by the various actors in Ballybeen's social and economic regeneration, its post-conflict t ransitions and social capital formations. This appraisal (redirects academic / statutory attention towards such communities and suggests that 40 years of paramilitarism has bestowed on the estate a legacy of stigma and oppression.
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