Within a generation, or perhaps less, the Republic of Ireland appears to have moved from being a society characterized by socioreligious conformity policed and structured by a hierarchical Catholic authoritarianism, to one predominated by a cosmopolitan and liberal outlook where a blend of Irish and European frames have replaced religion as a fundamental identity marker. The change is emblematized in a shift from a conservative, religiously oppressive and masculinist society to a neoliberal and post-religious one riven with dislocations following the economic crash of 2008. In stark contrast, in Northern Ireland, any thawing of religious norms intersects with the nationalist-unionist ideological and party-political axis; thus at the surface level, politics remains characterized by ethno-religious division, at an everyday level some signs of a more liberal culture are discernible in relation to issues such as marriage equality and abortion.

These transitional societies are the case studies that Jennifer Todd's masterly Identity Change after Conflict attempts to assess. Based on Todd's work on social and political identity change over two decades, the book draws on her collaborations with researchers across a number of disciplines including psychology, ethnography, sociology, and oral history. The book represents something of a culmination of Todd's thinking and research since, at least, the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. As such, it can be read in a number of ways: as a significant part of Todd's oeuvre, within the lineage of her many groundbreaking articles on Northern Ireland and her and Joseph Ruane's seminal Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (1996); as a timely interrogation of identity change North and South; and as an intervention into the socio-political debates on identity that have continued to gather momentum within academia.

A key concern of Identity Change after Conflict is with the micro-level shifts that give way to new articulations of self: “ideational innovation is measure by the distantiation from existing social norms and conventions” (256). The appendix is significant in and of itself as a kind of methodological guide for researchers. It outlines the interview cohorts and details how the interviews were conducted. These cohorts came from various locations around Ireland—north and south—including the border areas. The resulting text and findings are based on a combination of coding and close reading of the respondents’ opinions and experiences.

Todd's central idea comes from a concern with the everyday and fine-grained research. The book's central contribution is arguably the identification of mechanisms of change arising from that perspective—in particular, what Todd calls “individual identity innovation”; that is, a “discursive and practical distancing” from the ethno-religious norms that once predominated and still form the backdrop to the political cultures in the two Irish states (100). She prepares the ground by looking at synchronic evidence—distantiation involves a practical or ideational movement from “given social and symbolic boundaries” (31). Individual identity innovation is introduced near the beginning of the book (32). Todd explains that it is “roughly modeled on firm-level innovation in economics. Just as firm-level innovation does not necessarily lead to growth . . . [it] is not always sustained individually or socially. Just as firm-level innovation presupposes an industry ‘frontier’ which it breaches, so too identity innovation presupposes societies where there are discernible social practices and grammars of division from which it moves away” (33).

The first three chapters outline the context and theory that forms the basis for the rest of the text. Having set the scene, chapter 4 offers an insightful and intricate intervention into the kind of microscopic and everyday research on identity change that has interested researchers for the past decade and a half and addresses ethnicity, variation and exclusion in what Todd refers to as the “two Irelands”—the state and society of the Republic and the deeply divided quasi-state of Northern Ireland. This “grammar” of change is put into play in the fifth chapter: Todd describes how innovation can push conventional nationalist framings along resonant paths in the Irish Republic, while in the North, the ways in which those conventional framings are often used for exclusion and policing functions tends to force innovators along more “radical, challenging and transforming” (and transgressive?) paths (105).

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 cover questions concerning the depth of identity change, obstacles to identity change (focusing, in particular on mixed marriages and using empirical evidence from the Gard as a kind of test case), and typologies of strategies of identity change. Todd's discussion of change culminates in the fascinating idea of identity “traps”: that is, “where people want to change away from given social divisions . . . but the socio-political context incentivizes them to adopt modes of identity change that they lack the resources to sustain” (191). One example might be the segregated education system in Northern Ireland—although surveys show a desire to integrate children's schooling, around 94 percent of children are educated in institutions dominated by one religion (Catholicism or Protestantism). Here the principle of parental choice drives separation. Todd's idea of sociopolitical traps gives way to the question “What follows?” She explores alternative formulations and practices relating to the flying of flags, same-sex marriage debates, and Brexit in Northern Ireland in her final chapter. The book concludes with the observation that “states and international bodies cannot impose directions of identity change. Part of what they can do is to remove the traps that tend to reverse identity change and marginalize the individuals who change, creating more spaces where innovation can be sustained and grow in safety” (232). Yet, it remains unclear how this ethic can apply to politicians whose raison d’être depends on ethnic boundary making and who strike fear rather than safety into both in- and out-group members. In some ways, the question is out with the rationale for the book, but having identified the ways that change can occur, a follow-up might be to explore how change can be cultivated. Todd's book is an indispensable guide to that question and ought to be read by students of identity change.