Devolved Discourses: Agricultural Politics in Northern Ireland and the UK in the Shadow of Brexit

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This research project aims to explain current developments in Northern Irish agricultural politics using post-structuralist discourse theory. By considering the current day problems of sustainable agriculture, funding, market failure, huge falls in biodiversity and other environmental concerns this project will explain why certain issues are prioritized over others. By adopting first Foucault's geneological approach it will chart the development of the dominant discourses which have shaped practice and policy since the beginning of productivist industrial agricultural policy after World War Two up until the devolution period of UK politics in the late 1990s. It will then utilize the Logics of Critical Explanation approach to analyze policy documents, consultation responses and press releases to identify logics within this policy space to explain the dominance of certain policy positions, and the weakness of others.