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

本研究项目旨在利用后结构主义话语理论解释北爱尔兰农业政治的当前发展。通过考虑当今可持续农业、资金、市场失灵、生物多样性大幅下降和其他环境问题等问题，该项目将解释为什么某些问题优先于其他问题。通过首先采用福柯的谱系方法，它将描绘主导话语的发展，这些话语塑造了实践和政策，从二战后生产主义的工业农业政策开始，直到20世纪90年代末英国政治的权力下放时期。然后，它将利用批判性解释的逻辑方法来分析政策文件、咨询回应和新闻稿，以确定该政策空间内的逻辑，以解释某些政策立场的优势，以及其他政策立场的弱点。

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.