Rural change in Ireland

I have just been browsing through the book Rural Change in Ireland edited by John Davis at Queen's University. I was particularly interested in the latter part of Chapter 10, Towards a brave liberal world? living with European rural policies by Davis and Shortall. It is a very useful introduction to the evolution of rural development in Northern Ireland over the last 30 years or so and how European policies have shifted the focus away from sectoral interventions to more area-based, community-based initiatives all based on those lovely buzzwords, participation, partnership and empowerment. The authors point out that the history of the such rural development approaches have their roots in the 'community development approach fashionable in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s' which 'were subsequently discarded'. However, they did not point out that much of the rhetoric that seems to accompany EU rural policy in Northern Ireland (and obviously other EU regions) has much in common with the rhetoric currently found in EU international development policy. Interesting! Like a one-glove fits all policy. Shortall and Davis ask some very interesting questions in their analysis and I hope to focus on some of these over the next week. Definitely a good introduction for anyone who wishes to know more about rural development in Northern Ireland.