Landscape and Society in Contemporary Ireland

Book excerpt: Nearby, over several days, a landowner, with the help of a JCB, razed level a limestone outcrop and its hazel thicket to make way for a brand new field that was topped off with truck-loads of imported soil. Meanwhile, on the other sideof the Burren an ugly array of signage, most of it unauthorised, became the backdrop for another 'welcome' sign. These various bits of new development in the last dozen years are unexceptional in themselves. But they drew my attention because of their proximity to that simple and unequivocal declaration of landscape protection. The contrast between the public message and what was happening around the signs is just one illustration of the unsatisfactory relationship that exists between contemporary Irish society and the places that it inhabits. This book is an examination of that relationship. The book is about both special places like the Burren and the everyday landscape experience. My aim is to give an account of contemporary Irish landscape and to describe and to explain how and why it has changed over the last forty years.