ABSTRACT
Variations in cultural, demographic and social features within Ireland produce a diverse amalgam of identities. Merging contestations and contradictory configurations, this chapter explores how these identities indelibly mould the 'character' of the Irish and play a determining role in rural development discourse. Discourses of development, rural regeneration, history and culture are therefore drawn together to deconstruct, what is termed the renegotiation of rural development in Ireland. There is a movement away from the peripheral underdeveloped 'region' that was Ireland's lot, to a more developed, outward looking and advanced economy that characterises Ireland in the twenty-first century. In the post-war years, Ireland was characterised by a mainly rural-based and traditional society similar to that of the 1930s. There is an Ireland that is divided politically, by an international boundary, which provides a division not only in geographical space but in terms of community, where Catholics and Protestants live in a persistent state of tension and conflict.
