The Hurting Heritage of Bogs: Waste and Enclosure

Critical Ecologies

Katlyne Armstrong joins Patrick Bresnihan in this podcast to explore bogs as a living intersection where heritage, planning, and resistance collide. More specifically, Katlyne introduces the borrowed concept of a hurting heritage and how this might be playing out in the Irish context. Colonialism, for example, continues to structure life in Ireland and it is important to consider the ways in which this has implications for how we think about, use and engage with landscapes such as bogs. Here, we discuss enclosure, waste, and value through colonialism’s robbery of nature as well as Bord na Mona’s beginnings and present day climate enterprise. Despite these colonial mindsets, local resistances and knowledges emerge and provide for alternatives, which is illustrated through community projects at Sliabh Beagh, activism for the rights of nature among Friends of the Ardee Bog, and Leitrim groups blocking forestry developments and wind turbines on bogland.