Placing voluntarism within evolving spaces of care in ageing rural communities

Guided by a theorisation of voluntarism as a critical process shaping local outcomes of changes underway in health care systems and in rural communities, this paper re-analyses qualitative results from previous case studies of rural ageing to deconstruct the multifaceted role of the voluntary sector in facilitating the emergence of homes and communities as ‘new’ spaces of care. The specific focus is on the lived experience of voluntary sector care providers from the perspectives of non-profit organisations, community groups and families as well as elderly residents of rural communities in Canada and New Zealand. The findings confirm the local dynamics of voluntarism as a crucial yet neglected component of sustainable rural services and communities. More importantly, they reveal the voluntary sector as a major source of resistance to both the short-term changes mandated by restructuring and longer-term changes associated with rural ageing and service decline. It is through resistance that voluntary organisations and volunteers are seen to be engaging most intensely with the challenge of ageing in place within evolving spaces of care. A more nuanced understanding of their complex role is a prerequisite for developing informed policy on rural ageing and care provisioning.     

Ethical citizenship? Volunteers and the ethics of providing services for homeless people

This paper draws on wider research into the uneven spatialities of emergency services for homeless people in England, and focuses on the role of volunteers in staffing these spaces of care. In the first part of the paper, we explore the contemporary context of voluntarism, locating opportunities for volunteers in the shifting nature and character of organisations providing these services. We also trace conceptualisations of motivational underpinning of volunteering, arguing for the inseparability of giving and receiving in this context. These discussions frame the second part of the paper where we use interview and participant observation research to discuss what motivates volunteers to identify with and serve homeless people. The paper interprets the discourses, practices and performances of volunteering in services for homeless people in order to understand how volunteers are implicated in the co-construction of spaces of care.     

Creating a diversified community: Community safety activity in Musashino City,Japan

The recent development of the third sector and the government encouragement of it have attracted the attention of many researchers. In particular, geographical research has examined how the third sector has been affected or changed by government policies or guidelines in recent political economic contexts, especially neo-liberalism and also neo-communitarianism. While much research has demonstrated that the relationship between the government and the third sector is becoming closer, and has considered the problematic impact on the sector or the community, recent studies have described a much more complicated relationship and its consequence. In response, this paper attempts to explore alternative effects of government encouragement at the local community level, through utilising empirical data on recent voluntary activity regarding community safety by the Voluntary Organisations for Crime Prevention Patrol (VOCPP) in Musashino City, a suburb of Tokyo in Japan. Before focusing on the case study in Musashino, the paper briefly outlines key geographical literature on the third sector, and also examines recent expectations of Japan’s third sector using Japanese political documents. Finally, the paper argues that the encouragement of government in fact has the potential to work as a ‘catalyst’ leading to a more independent third sector, with a geographically and organisationally less hierarchical structure, and may also assist in developing a more diversified community.     

Placing sexuality in health policies: feminist geographies and public health nursing

Despite the increasing public profile of same-sex issues, health policies are often shaped by heteronormative assumptions. The health concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, two-spirit, intersex, queer and questioning (LGBTTTIQQ) people are complex and require broadening from an often exclusively sexual health and risk focus to a more holistic approach. In this context, this paper illustrates how a critical feminist geography of health, with its focus on the mutual construction of gender relations, space and place, potentially enhances and extends current understandings of public health policy and practice. Moreover, the use of a policy lens foregrounding gender and other power relations suggests that feminist research and coalitions facilitate participatory processes that address “the politics of discourse.” In particular, public health nursing practice can enhance the construction of spaces of resistance that challenge heteronormative discourse through research strategies focused on sexual minority communities’ health experiences and their visions for supportive care. In this respect, two strategies consistent with public health priorities to increase knowledge and participate in alliances are described. Ethnographic research with childbearing lesbians demonstrates that attention to institutional dynamics that foster safe spaces can facilitate access to public health services. Public health nurses’ involvement in community coalitions can enhance dissemination of community knowledges. The implications for gender inclusive and place-sensitive public health nursing practice include the development of sensitive educators, meaningful educational curriculum and related program planning, explicit policies, community partnerships and political leadership in institutional and research venues.     

‘Ageing in place’: experiences of older adults in Amsterdam and Portland

This article addresses the importance and meanings of formal and informal social support relationships and neighbourhood ties for older adults ‘ageing in place’ in urban neighbourhoods in two different welfare state settings: Portland (Oregon, the United States) and Amsterdam (the Netherlands). The rising number of people growing old(er) in urban environments raises new demands and pressing challenges for urban development. The majority of older adults are and will be ageing in their homes and communities, as opposed to institutionalized care facilities and settings. At the same time, the provision of formal and public care is being increasingly challenged by government cutbacks. On top of this, the formerly strong welfare states in many European countries have weakened. In-depth interviews with 40 older adults and key informants in two neighbourhoods in each city provide the empirical basis for this study. In Portland, there are widespread local civic initiatives related to care provision for older adults. The city has a long tradition both of individual responsibility and community culture, which has emerged from and appears to compensate for the overall lack of state services and support. Amsterdam has a long tradition of state provision, but is experiencing a policy shift towards a stronger reliance on private market-led services, and an emphasis on family and community as providers of support. Although a few emerging local initiatives for elderly care in Amsterdam were identified, it is unclear whether this form of community support can compensate for decreasing state provision in Amsterdam. This study raises concerns about the future of care provision for older adults living in unsupportive urban neighbourhoods, without financial resources or nearby relatives.     

Refugees’ expectations of durable solutions to their problems: deliberations from the Buduburam camp in Ghana

From the year 1990 to date, refugees living in Ghana encounter various socio-economic challenges in their toils to survive, leading to tensions over limited resources between them and members of the host communities. Voluntary repatriation, local integration, and resettlement programmes have been introduced as permanent solutions to their plights, but the given packages do not correspond with their expectations; resulting in their indefinite stay in camps. Despite this, not much information is available on their specific expectations about the durable solutions. Employing ‘When Displacement Ends’ framework, this article examines refugees’ expectations about the durable solutions. Questionnaires and interview guide were used to gather data from the refugees living in the Buduburam camp. Regardless of their preferred durable solutions, demand for employment, quality education/scholarships, skills training, and affordable health care services were common expectations. Quest for more financial incentives and security were eminent expectations of voluntary repatriation while they called for nondiscrimination against them, if they integrate into Ghana. However, there were variations in these expectations considering their background characteristics. For instance: those with no formal education mostly hoped-for skills training, the aged were eagerly concerned about health services while those in the assumed ‘school age’ predominantly requested for quality education with scholarships.     

Mental health preparedness for natural disasters in Iran

Appropriate emergency preparedness and response rely on social, economical, cultural, and political infrastructures, which vary widely according to the level of the development of each country. Mental health damages are among the consequences of absence of such infrastructure, which have not been studied comprehensively till to date. In most countries, planning for natural disasters and earthquakes has been mainly focused on physical and economical impacts; however, lessons learnt from recent earthquakes in Iran and other countries show that psychological impacts need to be considered more seriously. The first responder to an emergency is really the affected community, which consequently should be mentally prepared by appropriate training programs. These should include simple psychosocial interventions developed for people with average level of education in a way to be easily understandable and practicable. After the Bam earthquake, local community volunteers have been selected and trained to provide post-disaster mental health services.     

Back to the Future? Reflections on past reforms and future prospects for health services in New Zealand

In 1991 the New Zealand health system began to experience what has been termed the `turbulent decade'. Without health sector consultation or public mandate, an era of imposed market oriented reforms began. These changed the overall culture of health care delivery and the expectations of New Zealanders regarding the role of the state in the provision of welfare. In retrospect the ideologically driven imposition of the market-oriented reforms was not an exercise of bold leadership but one of political arrogance and rejection of established community values. Within the community, the neoliberal experiment heightened income and health inequalities, created a loss of social cohesion and generally provoked feelings of powerlessness. In the health sector, the reforms polarised clinical and commercial cultures and changed the geography of health care delivery. This occurred not only because place was de-emphasised, but also because decentralisation of purchasing created four health systems with widely divergent contracting arrangements and standards of care. The lessons of the health reforms have been painful, and must not be lost. A fundamental lesson is that market approaches to the delivery of health care have major limitations and that the ultimate goal of a health system should be the equitable, effective and efficient provision of care, not the profitable sale of commodities. Since 1997 there has been a retreat from the market, although it is not clear whether recent policy developments represent a new or distinctive `third way' or a pragmatic `pick and mix', combining the best from the market and the managerialism first introduced by Labour in the 1980s. Quite clearly, the experiment with the market was not sustainable. Whether this will also be true of the more recent and pragmatic `pick and mix' approach of the `third way' to health care reform is uncertain. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Sibling caringscapes: Time–space practices of caring within youth-headed households in Tanzania and Uganda

This paper investigates the time–space practices of young people caring for their siblings in youth-headed households affected by AIDS in Tanzania and Uganda. Based on qualitative exploratory research with young people heading households, their siblings, NGO workers and community members, the article develops the notion of sibling ‘caringscapes’ to analyse young people’s everyday practices and caring pathways through time and space. Participatory time-use data reveals that older siblings of both genders regularly undertake substantial caring tasks at the very high end of the caregiving continuum. Drawing on rhythmanalysis, the paper explores how young people negotiate emotional geographies and temporalities of caring. The competing rhythms of bodies, schooling, work and seasonal agricultural production can result in ‘arrhythmia’ and time scarcity, which has detrimental effects on young people’s health, education, future employment prospects and mobility. Young people’s lifecourse transitions are shaped to a large extent by their caring responsibilities, resulting in some young people remaining in a liminal position for considerable periods, unable to make ‘successful’ transitions to adulthood. Despite structural constraints, however, young people are able to exercise some autonomy over their caring pathways and lifecourse transitions. The research sheds light on the ways that individuals embody the practices, routines and rhythms of everyday life and exercise agency within highly restricted broader landscapes of care.     

Oil pipeline construction in Eastern Siberia: Implications for indigenous people

Traditional economic activities, lifestyles and customs of many indigenous peoples in the Russian North, such as reindeer herding, hunting and fishing, are closely linked to quality of the natural environment. These traditional activities that constitute the core of indigenous cultures are impacted by extractive sector activities conducted in and around traditional territories of indigenous peoples. This paper examines implications of an oil pipeline development in Eastern Siberia on the Evenki community in the Aldan district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). It examines community concerns about potential environmental damage and impacts on traditional livelihood. The paper analyses the interaction of indigenous communities with the pipeline project through interrogation of elements such as impact assessment, consultation, compensation, benefits, communication and public activism. The paper discusses how state policy and industry’s approach towards land rights and public participation affects the position of indigenous peoples and discusses barriers for their effective engagement. The analysis shows a number of policy failures in the protection of traditional natural resource use of indigenous peoples and provision of benefits with regards to the extractive sector that leave indigenous peoples marginalised in the process of development. There is a need to involve indigenous peoples on the basis of dialogue and partnership, improve regulation and shift industry’s approach towards consideration and engagement.     

State,capital and spaceships: A terrestrial geography of space tourism

Over the past decade, there has been a significant structural and geographical change in space travel. Following policy, budgetary and regulatory changes in the United States, space travel may now be conducted by private companies. This privatization has also led to some geographical competition and shifts between states within the US. In this paper, I respond to MacDonald’s (2007) call for more critical geographies of outer space activity. Building from his suggestion that we look more closely at the ways in which outer space activity is constituted by “numerous familiar operations” with respect to the practices of international relations and war and to the “basic infrastructural maintenance of the state and the lives of its citizenry”, this paper explores why the US Government has allowed for private space travel and why this privatization drove some states in the US to invest heavily in such a nascent industry sector. It argues that federal and state governments both saw private space travel as a means to fulfill their “basic infrastructural maintenance” with regard to economic expansion, development and competitiveness. The paper analyses these processes through the development of space tourism. In doing so, it provides more detail and geographical context to Dickens and Ormrod’s (2007) overview of the connections between outer space and the circuits of capital. It also demonstrates the many familiar political-economic processes involved in the privatization of space travel and, as such, the possibilities for further critical geographies of space activity.     

Participation dynamics and institutional change in the Scolel Té carbon forestry project,Chiapas, Mexico

Carbon forestry has become a cornerstone of attempted climate change mitigation in developing countries. As such, dozens of projects have been developed to supply carbon offsets to both voluntary and regulated carbon markets. In this paper we shed further light on the effects of such projects on communities and households by studying the implementation of a carbon forestry project in four communities in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. The project pays farmers to carry out a number of tree-planting activities depending on the local agro-ecological systems. We investigate how such activities have been promoted in and adopted by communities and we identify a series of community-based, institutional, resource management and asset-related factors that explain farmers’ willingness to participate in the projects. Our analysis highlights a number of shared motivations for joining the project but varied levels of understanding about the project rationale. We also show how community norms, access to land tenure, financial and physical assets differ among participants and non-participants which translates in increasing inequalities in access to income and to other development projects. However, we also demonstrate that project activities, as currently designed, motivate some farmers to participate because of the potential of the project to act as a mechanism to bridge existing social divides through cooperation in the project and therefore financially and politically benefit from participation. Overall, the paper demonstrates that the project contributes to transforming local livelihoods and institutions, unfortunately not always as originally designed.     

The roles of community assets in mitigating the impact of drought on grain yields in Northwest China

As an arid and semiarid region in that is frequently hit by drought, Northwest China is ecologically vulnerable. Faced with drought and other extreme events, policy makers have given top priority to the formulation and implementation of adaptation policies. This paper investigates the roles of community assets, including community social capital and access to public services, in mitigating the impact of drought in Northwest China. Based on a micro-level dataset of individual households and villages from two provinces, we find a major effect of community assets on grain yields, after controlling for other influences. Our econometric analyses show that the severity of drought in the study areas significantly reduces grain yields. The negative impact of drought, however, can be significantly mitigated in villages with better community assets. Several policies, including enhancing investments in communities’ infrastructure and providing public services related to drought, are recommended to both improve local adaptive capacity to drought and reduce poverty in the drought-prone areas.     

Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK

The media are one of the main arenas in which nutrition information is framed and developed. Research has shown a predominantly individualistic framing of diet-related health issues such as obesity, type-2 diabetes and coronary heart disease in international media coverage. These issues are framed as personal, ’lifestyle’ issues rather than requiring policy or structural change. In addition, research has shown a tendency in nutrition research and media coverage of it, to emphasize individual ingredients or components more than overall diet. The media have a tendency to report diet related research simplistically, often without contextualization. Taking a case study approach, this paper analyses UK news media coverage and framing of British Medical Journal (BMJ) published research into dietary fibre and bowel cancer risk. I investigate how the health issue fibre and bowel cancer is framed and dissect the process of mediation (from press release to mass media to local media), analysing the shifting ’geographies of responsibility’ that result. This paper argues that media coverage of research into diet and bowel cancer can be explained by the technologies, conventions and routines of media representation. Key gatekeepers were found to have an important role in framing the information that was reported. Taking a critical approach, this paper argues that like obesity, type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease, coverage of nutritional means of preventing bowel cancer is set predominantly in the ’lifestyle’ frame, laying responsibility for increasing dietary fibre at the door of the individual rather than looking at broader social, economic, or political drivers of dietary change.     

The murky waters of the second wave of neoliberalism: corporatization as a service delivery model in Cape Town

This article reviews how the process of corporatization transforms public sector management by adopting private sector principles. It argues that corporatization, as an institutional form emerging from a second wave of neoliberalism, threatens to undermine the democratic accountability of local authorities by virtue of restructuring the state in ways that are invisible to the public yet with highly negative outcomes for low-income communities. The article provides a case study on the water sector in Cape Town, South Africa by tracing the local authority's adoption of three cost-recovery policies and their impacts on low-income households over a five year period (1997-2001). Engineers are the key agents in the promotion of cost-recovery policies in the efforts to deliver services more `efficiently'. While these officials are highly skilled professionals in dealing with the technical side of the production process, they lack the social training necessary to deal with the politics of distribution. The prominence of the neoliberal agenda in urban management can be in part be attributed to the power of the technical over the political as engineers displace politicians in the deliberations over how to deliver services to poor areas of the city.     

‘That’s where my perception of it all was shattered’: Oral histories and moral geographies of food sector workers in an English city region

Geographers and oral historians continue to have much to learn from each other. The subfield of labour geography in particular can enrich its understanding of workers’ lived experiences, both in employment and beyond the workplace, through greater use of interpretative, collaborative oral history methodologies. Attentive to the temporal specificity and inter-subjectivity of people’s narratives, oral history reveals how workers’ moral geographies emerge and change. This article documents the spatio-temporalities and institutions of food sector employment in Peterborough, England, a city-region from which urban-based workers are bussed out daily to rural jobs. The analysis draws on four extended case studies of people who migrated to the UK and worked in the sector in the 2000s, building on recent research that has highlighted harsh employment conditions in the food production, packing and processing sector. It complements this work by viewing narrative itself as an agentic act and listening to how research participants crafted their life stories. These stories revealed diverse, complex and context-specific moral geographies, with participants variously placing value on small acts of rebellion or refusal, dignity and the time to speak with others at work. The article advocates greater engagement by labour geographers with the subjective experiences of workers, and with individual as well as collective agency.     

International students as urban agents: International education and urban transformation in Auckland,New Zealand

This paper discusses connections between the internationalisation of education, and in particular the growth in international students, and processes of urban transformation. The research is centred in Auckland, New Zealand, a city where the number of international students has grown rapidly over the last decade leading to significant impacts on the urban form and experience of the city’s CBD. This includes growth in educational services such as language schools and other private training establishments, new residential geographies characterised by low-cost and low-quality high-rise developments, and new ethnic economies of food, service and entertainment businesses that explicitly target international students. The paper draws on research with South Korean international students and a range of secondary materials to interrogate the connections between student mobilities and changing urban form. In doing so the paper contributes to emerging scholarship on student geographies and the role of students as urban agents through the inclusion of an international dimension that has largely been absent in the extant literature. The findings illustrate that while international students themselves clearly play a significant role in the transformation of urban spaces their influence cannot easily be separated from the contribution of a range of other actors including educational businesses, property developers, transnational migrants and local and national state actors.     

Service sector employment in Merseyside

This paper reports the results of an analysis of service sector employment trends in Merseyside. The main data source was the Census of Employment covering the period 1971–1975; comparisons are made between Merseyside and national trends. The paper contains analyses of changes in industrial and male and female employment, tertiary and quaternary sector services, growth and declining industries, public and private sector employment, office employment and the components of employment change. Particular attention is paid to differences between the Inner City and Outer Areas of Merseyside. Employment decline was widespread in the service sector, as was also the case in manufacturing. Employment decline is likely to continue because of a number of adverse factors affecting the local economy. The paper concludes by describing a number of initiatives the public sector could take in association with private sector interests to promote the further development of service industries which are already established in Merseyside.     

The effects of human activities and different land-use on trace element pollution in urban topsoil of Isfahan (Iran)

The excessive input of trace elements into urban soil has become one of the most important concerns in industrial and crowded cities all over the world. The contamination of urban soils can affect the health of people living in urban areas, and the surrounding ecosystems. Current study was conducted to assess the effects of human activities as well as different land-use on accumulation of trace elements in urban topsoil and also identify the potential risks to human health in Isfahan (Iran). A total of 95 topsoil samples were taken from different localities of Isfahan City and analyzed for Zn, Pb, Cu and Cr using the atomic absorption spectrophotometric method. Pollution index (PI) was calculated for each trace element to identify the rate of trace element accumulation with respect to the background values. Land-use map and geochemical maps were also created for evaluating of spatial distribution of pollution index and trace elements’ concentration in the studied area. Overlapping the concentrations’ map and land-use map revealed that the highest values of pollution index and trace elements’ concentration were located in central part of the city and highways with a great vehicle traffic load and also in the vicinity of industrial factories that increased potential health hazards to the local community. On the other hand, lowest values of trace elements were located in green-lands with strict vehicle traffic laws. These results indicated that different land-use and human activities have affected quality of urban topsoil of Isfahan resulting in great apprehensions regarding public health in crowded parts of the city.     

Risky bodies: Public health, social marketing and the governance of obesity

The inclusion of obesity within public health rests on a proven and accepted biomedical link between body weight and health status. Drawing on the 2005 controversy over annual death rates attributable to obesity in the US, this paper contends that uncertainty as to the causal mechanisms linking body weight and health are undermining the development of effective obesity prevention policies. Consequently, this also weakens the justification of the inclusion of such policies within public health. This work draws on recent interest in ‘critical geographies of public health’ and the continued attention to the recursive relations between people and places in the context of health which may offer a useful theoretical viewpoint from which unpack such aetiological uncertainty. Without an agreed or universal risk from obesity, the paper argues that public health obesity prevention through social marketing should be geographical in outlook. The three examples of 5 a day, Jamie’s School Dinners and Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster are discussed to illustrate the effectiveness of communicating risk in a manner that allows intention to be effectively translated into risk-minimising behaviour within the dictates of locale.