Sweating bodies: Men,masculinities, affect,emotion

This paper investigates sweat to deepen theoretical understandings of how gender is lived. To do so we adopt a visceral approach that opens possibilities of thinking geographically about the affective ties and emotional bonds of sweat to engage with feminist logics of embodiment. Our interest is in what sweaty bodies can ‘do’. Attention is given to the way that affects, emotions and sensations associated with being sweaty, smelling sweat, as well as touching one’s own sweat, and that of others, provides insights into the gendered lives of people as they move through different context. Our analysis of how gendered is lived through sweaty bodies draws on ‘Summer Living’ narratives of 17 participants who understand themselves as men and live in Wollongong, a city of around 280,000 people on the east coast of New South Wales, Australia. We illustrate the theoretical significance of thinking about sweat for gender and geography by discussing the ambiguity, proximity and collectivity of sweaty bodies; and, the fragility, multiplicity and vitality of sweaty bodies. To conclude we outline how a visceral approach provides possibilities to improve household sustainability policies.     

Borders on the move: Cross-strait tourists’ material moments on ‘the other side’ in the midst of rapprochement between China and Taiwan

This paper forms part of an endeavour to elicit the cultural-geo-politics of rapprochement tourism between China and Taiwan from a grounded approach. It seeks to examine cross-strait tourists’ travel experiences on ‘the other side’ through the lens of ‘border’, ‘materiality’ and ‘identity’ in an attempt to move beyond the often state-centric analyses of cross-strait ties. Discussion shows that travel documents that are close to the personal or those that are part and parcel of a touring experience are far from inert; they participate in the social and political lives of their owners, feature in bordering practices between the Chinese and the Taiwanese, and are often platforms through which identities are performed. Importantly too, as the various travel narratives reveal, the ubiquitous border certainly does not exist only in its physical form; imagined and perceived social borders are equally potent in (re)shaping cross-strait relations. A study that captures the often neglected field of comparative tourists’ travel experiences is timely in the advent of a warming relationship between China and Taiwan and the unprecedented increase in tourism exchanges that ensues.     

Urban greenspace from the inside out: An argument for the approach and a study with city workers

How might the fact that western people now spend so much of their time indoors impact upon techniques for studying urban greenspace experience? This paper takes this question as its starting point before substantiating one possible answer. It does so by using qualitative methods to examine the everyday practices of city professionals in London and what they tell us about the likelihood that this group will ever venture out into the various parks and gardens found around their offices. Many studies have considered which physical arrangements of city greenspace seem to deliver the greatest amounts of human benefit. Yet this kind of endeavour gives us only one part of the puzzle and contextual studies with those now generally found indoors have something important to add. It is with this in mind that the paper discusses how one sample of office workers quite easily forgot about these spaces, how certain social injunctions both pushed them outside and sealed them indoors, and why it sometimes made good sense for them to avoid any areas of local outdoor vegetation during the day. In so doing it highlights contextual dynamics that seem set to make significant impacts on the future of urban environmental experience and offers some novel suggestions about how best to promote positive greenspace relations in cities today.     

Which households are most distant from health centers in rural China? Evidence from a GIS network analysis

In this paper we have two objectives—one empirical; one methodological. Although China’s leaders are beginning to pay attention to health care in rural China, there are still concerns about access to health services. To examine this issue, we use measures of travel distances to health services to examine the nature of coverage in Shaanxi Province, our case study. The mean distance by road to the nearest health center is still more than 6 km. When we use thresholds for access of 5 and 10 km we find that more than 40 (15) percent of the rural population lives outside of these 5 (10) kilometer service areas for health centers. The nature of the access differs by geographical region and demographic composition of the household. The methodological contribution of our paper originates from a key feature of our analysis in which we use Geographic Information System (GIS) network analysis methods to measure traveling distance along the road network. We compare these measures to straight-line distance measures. Road distances (produced by network analysis) produce measures (using means) that are nearly twice as great as straight-line distances. Moreover, the errors in the measures (that is, the difference between road distances and straight-line distances) are not random. Therefore, traditional econometric methods of ameliorating the effects of measurement errors, such as instrument variables regression, will not produce consistent results when used with straight-line distances.     

‘We are managing!’ Uncertain paths to respectable adulthoods in Accra, Ghana

Studies have shown that the life experiences and future prospects of young people in many parts of the world today are more complex and less predictable than those of past generations. This has led to a recognition of the need to reconsider the conceptual frameworks applied in youth studies. Thus far, research within geography has mainly focused on young people’s paths to adulthood in the Global North or on particularly vulnerable children’s lives in the Global South. In this paper an approach based on the ‘social navigation’ of ‘vital conjunctures’ is adopted to explore the complex ways in which young people in Ghana navigate their way through life in a city marked by economic hardship and neo-liberal reform. The stories of three young people are presented to show the variety of life conditions, the complex social positions they occupy and their various and shifting future imaginations. The actions of these young people are steered by prevailing cultural ideals and social expectations of what a desirable and respectable future entails and by the actual space of possibility in the urban space they move through. It is argued that achieving respectable adulthoods in present-day Accra is a complicated and convoluted journey involving the careful management of social relationships.     

“You have to engage with life,or life will go away”: An intersectional life course analysis of older women’s social participation in a disadvantaged urban area

Social participation in later life has been studied as part of discourses around ‘active ageing’ but the promotion of participation in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods meets with particular challenges. In this paper I argue that in order to effectively promote social participation in later life researchers and practitioners require an understanding of life-long relational practices which are embedded in social norms and places as they intersect with identities such as gender, class and age.The intersectional life course analysis traces complex relationalities between people and place across the life course of two women living in disadvantaged urban areas. It shows the effects of societal and structural changes on individuals’ opportunities for social participation as well as demonstrating how age-related relational practices may lead to spatial segregation of older people in society.     

Independence and mobility in later life

This paper explores independence in later life and its relations with mobility, or embodied movements through physical space on the basis of a review of a range of academic literature and in-depth interviews with community-dwelling adults aged 70 and more in the UK. We suggest that independence is a complex and fuzzy notion that is best thought of as a qualitative multiplicity and as an unstable achievement fabricated out of dependencies on bodies, technologies, infrastructures, social networks and other elements. Yet we also find that the study participants understand independent mobility as avoiding lifts provided by next of kin, friends or others for getting around. This is tied to the enactment of particular forms of embodiment and ageist subject positions for older people and implies that older adults are inadvertently complicit in the perpetuation of the connotations of dependency in later life with passivity, burden and undesirability. To counteract these tendencies, we end this paper by elaborating more inclusive and broader conceptualisations of dependence, independence and independent mobility in later life.     

Population growth and its spatial distribution as factors in the deforestation of Nang Rong, Thailand

Frontiers constitute a major source of global land cover change hot spots, with forests and grasslands being converted into agricultural uses. As such, frontiers provide an opportunity to see how people manipulate the land and their lives in the context of social, cultural and environmental constraints. This paper examines frontier settlement and land cover change in Nang Rong district, Northeast Thailand for the last half century. It uses a Cellular Automata (CA) model to explore the land cover consequences of alternative patterns of settlement in a setting where people establish dwelling units in nucleated villages and work agricultural plots that surround villages. Forested land around the center of a village is converted into agricultural uses in an inverse relationship to the distance from the village center, but frequently modified by biophysical conditions. Land at the center of the village may be reforested after the village is established as a source of shade as well as fruit and other products. Model variation in land cover change is more sensitive to the spatial reach of village households than their temporal reach, suggesting the important role that technology plays in how villagers travel to their fields (walking versus motorized transit).     

Dealing with change in old age: Negotiating working-class belonging in a neighbourhood in the process of urban renewal in the Netherlands

‘Ageing in place’ policies presuppose that growing old in one’s own home and neighbourhood is in the best interests of older adults, as a familiar and predictable environment fosters autonomy and well-being in old age. However, discontinuities of place can challenge the relationship between older adults and their neighbourhood. This paper addresses the impact of neighbourhood transitions on older adults’ sense of belonging in the Netherlands by exploring how they deal with changes in the neighbourhood in their everyday life. The context of this qualitative research is a former working-class neighbourhood in the process of urban renewal. Our findings show how a sense of belonging is negotiated in relation to everyday places and interactions within the neighbourhood, providing a sense of continuity despite neighbourhood change.     

Public participation in China’s green communities: Mobilizing memories and structuring incentives

In recent years, there has been heightened interest in creating more environmentally sustainable forms of urban development in China. Central in these greening initiatives has been increased attention on promoting public participation in community-based environmental activities. Focusing on China’s green community initiatives, we examine the production and effects of participation in a state-led development program. Our analysis considers how incentives for program organizers and participants are structured by broader political and economic imperatives facing Chinese cities. We also consider what influence China’s history of neighborhood-based mobilization campaigns had on the meanings and methods of participation in green communities. To understand how urban development processes and memories of mobilization influence participation at the local level, we present two examples of the community greening process from the city of Guangzhou, comparing policy outcomes between a new and older neighborhood. This article seeks to demonstrate that the participatory processes associated with such an urban environmental initiative cannot be adequately understood without reference to earlier participatory practices and broader policy priorities guiding development in Chinese cities.     

SECONDARY DISPERSION HALOS OF A COPPER-COBALT DEPOSIT IN THE SOUTHERN URALS

Landscape-geochemical analysis of the expressions of blind ore bodies, in the semi-arid grassland environments of the Southern Urals, shows a depression of the migration capacities of copper, nickel, and cobalt and a relative weakness of the corresponding secondary dispersion halos in the geochemical profiles. Such halos are derived from the ore bodies' mineralized host rocks, however, rather than from the ore bodies themselves, in ortho-eluvial and trans-ortho-eluvial landscapes, and, as such, have a certain prospecting usefulness, under the circumstances, particularly where they lie in immature soils or in certain horizons of thin chernozems typical of the region. On the other hand, geochemical prospecting in neo-eluvial landscapes of the area is definitely not recommended. Mechanical dispersion halos and trains are the principal forms of the metals' migration in the region but they too represent mainly the anomalous disseminated mineralization in the host rocks, right next to the ore bodies themselves.--V. P. Sokoloff.     

Living and working in urban working class communities

Much has been written on the apparent urban renaissance in UK cities and the new lifestyle arrangements, working time patterns, economic activities and the more general reordering of work and life that appears to accompany it. Certainly, recent decades have witnessed a range of economic, social and cultural changes in the lives of those living and working in cities and surrounding suburbs. Much of the attention in this work has focused on those groups for whom the changes have appeared most profound: the high-income earners returning to live in the city - the gentrifiers - or those who suffer multiple deprivations as a result of economic restructuring. Seemingly absent from many accounts of urban change are those places where, at first glance, the effects of change have been less pronounced: low-income, working class neighbourhoods where most people continue to get by, albeit in the context of a harsher, and less secure political economic context. In light of this apparent silence, this paper draws on interviews from Wythenshawe in South Manchester, to examine how low-income mothers cope, live and labour, in a rapidly changing city, as they perform paid work at the same time as ensuring the social reproduction of the household.     

Changes in population evacuation potential for tsunami hazards in Seward, Alaska, since the 1964 Good Friday earthquake

Pedestrian evacuation modeling for tsunami hazards typically focuses on current land-cover conditions and population distributions. To examine how post-disaster redevelopment may influence the evacuation potential of at-risk populations to future threats, we modeled pedestrian travel times to safety in Seward, Alaska, based on conditions before the 1964 Good Friday earthquake and tsunami disaster and on modern conditions. Anisotropic, path distance modeling is conducted to estimate travel times to safety during the 1964 event and in modern Seward, and results are merged with various population data, including the location and number of residents, employees, public venues, and dependent care facilities. Results suggest that modeled travel time estimates conform well to the fatality patterns of the 1964 event and that evacuation travel times have increased in modern Seward due to the relocation and expansion of port and harbor facilities after the disaster. The majority of individuals threatened by tsunamis today in Seward are employee, customer, and tourist populations, rather than residents in their homes. Modern evacuation travel times to safety for the majority of the region are less than wave arrival times for future tectonic tsunamis but greater than arrival times for landslide-related tsunamis. Evacuation travel times will likely be higher in the winter time, when the presence of snow may constrain evacuations to roads.     

长江正源区可持续发展对策探讨

长江源区自然环境恶劣，生态脆弱，资源较缺乏，居民生活贫困，区域经济的发展和生态环境的保护面临着严峻的挑战。综合分析源区的现状和有利条件，认为旅游资源具有得天独厚的优势，如果加强基础设施建设，逐渐使牧民从散居到聚居，以旅游业为龙头，带动第三产业的发展，促进居民生活方式的多元化，提高居民生活质量和思想素质，树立环保意识，逐渐摆脱对草地的过分依赖，自觉保护生物多样性，优化和重建生态环境，从而实现人和自然的协调发展，步入可持续发展的轨道。     

Long-runout pyroclastic surge on a Cretaceous alluvial plain, Republic of Korea

Pyroclastic surge is a dilute and turbulent flow of volcanic gas and tephra that is commonly generated during explosive volcanic eruptions and can threaten lives along its flow paths. Assessing its travel distance and delineating future volcanic hazards have therefore been major concerns of volcanologists. Historical eruptions show that most pyroclastic surges travel a few tens of kilometres or less from their sources. Aeolian or aquagene processes have therefore been evoked for the emplacement of supposed surge deposits much beyond this distance. Here we show that a Cretaceous tuff bed in Korea was emplaced by an exceptionally powerful pyroclastic surge that flowed as far as the most powerful pyroclastic flows that formed the low-aspect-ratio ignimbrites (LARI). This has significant implications for interpreting ancient volcanic eruptions and delineating volcanic hazards by pyroclastic surges, and casts intriguing questions on the eruption dynamics and physics of long-runout pyroclastic surges and their distinction from LARI-forming pyroclastic flows.     

Environmental change and human mobility in the digital age

This intervention argues for the need of research to examine how information and communication technologies (ICTs) shape human mobility in the context of environmental change. ICTs are becoming increasingly central in the daily lives of migrants and communities at risk of environmental events. There is a lack of research, however, exploring how access to and the use of ICTs influences practices and dynamics of human mobility in the face of environmental change. I will outline this research gap and highlight areas for further research. I will do so by bringing together literature from human geography and environmental studies on migration and social resilience, and from sociology on the influence of our mobile and network society. In conceptualizing the role that ICTs play, I argue that the use of ICTs shapes human mobility through its impact on social network activities and relations. In this manner, this intervention builds on a growing body of research conceptualizing social networks – and related dynamics of power, access, in/exclusion – as shaping migration trajectories and abilities to cope with environmental events.     

Understanding older adults’ social capital in place: Obstacles to and opportunities for social contacts in the neighbourhood

Social capital has been a popular concept used in research and policy to stress the value of social contacts for the health and well-being of older adults. However, not much is known about the obstacles to and the opportunities for local social contacts in older adults’ everyday lives. In this paper we provide a geographical account of older adults’ social capital, by taking the main context of their daily life, the neighbourhood, into consideration. We draw on semi-structured and walking interviews with 17 older adults living in an urban neighbourhood in the Northern Netherlands in order to illustrate the meanings of, the obstacles to and the opportunities for local social contacts. Our findings show that the neighbourhood is not an isotropic surface where opportunities for developing social capital are evenly distributed. The potential benefits of older adults’ local social contacts differ depending on the place of social interaction within the neighbourhood and expectations associated with these interactions. Furthermore, different time geographies of older and younger residents as well as ageist stereotypes of older adults’ body capital influence the development of social capital in the neighbourhood.