Inaccessible childhoods: evaluating accessibility in homes,schools and neighbourhoods with disabled children

Accessible built environments are a critical component of Canada’s commitment to disabled children’s ‘right to enjoy full and decent lives’ [United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. 1989. Convention on the Rights of the Child. New York. [Google Scholar]. Convention on the Rights of the Child. New York.] . Although valid, reliable research data about the accessibility of built environments are key to developing related policies, these data currently do not exist. To begin to redress this gap, we conducted a case study series followed by a survey to determine the accessibility of schools, homes and neighbourhoods directly from disabled children (The ScHaN Project). To present a concise summary of the findings that can inform equitable, evidence-based policies, we developed a scoring system for their homes, schools and neighbourhoods. Although our findings illustrate that eliciting and interpreting data from these children were complex undertakings, it is clear that none of these central environments met Canada’s obligation to enhance equity by enabling their access, inclusion and participation.     

Playing and affective time-spaces

In this paper I have two objectives. The first is to critically explore definitions of playing that have underpinned a great deal of research in children's geography. In so doing I want to highlight some of the assumptions that various authors within geography have made (often implicitly) about the ontological status of playing. This will in turn, lead me to work with, between and sometimes against three authors who have tried to theorize playing. In following this route, I hope to come to some tentative conclusions about the status of playing, which paradoxically will eschew any (strong) ontological commitment at all. This leads to my second objective, which is to explore four particular aspects of playing—embodiment, affect, objects and time-space—to examine how they are interleaved with spaces and spacing. In necessarily situating this work within my research at Hilltop Primary School1 1. This is a pseudonym, used as part of a confidentiality agreement signed with the school. View all notes in the summer of 2001, I hope to show that geographical studies can contribute to definitions of playing as much as playing can inflect certain notions of space.     

Sexual Assault: What's Title IX Got to Do with It?

Sexual assault is a heinous crime that for decades had failed to receive needed attention on college campuses across the country.¹1. Nancy Chi Cantalupo, “Burying Our Heads in the Sand: Lack of Knowledge, Knowledge Avoidance, and the Persistent Problem of Campus Peer Sexual Violence,” 43 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. (2011) 205, 214–17.View all notes That changed on April 4, 2011, when the Department of Education's (ED) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a “Dear Colleague” letter (DCL) on sexual harassment and violence, which purported to clarify “Title IX's requirements related to student-on-student sexual harassment, including sexual violence, and explains schools' responsibility to take immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and sexual violence.”²2. Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, “Dear Colleague Letter from Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights,” Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education. Office of the Assistant Secretary, April 4, 2011, http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201104_pg2.html. All subsequent references to this letter will refer to Ali, Sexual Assault Guidance, 2011.View all notes The intent of the letter to mete out swift justice for sexual assault survivors and to punish perpetrators and negligent institutions became immediately clear as the number of schools under OCR investigation began to swell. In response, colleges and universities have instilled a vast machinery of administrative procedures to adhere to the new requirements. At last count the OCR was conducting more than 300 investigations of nearly 200 colleges and school districts for the handling of sexual harassment and assault under Title IX.³3. Tyler Kingkade, “There Are Far More Investigations of College Campuses under Title IX than Most People Know,” Huffington Post, June 16, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/title-ix-investigations-sexual-harassment_us_575f4b0ee4b053d433061b3d.View all notes     

Participant observation in obesity research with children: striated and smooth spaces

This article discusses the value of conducting participant observation in obesity research with children in an Australian community setting. Obesity is highly stigmatized, and the use of activity-based interviews exposed the intellectual and embodied consciousness that children negotiate when they take part in research about food and bodies. Instead of opening up possibilities, interview-based activities can lead to a moral correctness about healthy lifestyles. It was through participant observation, in engagement with what Deleuze and Guattari [1988 Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1988. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press. [Google Scholar]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press] call striated and smooth (or regulated and unregulated) spaces of children's everyday activities, that richer understandings of obesity and children's bodies became apparent. We argue that without participant observation, our understandings of what children say and draw about healthy lifestyles may be limited by the striated spaces in which we conduct our research and the constraints that accompany the cultural politics of childhood and obesity.     

Barcelona as urban palimpsest: Architectonic memory and structural violence in José Luis Guerin's En construcción (2001)

This article presents an analysis of the Spanish director José Luis Guerin's “documental ficticio” titled En construcción (2001) En construcción. Dir. José Luis Guerin.Ovídeo TV S.A., 2001. Film. [Google Scholar]. In particular, I will examine the filmic representation of urban and architectonic spaces within post-industrial Barcelona, as well as the relationship of space and place to the construction of historical (post)memory in post-Francoist Spain, as “lieux de memoire.” While contemporary Spanish film has tended toward the engagement of Franco's lingering specters, I contend that Guerin's filmic discourse rather focuses on the new totalitarian state imposed by the emergence of social democracy and free-market capitalism in post-Francoist Spain, as inscribed via the urban architecture within Barcelona's public spaces.     

Dark Nightmare: The Shooting of William Alexander as Canon Scott Saw it

Frederick G. Scott's World War I war memoir, The Great War As I Saw It, contains the sole unofficial eyewitness recording of a court martial execution that we possess. The case of William Alexander 20726 Alexander, William. 20726. Service records. Library Archives Canada, RG24, vol. 2538 HQS 1822, RG 150/acc 1992-93/166/Box 83-992 and RG24-C-1, 1946 Central Army Registry R112-553-X-E, Reel C-5053 90,  [Google Scholar], executed in October 1917, for desertion in the face of the enemy compelled Scott to devote more printed space to it than to the death of his own son, Henry. A discussion based upon a close reading of Scott's memoir and an exposition from archival sources of Alexander's case demonstrates the ways in which Scott evades the case's disturbing implications echoes wider aspects of Canada's early memorialization of the Great War.     

A l'attac. Globalisation and Ideological Renewal on the French Left

The question of globalisation has become a focus of intense debate on the French Left with growing attempts to redefine the nature and forms of leftist opposition. More than any other grouping Attac, created in 1998, has been at the centre of a movement of opposition that contests the terms of neo-liberal globalisation and posits an alternative vision of social and political change. This article focuses on Attac's role in constructing a new discourse of opposition in relation to a global economic order. Whilst Attac seems to offer the possibility for ideological renewal on the Left, it has so far been unable to mobilise widespread support behind its political project. For some observers, Attac has failed to make explicit the connections between particular social problems and grievances in France and a universal context of change at international level. It tends to treat globalisation as an abstract ‘scientific’ problem, a distant and reified phenomenon rather than a social reality affecting millions of French citizens in their everyday lives.

Comment cela s'appelle-t-il, ce moment o[ugrave] un autre monde devient possible? Cela a un très beau nom, camarades. Cela s'appelle l'aurore.1 ?[1] Ramonet, I. (2002 Ramonet, I. 2002. “Cela s'appelle l'aurore”. In Attac au Zénith, 13–25. Paris: Mille et Une Nuits.  [Google Scholar]) ‘Cela s'appelle l'aurore’, in Attac au Zénith, Attac, Mille et Une Nuits, Paris, p. 21. The slogan un autre monde est possible was first devised by Attac and has since become the main symbolic reference for the French anti-globalisation movement.      

Invoking Religion in Australian Politics

As religious engagement in the Australian population continues to decline, the apparent increased prominence of religion in Australian politics is puzzling. This article examines the characteristics of 2422 speeches given by prominent Australian federal politicians between 2000 and 2006 to assess whether religion has become more prominent in early twenty-first century Australian politics, and whether or not the explanations provided to explain the increase are compelling. It is argued that the framing of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ as a religious conflict weakened adherence to Rawls' (2005 Rawls, J. 2005. Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press.  [Google Scholar]) liberal consensus (exclusion of religious beliefs from the public forum) and normalised the use of Christian terminology and ideas in Australian political discourse.     

‘The Most Churlish of Celebrities’: George Eliot,John Cross and the Question of High Status

Published in 1885, John Cross's biography of his late wife, George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, was written with the intention to ‘make known the woman as well as the author’ (John Cross, ed., George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, cabinet edn, 3 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1887), I, v). Yet, ironically, the biography is renowned precisely for the lack of insight it affords readers into the private life of George Eliot. Why did Cross make a promise that he could not keep? My essay attempts to answer this question by examining George Eliot's Life in the context of the fame culture of the late nineteenth century. I suggest that it is possible to read Cross's unwillingness in the Life to make Eliot more ‘available’ to her public as a reaction against the sorts of publicity which, throughout the 1870s, had pushed Eliot's persona into a celebrity arena. George Eliot's Life represents Cross's effort to preserve Eliot's high professional reputation by emphasizing her distance from celebrity culture and her status as a female sage. Through close examination of the reviews of the biography, I identify the contemporary attitudes that made stressing Eliot's greatness appear urgent to her biographer and, paradoxically, so unpopular with the general public. I call attention, in particular, to changing expectations about the relationship between public figures and their audiences as well as the purpose and content of famous Lives. ?1.?Leon Edel, ed., The Diary of Alice James (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 40–41.      

‘The best thing ever’: how children's popular culture matters

This paper reflects upon a popular cultural event which was, briefly, for a particular grouping of children in the UK, ‘the best thing ever’: namely the release of the CD-single Reach, by the British pop group S Club 7. I suggest that this event was illustrative of manifold cultural forms and practices which—being ostensibly banal, fun, faddish, lowbrow and ‘childish’—continue to go largely unheralded by many social/cultural geographers. Against this grain, this paper presents three apprehensions of S Club 7’s significance. First, I restate a particular case made via Anglo-American cultural studies that ‘children's popular culture’, ought to be taken more seriously in contexts salient to social/cultural geographers. Second, I detail how the S Club 7 phenomenon existed, practically and materially, and mattered, in some children's everyday lives. Third, refracting cultural geographers' recent apprehensions of affective, evental aspects of cultural practices, I suggest that the pop cultural phenomenon described herein mattered (to those children, there and then) in ways which elude and exceed canonical scholarly habits of writing/knowing popular cultural phenomena.     

“Back in the heartland”: Seamus Heaney's “Route 110” sequence in Human Chain

This essay foregrounds the increasingly significant role translation has played in Seamus Heaney's compositional and creative practices since the 1970s, and how it functions as a means of displacement and route into imagined homecomings. It offers a detailed analysis of the sequence which occupies a central position within Human Chain, in which Heaney HeaneySeamusStations. Belfast: Ulsterman Publications, 1975. [Google Scholar] attends to and seeks to reconcile once more the different “voices of my education”, that of originary familial/parish culture of Mossbawn and Bellaghy, and that acquired at St Columb's College and Queen's University that furnished him with rich linguistic and cultural assets, but sentenced him also to a “migrant solitude” (“The Wanderer”, Stations). “Route 110” illustrates the enduring effects of both bequests, as Heaney takes scenes and motifs from Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI, which details Aeneas' experiences on his descent into the seventieth year, Heaney takes readers with him on a road back to pre-Troubles Northern Ireland in the mid-twentieth century, stopping off initially at Smithfield Market, Belfast, in order to pick up a “used copy” of the Virgil that will become his guide. What he subsequently assembles is an album of snapshots of his youth, part of his legacy to his newly-born granddaughter.     

From “Dead Things” to Immutable,Combinable Mobiles: H.D. Skinner,the Otago Museum and University and the Governance of Māori Populations

This paper draws on Callon's [2005 Callon, Michael. 2005. “Why Virtualism Paves the Way to Political Impotence: A Reply to Daniel Miller's Critique of The Laws of the Markets.” Economic Sociology: European Electronic Newsletter 6 (2): 3–20. [Google Scholar]. “Why Virtualism Paves the Way to Political Impotence: A Reply to Daniel Miller's Critique of The Laws of the Markets.” Economic Sociology: European Electronic Newsletter 6 (2): 3–20] concept of agencement, together with Latour's [1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press] concept of immutable combinable mobiles to illustrate how Henry Devenish Skinner, ethnologist and anthropology lecturer at the Otago Museum and University sought to form and shape Māori identity, history, culture and populations as subjects of liberal government. It does this through an exploration of Skinner's fieldwork and collecting practices. The paper suggests that forms of analysis mediated through the American History School, and the culture area concept were deployed during the emergence of anthropology as a discipline in New Zealand (between 1919 and 1940) to produce ethnographic authority that then acted as a point of connection between scientific networks and the colonial administrative field.     

Australian Indonesia-specialists and debates on West Papua: Implications for Australia-Indonesia relations1

This article explores the modes by which Australian scholars construct knowledge of Indonesia with particular reference to the debates on West Papua in the post-Suharto period. It examines their perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards human rights issues with a view to analysing the underlying forces, motivations and implications of activism. This article casts doubt on a common, yet often unacknowledged, perception in Indonesia about Australian Indonesia-specialists who are categorised as: intellectuals who always see Indonesian government policies as ‘negative’.2 2. ‘Indonesia specialists’ refer to both scholars who have and who do not have formal Indonesian studies or training who get involved in the study of Indonesia and Indonesian society. Whenever I use ‘Indonesianists’, I refer to scholars who have formal Indonesia studies or training. By Australian scholars, I mean scholars who are Australian by ‘residence’. View all notes I demonstrate that the theorisation of Indonesian society has been diverse in Australia as exemplified by the West Papua debates. Australian scholars’ social positions and mobility, not government policy, shape their beliefs, attitudes and knowledge construction of Indonesia. Thus, considering Australian scholars from a monolithic perspective misses the reality that contemporary intellectual culture in Australia is no longer based on a traditional class.3 3. For an excellent discussion on contemporary intellectual culture, see Eyerman (1994 Eyerman, Ron. 1994. Between Culture and Politics: Intellectuals in Modern Society, Cambridge: Polity.  [Google Scholar]). View all notes I argue there are two major opposing groups in West Papua studies which I label as the ‘affirmative revisionist’ scholars who tend to be more optimistic towards resolution of conflicts in West Papua and the ‘sceptical reformist’ scholars who are dubious about any major changes in West Papua. This latter group believes the people of West Papua should be given the opportunity to remain integrated with Indonesia or to opt for selfdetermination. They tend to use the perceived failure of Indonesia in the protection of human rights in West Papua to attack the Indonesian government and Australian governmental agencies dealing with Indonesia. This article argues that this criticism may adversely impact on future Australia-Indonesia relations.     

Children with mind–body differences: performing disability in primary school classrooms

There has been a significant geographical shift in the primary school education of children with mind–body differences in England. Emphasis is increasingly placed upon the ‘inclusive’ education of ‘disabled’ children in mainstream schools (DfES, 2001 Department for Education and Skills (2001a) Special Needs and Disability Act London: HMSO  [Google Scholar]a, 2001 Department for Education and Skills (2001b) Special Educational Needs, Code of Practice London: DFES  [Google Scholar]b), and children with a range of mind–body abilities are currently educated within mainstream primary school classrooms. This paper prioritises children's experiences in examining how (dis)ability is reproduced heterogeneously through everyday practices in ‘inclusive’ classrooms. The discourses of disability which circulate through classroom spaces are influenced by wider societal representations of disability and childhood, albeit often interpreted in specific ways within the context of the education institution. This demonstrates that classroom micro‐spaces are porous, specific institutional spaces.     

‘Against the tide’: placing visual art in the Highlands and Islands,Scotland

Within a political context where Gaelic arts are recognised as integral to the configuration of a new Scotland, this paper focuses on the art and artistic practice of a community arts centre in North Uist, Outer Hebrides, and the art of internationally acclaimed Scots artist, Will Maclean, who has worked with this centre, with initiatives to commemorate the land struggle on the Isle of Lewis, and with Gaelic arts. Drawing, at the conceptual level, on ‘the idea of place as a political project’ (Gibson-Graham 2003 Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2003. An Ethics of the Local. Rethinking Marxism, 15(1): 53–78.  [Google Scholar]: 35) and a narrative of resistance that suggests a differential rather than oppositional optic (Braun 2002 Braun, B. 2002. The Intemperate Rainforest. Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada's West Coast, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.  [Google Scholar]), I examine how art and artistic practice contribute to an aesthetics that works ‘against the tide’ and how, as part of this process, place is re-constituted.     

Woman Traveller/Colonial Tourist

I promised to show you a map but you say this is a mural

Then yes let it be these are small distinctions

Where do we see it from is the question1 ?1. Adrienne Rich, cited in Kaplan Kaplan, Karen. 2000. Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement, London: Duke University Press.  [Google Scholar], Questions of Travel, 8. View all notes     

Generational differences in women's attitudes towards paid employment in a British city: the role of habitus

Most studies of women's work orientations are based on the attitudes and experiences of women with dependent children and conceptualise women's decision-making in terms of moral positions on the combination of paid work and motherhood. Thus, work orientations are understood within a ‘gender model’ (Dex 1988 Dex, S. 1998. Women's attitudes towards work, New York: St. Martin's Press.  [Google Scholar]), which assumes that women's family situation drives their attitudes towards paid work. This article draws on qualitative interview data collected from interviews with women in two age groups living in Oxford, UK, to explore generational differences in women's work orientations and labour market behaviour. Drawing on a Bourdieusian framework, it considers specifically how changing social, economic and moral geographies, incorporating expectations about women's economic and caring roles, have influenced the habitus of older and younger women. The results of the study suggest that whilst caring responsibilities clearly influence women's attitudes and employment patterns, paid work is more important to younger women's sense of themselves and ‘gender models’ of work orientations do not adequately describe their attitudes.     

Frustrated Great Gamesmanship: Sir Garnet Wolseley's Plans for War against Russia, 1873–1880

Abstract

In three books published in 1940, 1956, and 1961, Arthur J. Marder established what became the orthodox view of the development of the British navy in the years leading up to the First World War.1 A.J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880–1965 (New York, 1940); idem,[Fear God and DreadNought: The] C[orrespondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord] F[isher of Kilverstone: II: Years of Power, 1904–14] (London, 1956); idem, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: I: The Road to War, 1904–14 (Oxford, 1961). Building upon the work of Sir Llewellyn Woodward, who argues that, from the outset of the twentieth century, British naval policy was framed as a response to the threat posed by the rising German naval power,2 E. L. Woodward, Great Britain and the German Navy (London, 1934). Marder makes precise claims about the nature of the response. In particular, he states that, under the leadership of the first sea lord from 1904 to 1910, Admiral Sir John Fisher, the admiralty undertook two root-and-branch reforms. First, it redeployed Britain's fleets and squadrons, reducing the number of foreign stations, scrapping obsolescent vessels, and stationing the most powerful units of the fleet in European waters. Next, at Fisher's prompting, it triggered a naval revolution by ordering the building of a new type of warship, HMS Dreadnought, the world's first turbine-powered, all-big-gun battleship. In both cases, Marder is unambiguous about the motive: the redeployment adjusted Britain's force posture to ensure a preponderance of strength in the vicinity of the North Sea, the theatre in which the expected war with Germany would be fought. The new type of ship was necessary to help to modernize the navy's matériel in keeping with advances in gunnery, propulsion, and torpedoes. If not explicitly aimed at Germany, the new ship would ensure that the navy was better prepared for a war that Fisher perceived to be ‘inevitable’s.     

Post-war changes in the influence of social structure on Australian voting: The ‘decline of social cleavages’ revisited

Franklin, Mackie and Valen's 1992 Franklin, M., Mackie, T. and Valen, H. 1992. Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  [Google Scholar] book on Electoral Change drew on evidence taken from a small number of surveys in each included country (including Australia) during the mid-1960s to 1990 to derive some general conclusions about the historical decline of cleavage politics. In this article, I make some methodological improvements and also considerably chronologically extend the analyses for Australia, to cover the whole of the post-war period. The results show that some of the previous conclusions are incorrect and that although there has been a decline in the strength of association between social structural variables and voting for the ALP over the post-war period, the decline has not been a smooth one and predominantly occurred in the earlier part of the period. I also discuss the results in the context of broader international debates about the impact of social changes on voting.     

Marginalia to a New Aeneis recensa

The text of G.B. Conte's Teubner edition (2009) contains more than 70 divergences from Mynors' edition (1969), apart from a number of orthographica. About 40% of these differing readings can also be found in Geymonat's text (1973/2008 Geymonat, M. 1973/2008. Opera Torino/ Roma [Google Scholar]). Among the rest this reviewer has noted a handful of choices of particular interest and fit to make the new edition a welcome contribution to the long-standing quest for an optimal text of Vergil. Another, more controversial, handful of Conte's preferences is discussed below together with his accompanying information in the app. crit.: 1. 380; 2. 433; 598; 738-739 (with a new conjecture); 3. 685-686; 4. 176; 5. 505; 851; 6. 746; 7. 129; 9. 130; 214; 402; 463; 10. 366 (with a new conjecture); 12. 470.