SPACES OF DIZZINESS AND DREAD: NAVIGATING ACROPHOBIA

As part of emerging disciplinary interests in well‐being and emotions, geographers have recently begun to pay attention to common but often neglected psychological conditions that have the potential to impact considerably upon individuals and their daily lives. Specifically extending the scope of geographical inquiry on phobias, this paper considers acrophobia (known as being scared of heights). Through interviews with ten sufferers, the spatial character and intensity of the condition is articulated. The findings tell us that underpinning acrophobia is mathematical height: the vertical elevation from the lowest possible resting point of the body to the point at which the symptoms of acrophobia occur. This point is however ‐ even for each individual ‐ highly variable, context dependant and, in terms of explanatory potential, does not convey personal experiences. Instead, the idea of ‘encounter spaces’ provides far greater elaboration. Created by sufferers ‘dysfunctional’ spatial perceptions, these are the occupied spaces of mixed emotional and physical responses (such as fear and rapid breathing) and reactionary practices that are tactical yet somewhat involuntary in nature (such as gripping tighter or getting lower). Depending on the particular circumstances, sufferers might choose to, feel forced to, or might inadvertently enter encounter spaces. Their impacts also extend beyond immediate effects to sufferers’ longer term lives and well‐being. This might be negatively impacted, for example, through cumulative encounters, worrying about potential encounters or missing out on life events. At this level, reactionary practices ‐ again which are tactical yet somewhat involuntary ‐ are often employed in order to avoid height. Ultimately, the overall impact of acrophobia on an individual depends on a number of factors including the severity of their condition, the attitudes of the people they associate with, their job, lifestyle and the environments which they have to, or would like to, frequent. Consequently, while some sufferers cope with ease, others constantly navigate the altitude of their lives.     

Policy Change: An Advocacy Coalition Framework Perspective

One purpose of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is to explain policy change. Previous holistic reviews of the ACF by Weible, Sabatier, and McQueen (2009) and Pierce, Peterson, Jones, Garrard, and Vu (2017) of the framework have not explicitly analyzed all the concepts and their interactions in a systematic manner. To address this gap and inform scholars and practitioners about past findings, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for future research, this article analyzes how the ACF's theory of policy change is applied to 148 policy processes among 67 journal articles from 2007 to 2014. Similar to Weible et al. (2009), this research finds the frequent use of multiple primary pathways to policy change, infrequent use of many of the ACF's concepts, a plurality of applications in the environment and energy domain, comparison of subsystems, and a need for greater clarity and transparency among applications. Unlike Weible et al. (2009), this article explores associations between primary pathways and policy domains, the frequency of associations between primary pathways and secondary components, policy change and stasis, and identifies threats to internal validity of key ACF concepts.     

PUTTING LITHICS TO THE TEST: NON-SITE ANALYSIS AND THE NEOLITHIC SETTLEMENT OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND

Summary. The earliest farming communities in Southern England were for a long time represented solely by the structural remains left behind in the form of burial monuments, henges and causewayed enclosures; only recently, through problem-oriented surface collection, has any attempt been made to locate their settlements. This paper suggests that such attempts have been limited by the very desire to locate 'sites' which made the technique attractive in the first place. Instead it is suggested that we should be attempting to 'think Mesolithic', and by using our knowledge of Neolithic settlement and land-use strategies, attempt to locate zones of continuity which undoubtedly occurred in certain 'favourable locations'within the landscape. Case studies from East and West Hampshire are discussed and two types of adaptive behaviour are identified.