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.     

Qualitative Landscape Theories and Archaeological Predictive Modelling—A Journey Through No Man’s Land?

An approach to test and interpret geographic information system-based, quantitative archaeological predictive models using techniques from qualitative (experiential) landscape theory is described and demonstrated via a case study. The result is the transformation of statistical output from quantitative predictive models into more archaeologically meaningful interpretations of spatial data.     

In Search of the Middle Ground: Quantitative Spatial Techniques and Experiential Theory in Archaeology

In March 2011, a conference was held at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, focusing on the possibilities and potentials of combining quantitative spatial studies with more human-centred and theoretically explicit approaches to past landscapes. This short introduction outlines the main themes and goals of the conference and the resultant papers, published here as a special issue.     

Multiply vulnerable populations: mobilising a politics of compassion from the ‘capacity to hurt’

This paper reflects on the concept of insecurity defined as ‘the capacity to hurt’. It begins by considering asylum seekers and refugees as hyper-precarious groups that have experienced bodily, material and psychological ‘hurt’ in the UK. At the same time, the paper considers how these hyper-precarious groups are perceived to have the capacity to hurt (bodily, materially, psychologically and spatially) the majority population. Having drawn out two understandings of the capacity to hurt—both the ability to be or feel hurt and the act of hurting others, we argue that a shared recognition of what it means to feel hurt (co-suffering or suffering together)—albeit to very different extremes and with very different consequences—and an understanding of the processes which drive this might be mobilised politically to challenge the act of hurting others. In doing so, we argue for a group politics of compassion to respond to increasingly insecure times.     

Disintegrated Houses: Exploring Ecofeminist Housing and Urban Design Options

Sherilyn MacGregor astutely highlights possible points of tension between the socioeconomic agendas, processes and outcomes of ecocity and feminist urban visions. MacGregor also claims ecofeminism may benefit from utilising the language of citizenship to move beyond essentialised gender and spatial associations of care to address such possible tensions between ecological and feminist agendas. Responding to MacGregor's reflections on options for taking care into the public realm, and the need in this to question the public–private divide, this paper asks whether the traits highlighted by Chantal Mouffe's citizen can be applied to the socioeconomic aspirations of the ecocity, addressing possible tensions between ecocity and feminist aspirations on the basis of a de‐essentialised ethic of care.     

Hybrid and Global Kitchens - First and Third World Intersections (Part 2)

Post-colonial movements for independence are voices of autonomy and independence before the onslaught of global organizations and cultures. This paper introduces the second set of themed papers in Gender, Place and Culture (see 13.2) which contains some of these voices, emanating from intensely private as well as communal and street kitchens; where women proclaim their visibility, economic value as food producers and transformers. The essays by Christie on the fiesta kitchens of central Mexico, Schroeder on the community kitchens of Bolivia and Peru, Robson on Islamic kitchens in rural Nigeria, Wardrop on the street vendors of south Durban and Pascali on Italian migrant kitchens in North East America, all acknowledge the vital contexts of ‘development’, urbanization, migration and industrialization to their stories, while also highlighting powerful elements of resistance and autonomy within the kitchen. As such the Western gaze records not so much the impacts of globalization as its cooking and transformation into something new, a hybrid dish, customized for local consumption.     

Wishful thinking? Towards a more realistic role for universities in regional innovation policy

ABSTRACT

The past 30 years has seen an escalating interest in the potential role of universities in contributing to their regional economies, reflected in the increasing trend for regional innovation strategies to ascribe a central role for universities, particularly in peripheral, institutionally thin places. The global economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures implemented in many developed economies have put further pressure on universities from national and regional policymakers to become more explicitly involved in contributing to their local economies in order to justify their public funding. This paper will draw on the academic literature to consider how justified this focus is by questioning whether universities are willing or even able to play the roles expected of them in contributing to regional innovation. It will critique an approach to policymaking that often views universities as homogenous actors in the regional innovation system and places an over reliance on imitating success stories from other places without sufficient consideration of the specificities of local conditions. It will argue for a more realistic and nuanced approach to involving universities in regional innovation policy, concluding with key insights for both universities and policymakers.