ICE-WEDGE CRACKS, WESTERN ARCTIC COAST

Ice-wedge ice is one of the most abundant types of nearly pure ground ice to be found along the western Arctic coast and, indeed, in many other permafrost areas of the world. Ice wedges grow because thermal contraction cracks open in winter and become infilled with water in spring to form incremental ice veinlets. Long-term winter observations along the western Arctic coast have provided details of crack opening and closing, propagation, and cracking frequency. Ice-wedge cracking is sensitive to climatic factors, particularly the winter snowfall. Therefore, long-term monitoring of ice-wedge cracks should be of interest in the study of climatic change and the interpretation of the size-age relations of ice wedges.     

Interpretive walks: advancing the use of mobile methods in the study of entrepreneurial farm tourism settings

This article draws on the application of interpretive walks in a socio‐geographical study of tourism‐oriented entrepreneurial activity on multi‐generational family farms in New Zealand. We highlight the great potential this method holds for tourism researchers interested in the ways tourist spaces are produced in processes of place‐making. Mobile methods have been a feature of qualitative field research in several disciplines for some time, particularly in cultural geography with its emphasis on human interactions in and with landscapes. The interpretive walk, known also as the walking interview, has been applied mainly in urban neighbourhood, health, transport, and housing research, where it has proven very useful for revealing human connections to place that have been difficult to elicit using stationary face‐to‐face interviews. This article is one of the few that reports on the use of the method in a farm tourism setting. It is also one of few applied studies seeking to understand the local geographies of farm tourism and their connections to the farm site as both family home and place of primary production. The method is characterised as an effective tool for navigating and interpreting the socio‐spatial settings in which new rural tourism ventures emerge, evolve, and are embedded. The approach allows for unexpected encounters with spatial practices and strategies, projects, and objects, behind which lie stories of changing human relationships with the land, economy, and community, and of the exigencies of everyday life that are less readily unearthed using conventional interviews.     

ANALOGUE SWITCH‐OFF

The paper addresses the switch‐off of analogue television in the UK and explores key issues about technology, audiences and communications policy. The main argument is that the characteristics of the “second 50%” are very different from the first half of households that have chosen to adopt digital, and that concerns are as much about content as cost. The paper reports a small, largely qualitative, study of households where analogue television has been switched off – the only place in the UK where this has happened, as a Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) trial. Qualitative data on the transformation of audience behaviour with the arrival of digital is contextualised by an analysis of British government policy on analogue switch‐off. The paper compares and contrasts the discourse of digital TV with viewing expectations and experiences. It reflects on choice, viewing behaviour and the shaping of technology and raises critical questions about government policies on analogue switch‐off.     

Making Banks Fit for the People: Confidence,Democracy, and the Rise of Banking Alternatives in America, 1880–1914

At the turn of the twentieth century, many Americans lacked confidence in the nation's banks. In various ways, privately owned or operated banking institutions were viewed to be adverse to the interests of “the people.” Still, beginning in the late nineteenth century, deposit banking came to be accepted as a vital “public service.” This article explains how that happened and illustrates how multiple people-oriented alternatives gradually emerged. While these have been explored previously, this article demonstrates how new ideas about the importance of banking facilitated the emergence of a broad movement aimed at popular participation and control. To reveal this history and to gauge popular ideas, it favors materials that appeared within the public sphere. This approach demonstrates how underlying confidence issues motivated a broad movement that aimed to democratize banking institutions.