Girls’ perspectives on the ideal school playground experience: an exploratory study of four Australian primary schools

ABSTRACT

Based on research conducted as part of the Sydney Playground Project, this paper provides an exploratory investigation of the perspectives of girls relating to the ideal school playground experience, and whether their perspectives are influenced by a loose-parts playground intervention. The focus is on the play behaviours of 22 girls aged 8–10 years, from the perspective that school playgrounds are generally designed in ways that are more suited to the play behaviours of boys. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of children’s drawings, interviews and focus groups, exploring meanings associated with desired play experiences. Findings indicate that girls’ views of the ideal school playground are influenced by the geographies of the spaces they play in, and that girls highly valued changes provided by a loose-parts intervention.     

Populism and the development of traditional agriculture

Richards, Paul. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology and Food Production in West Africa. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. No frontmatter. 192 pp. including appendix, bibliography, and index. $22.50 cloth.

Marten, Gerald G., ed. Traditional Agriculture in Southeast Asia: A Human Ecology Perspective. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1986. xxvi + 358 pp. including figures and tables, chapter references, and index. $36.50 cloth.     

Perspectives on ritual

de Coppet, Daniel, ed. Understanding Rituals. London: Routledge, 1992. viii + 120 including chapter references and index. $59.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. x + 270 including references and index. $35.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.

Drewal, Margaret Thompson. Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. xxii + 241 including notes, glossary, references, and index. $35.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Schechner, Richard. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London: Routledge, 1993. x + 283 including chapter notes, reference, and index. $27.50 cloth.     

Mobile Modernities: A South Asian family negotiates immigration,gender and class in Canada

For the modern Indian immigrant family ‘modernity’ is not necessarily found in the west. Using qualitative data drawn from in-depth interviews with one immigrant Sikh family, conducted in both Vancouver and the Punjab, we draw attention to the mobile and contradictory modernities family members have faced in their migration, settlement and subsequent transnational activities. We explore how class, gender and sexuality have framed the experiences of the members of this family in differential, partial and sometimes ironic ways. In so doing we construct a theoretical argument about the nature and geography of modernity, and how it relates to immigrant settlement in Canada.     

Seniors’ Long-Term Care in Canada: A Continuum of Soft to Brutal Privatisation

We situate the contemporary crisis of COVID-19 deaths in seniors’ care facilities within the restructuring and privatisation of this sector. Through an ethnographic comparison in a for-profit and nonprofit facility, we explore what we identify as brutal and soft modes of privatisation within publicly subsidised long-term seniors’ care in Vancouver, British Columbia, and their influence on the material and relational conditions of work and care. Workers in both places are explicit that they deliver only bare-bones care to seniors with increasingly complex care needs, and we document the distinct forms and extent to which these precarious workers give gifts of their time, labour and other resources to compensate for the gaps in care that result from state withdrawal and the extraction of profits within the sector. We nonetheless locate more humane and hopeful processes in the nonprofit facility, where a history of cooperative relations between workers, management and families suggest the possibility of re-valuing the essential work of care.     

COMPUTER CARTOGRAPHY IN HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH

The potential value of maps in historical geographical research has increased as a result of clearer understanding of the nature of maps and new developments in computer cartography. The computer has made possible the rapid transformation of appropriately organized sets of data into maps of many different types. The manipulation of such data sets replaces many time-consuming drafting operations of conventional cartography and adds new flexibility to mapping operations. Maps of the early colonial settlement of the Cape Colony demonstrate the flexibility and value of computer cartography in historical geographical research.
La valeur potentielle des cartes pour la recherche en géographie historique a connu un essor considérable suite à une meilleure connaissance de la nature des cartes et les développements récents dans la cartographie automatisée. L'ordinateur a rendu possible la transformation rapide des ensembles de données organisés d'une facon appropriée en cartes de divers types. La manipulation de tels ensembles de données remplace un grand nombre d'opérations manuelles de la cartographie traditionnelle qui ont demandé beaucoup de temps, et elle a ajouté une nouvelle flexibilité aux opérations de cartographie. Des cartes du peuplement au début de l'époque coloniale du Cap démontrent la flexibilité et la valeur de la cartographie automatisée pour la recherche en géographie historique.