‘It’s fun in the legs’: children’s dwelling in garden trampolines

ABSTRACT

Physical activity is critical for children’s current and future health status. Understanding how children’s everyday outdoor environments encourage movement could help progress the health-environment debate. In response to this, and adopting a theoretical focus upon dwelling, skills and the haptic engagement, this qualitative case study explores 25 Danish 10–11-year-old children’s everyday use of garden trampolines. Three principal methods of data generation were employed in the fieldwork: photo-elicited interviews, group interviews and participant observation at children’s important outdoor places. Findings suggest that garden trampolines are important everyday outdoor places for children that – among other things – can spark a vigorous physical movement in abundantly meaningful and joyful ways. Further, findings indicate that trampolines are places of inexhaustible movement opportunities, which operate through haptic sensations, feelings of skilfulness and attunement, expansions of the range of motions available to the body, and interactions between children. Implications for future research and design are highlighted.     

Caribou,Petroleum, and the Limits of Locality in the Canada–US Borderlands

This article discusses Karsten Heuer’s 2006 book Being Caribou in light of debates in ecocriticism and border studies about how to define the local in the context of environmental problems of vast range and uncertain temporality. It explores how Heuer’s book about following the Porcupine Caribou herd’s migration engages in multiple forms of boundary crossing—between countries, between hemispheric locations, and between species—and shows how insights from Indigenous storytelling complicate the book’s appeal to environmentalist readers by asserting a prior, transnational Indigenous presence in the transboundary landscapes of present-day Alaska and the Yukon.     

Children's Perceptions of the Use of Public Open Spaces for Active Free-play

Activity performed by children in their free-time may have a significant impact on overall physical activity levels, however, very little is known about the influences on children's active free-play. To examine the role and use of public open spaces, 132 children (6–12 years) from a selection of primary schools participated in small focus group interviews. Children reported that their use of public open spaces was influenced by a combination of intrapersonal, social and environmental factors including; the play equipment and facilities at local parks, lack of independent mobility, urban design features, presence of friends, and personal motivation.     

Regenerative tourism needs diverse economic practices

Abstract

Calls for a new relationship between tourism and capitalism have intensified as a result of COVID-19. The pandemic has exposed massive vulnerabilities in the tourism operating system, the effects of which have fallen unevenly across different groups and subsectors of tourism. Critics have been quick to point out capitalism’s emphasis on resource exploitation, growth and profit is to blame and that tourism destinations have never been encouraged to foster diverse economic practices which would enhance resilient communities and regenerative tourism. The diverse economies framework envisages the co-existence of capitalist, alternative capitalist and non-capitalist practices and provides a pathway to more resilient and regenerative tourism practices in tourism. Tourism industry cases are used to illustrate the innovation inherent in diverse economic practices (enterprise, exchange, labour, transactions, property etc.) and illustrate their natural resilience as a result. Post COVID-19, a regenerative tourism that incorporates diverse economic practices will guide tourism practices worldwide to withstand future exigencies.     

Race to the top: using experiments to understand gender bias towards female politicians

ABSTRACT

Gender balance in political representation is an important goal of governments. In this paper, we ask: Do voters judge female politicians less favourably than male politicians, when given an otherwise identical set of information about their backgrounds? We employ an innovative online experiment (N?=?1933) to measure Australians’ attitudes towards female politicians and examine a series of hypotheses. We find voters see female candidates as more capable and are more likely to vote for them, but they are less likely to expect them to win. Female candidates are seen as more capable in their military and healthcare roles, but gender is perceived to be a major barrier to a female candidate’s success. Women and those aligning with the Labor/Green parties are more supportive of a female candidate, but we find limited evidence that those aligning with the Liberal/Nationals are openly hostile to a female candidate.