Exhibiting enterprise: how New Zealand museums generate revenue

Museums in New Zealand are not a homogeneous group in terms of their level of incomegenerating activity or the nature of those activities. The gap of knowledge consequent on this situation led to the National Services unit of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, commissioning primary research into the revenue‐generation activities of the sector. This paper presents the results of that research, specifically the data gathered through a questionnaire. The results provide a profile of respondents in relation to their operating contexts, the sources of financial and non‐financial support they received (from the local community, local authorities and central government), and the types of income‐generating activities they undertook. The results contribute to a better understanding of both how organisations within the sector generate income (from traditional sources and new, more innovative activities) and what factors influence their ability to do so.     

Small Towns and Agriculture: Understanding the Spatial Pattern of Farm Linkages

Agricultural policy and farm lobby groups often stress the role of farm production in sustaining local economies. This paper considers the spatial pattern of upstream and downstream agricultural transactions of farms in North East Scotland and, in particular, the extent to which they take place within the locality of the farm holding. Three alternative definitions of “local” are considered: a distance-based measure; a measure which takes into account the location of the farm in relation to the nearest town; and a measure which takes into account the location of agribusinesses, defining a transaction as local if the farmer buys from (sells to) the nearest available input supplier (output purchaser). The results highlight the importance of allowing for context when explaining farmer purchasing and sales decisions. They also reveal a highly complex pattern of production-related linkages in the region, with many farmers choosing to bypass their most proximate agribusinesses. Certain towns are found to dominate agriculture-related transactions in the region, reflecting the spatial concentration of upstream and downstream agribusinesses. The findings provide new insights into theoretical debates on the role of small towns in the urban system and the changing importance of geographical distance in determining business transactions.     

Beautiful face,beautiful place: relational geographies and gender in cosmetic surgery tourism websites

Cosmetic surgery tourism is a significant and growing area of medical tourism. This article explores the gendered construction of cosmetic surgery tourism in different geographical locations through an analysis of destination websites in Spain, the Czech Republic and Thailand. We examine the ways in which gender and other intersections of identity interact with notions of space, place and travel to construct particular locations and cosmetic surgery tourist experiences. The relational geographies of skill, regulation and hygiene in discourses of cosmetic surgery risk are also explored. We conclude that accounts producing cosmetic surgery tourism as undifferentiated experience of ‘non-place’ fail to acknowledge the complex constructions of specific destinations in promotional materials targeting international consumers in a global marketplace.     

Digitisation,digital interaction and social media: embedded barriers to democratic heritage

Abstract

The democratisation of heritage through digital access is a well-documented aspiration. It has included innovative ways to manage interpretation, express heritage values, and create experiences through the ‘decoding’ of heritage. This decoding of heritage becomes democratised, more polyvocal than didactic exhibitions, and less dependent on experts. However, the decision of what ‘heritage’ is and what is commissioned for digitisation (the encoding) is not necessarily a part of this democratisation. This paper will consider how digitisation reinforces the Authorised Heritage Discourse through the lens of Stephen Lukes’ three (increasingly subtle) dimensions of power: conflict resolution, control of expression and shaping of preferences. All three dimensions have an impact on how public values are represented in heritage contexts, but the introduction of digitisation requires more resources, expertise and training within established professional discourse. Social media may have a positive impact on the first two dimensions, but can reinforce hegemony. Alternatives are subject to epistemic populism. The role of digitisation and social media in the democratisation of heritage needs to be better understood. Questions regarding the nature and process of digital interaction, in terms of whose heritage is accessible, affect the very issues of democratisation digitisation appears to promote.     

Connecting to food: cultivating children in the school garden

School gardens are widely celebrated as spaces to promote health and sustainability by connecting children with their food. While scholars have assessed the effects of gardening in practice, media discourses play a key role in constituting this site. This paper examines how the school garden is discursively constituted within American and Canadian newspaper coverage. The analysis reveals specific forms of connection that are said to flourish in the school garden: between food production and consumption, between bodies and knowledge, and between the urban child and nature. While all children are said to benefit from connecting with their food, these connections are articulated differently in relation to particular bodies and spaces, evident in racialized and classed narratives of stewardship and salvation. As children’s relationship to food is invested with the hopes and fears of collective futures, the discursive construction of the school garden provides crucial insights into contemporary understandings of childhood.     

The role of waterways in the spread of the Neolithic

The causes and implications of the regional variations in the spread of the incipient agriculture in Europe remain poorly understood. We use population dynamics models to study the dispersal of the Neolithic in Europe from a localised area in the Near East, solving the two-dimensional reaction-diffusion equation on a spherical surface. We focus on the role of major river paths and coastlines in the advance of farming, to model the rapid advances of the Linear Pottery (LBK) and the Impressed Ware traditions along the Danube–Rhine corridor and the Mediterranean coastline, respectively. We argue that the random walk of individuals, which results in diffusion of the population, can be anisotropic in those areas and hence lead to an effective advection. The standard reaction-diffusion equation is thus supplemented with an advection term, confined to the proximity of major rivers and coastlines. The model allows for the spatial variation in both the human mobility (diffusivity) and the carrying capacity, reflecting the local altitude and latitude. This approach can easily be generalised to include other environmental factors, such as the bioproductivity of landscapes. Our model successfully accounts for the regional variations in the spread of the Neolithic, consistent with the radiocarbon data, and reproduces a time delay in the spread of farming to the Eastern Europe, Britain and Scandinavia.     

Professional Politicians as the Subjects of Moral Panic

The media, the public and politicians themselves often express a fear that Australian political life is increasingly dominated by ‘professional politicians’, who are seen as careerist, lacking in commitment and disconnected from the reality of ordinary lives. The article analyses the meanings given to the term ‘professional politicians’ and their relationship to other definitions and characteristics of professionalism. It also uses the concept of moral panic to analyse the concerns expressed about ‘professional politicians’. This concept, first formulated in 1972 in Cohen's study of alleged youth violence in a small town in the United Kingdom, is most often associated with studies of social deviance. This article demonstrates how, in a later period, it can be extended to apply to politicians, a group traditionally more often identified as a perpetrator of moral panics than the subject of them.