Feminizing risk at a distance: critical observations on the constitution of a preventive technology for HIV/AIDS

Distance is a key idea in contemporary literatures on geography and the government of risk, and it is central to the work presented in this paper, which focuses on Western media representations of an innovative ‘first-generation’ non-contraceptive microbicide, Carraguard. A preventive technology that has been developed under the auspices of the US Population Council and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carraguard is represented in the media in ways that produce certain noteworthy cultural geographies of HIV/AIDS. Via an analysis of a selection of such media representations of Carraguard, and focusing on sexual citizenship, political subjectivity and three socio-spatial orderings of risk (displacement, replacement and reorientation), we posit that Carraguard has effected a feminization of the government of risk at a distance. Specifically, we contend that HIV/AIDS has been displaced from the marginalized spaces of metropolitan centres of the West and replaced at the world's under-developed margins, being reoriented from dangerousness/deviance and the masculine to risk and the feminine in that process. In this work, we have taken up Dean's (1999) call to use an analytics of government to highlight the effects of certain ways of thinking and acting, and have also sought to respond to observations by Craddock (2000) that the silences in geography about HIV/AIDS and the regional coordinates of risk and vulnerability need to be addressed. In the final analysis, it appears that media representations of Carraguard reproduce and intensify much older geopolitical and socio-spatial orderings and relations of power that give effect to conceptions and practices of political obligation and sexual citizenship.     

A comparison study of children's independent mobility in England and Australia

We compared independent mobility (freedom to move around the neighbourhood – or similar – without adult accompaniment) among English and Australian schoolchildren. Parents reported mobility licences granted to their children (e.g. allowing them to cross main roads alone) and accompaniment on local trips. Children reported travel mode to school. We examined associations between mobility licences and independent school journeys, and accompaniment on local trips. Among 10–12-year-olds, English children had more licences than Australian children. Mobility licences were directly associated with independent school journeys among primary but not among secondary schoolchildren who travelled further; and inversely associated with parental accompaniment to other destinations. Influences on parental restrictions should be examined to promote children's independent mobility.     

Community-based Heritage Management: a case study and agenda for research

Heritage sites regarded as important are safely managed by the state, voluntary or private sectors but the majority of sites, despite statutory protection, remain unrecognised and without a role in their host communities. New schemes such as the Local Heritage Initiative in the UK aim to encourage communities to recognise their heritage assets and in managing them effectively to contribute to their preservation. With reference to the case of Nether Poppleton near York (UK), the present study explores the factors and conditions for effective community management displayed in one locality by groups who are successfully conserving and managing a diverse set of local heritage sites. Interviews and joint tasks enabled an analysis of the complex range of factors and conditions that can lead to a successful community-based initiative. Future research will determine the extent to which these factors, if applied to other sites, might produce the same results. The importance of this agenda is underscored by the increasing reliance on community-based heritage management in the UK and elsewhere.     

Framing theory: towards a critical imagination in heritage studies

Heritage theory has developed piecemeal over the last 30?years, with little progress made in fully understanding the way the subject can or should be theorised. This paper identifies some of the main sources of theory in heritage, as well as the approaches and perspectives that have been formulated as a result. These are framed on the basis of their disciplinary origins and can be viewed as theories in, theories of and theories for heritage. As frames through which heritage can currently be examined they are still employed in relative isolation from each other and we suggest, therefore, a way by which they might be considered as complementary, rather than competing approaches in order to provide impetus for the development of a critical imagination in heritage studies.