Exploring the daily geographies of diverse men caregiving for family members with multiple chronic conditions

Within Canada, it has been estimated that almost half of all family, also known as informal, caregivers are now men. However, the contributions and experiences of these caregiver men have received relatively little attention, particularly from geographies of care and caregiving researchers. This analysis hopes to shed light on the unique, yet diverse, experiences of men caregiving for persons with multiple chronic conditions in Canada. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with nineteen men caregivers in two provinces of Canada, this analysis aims to explore how social and physical axes of difference shape men’s daily lived geographies when providing care. Our thematic findings reveal that caregiving is experienced by participants at the three scalar levels of the body, the home and the community. Our intersectional analysis reveals that at each scalar level, being a man was not the only variable shaping caregiving experiences. Rather, it was also age, physical capacity, culture, socio-economic status, marital status, housing status, social connectedness, relationship to the care recipient and care recipients’ physical and mental capacity that shaped experiences and meanings of place during the caregiving process. Accounting for this diversity at each scale, our findings point to the unique stresses and challenges experienced. We conclude by emphasizing the significance in acknowledging the diverse challenges that exist for all caregivers in order to inform comprehensive and inclusive social policy that ultimately will produce equitable caregiver supports.     

Winda Lingo Parugoneit1 or Why Set the Bush [On] Fire? Fire and Victorian Aboriginal People on the Colonial Frontier

There is an ethnographic and historical record that, despite its paucity, can offer specific insight into various contextual matters (purpose, motivations, acknowledgement) relating to how and why fire was being used by Victorian Aboriginal people in the nineteenth century. This insight is essential to developing cross-culturally appropriate land and fire management strategies in the present and into the future. This article demonstrates the need for further research into historical accounts of Aboriginal burning in Victoria.     

Feelings of distance and proximity: exploring the emotional geographies of men caregiving for family members with multiple chronic conditions

Care exchanges are imbued with emotion, yet few geography of caregiving researchers have explored how emotions shape such experiences. Furthermore, the emotions of caregiver men have been largely overlooked. As such, this secondary analysis aims to geographically explore the emotion discourse of a diverse group of men caregiving for family members with multiple chronic conditions. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with nineteen men caregivers in Canada, our thematic findings reveal that the men’s discourse portrayed emotions experienced relationally at three levels: Between the caregivers and their own selves, others and the wider community. It was also found that the men commonly expressed their emotional experiences using geographic notions of distance (e.g. feeling far, isolated) and proximity (e.g. feeling close, connected) and that these emotions were further complicated by the participants’ diversity or situated ‘place-in-the-world’. Overall, our findings demonstrate the importance of emotional geographies in caregiver men’s lived realities and how they move between distance and proximity in order to manage their emotions as caregivers. By considering caregiver diversity and the role emotions play in shaping caregiver experiences, programs, services and best practice can become better informed on ways to enhance the provision of more context sensitive and equitable caregiver support.     

Narratives of World Heritage in Travel Guidebooks

World Heritage Sites are among the most popular tourist destinations in the world and are, by UNESCO definition, exceptional heritage places. New visions of World Heritage encourage ideas of intercultural exchange and dialogues in the creation of these places. Thus it might be expected that cultural World Heritage Sites would be presented in ways that signal their ‘universal’ status. The article examines the portrayal of these sites in travel guidebooks, which are an acknowledged source of important influence on travellers. A study of travel guidebooks for various European nations showed that surprisingly few places are labelled as World Heritage even in the most comprehensive books. There is a gap between the ideals and what happens on the ground. While practical problems and lack of awareness may be one explanation for this, the inherent difficulties of conceiving and presenting narratives of world heritage as opposed to national, regional or local heritage may be more significant.     

Feeling at Home: Gender and Creative Agency at Red House

Much has been written about Red House, the home of Jane and William Morris between 1859 and 1865, as an example of architectural innovation and a place of artistic fellowship. In accounts by Morris's contemporaries and subsequent scholars, Red House has also been represented as a site of conviviality, creativity and youthful idealism, where a utopian way of life proved unable to withstand the vagaries of mature responsibilities. This essay reconsiders the happy memories attached to Red House and explores how the affective investments that linked people, spaces and objects were created and enhanced by a shared process of creative improvisation there. Drawing on recent scholarly work on feelings, emotions and affect, this essay pays particular attention to the gendered experience of intimacy and creativity at Red House and seeks to redress a tendency to discount women's creative agency in the household. In the web of relationships at Red House, expressed and enacted through practices of creative labour and hospitality, Jane Morris and Georgiana Burne-Jones articulated an increased capacity for agency not merely as aesthetic objects but as creative subjects.     

The Midland Canals in 1871: the Evidence of the Census

Abstract

The author has carried out recording on the former horse tram depot and some of his drawings are published; he also describes the development and demise of the Ipswich tramway system.