‘I'd Feel Ashamed’: Girls' Bodies and Sports Participation

This article is concerned with the links between space, gender and adolescents' bodies. Drawing on data from both qualitative and quantitative research carried out with adolescents aged 13–16 in Liverpool, UK in 2001 the article examines girls' low participation rates in physical education (PE). Framed within theoretical work relating to the performance of corporeal femininities and ‘inhibited intentionality’ in reference to sporting confidence, girls' experiences of single-sex PE are compared with their perceptions of mixed PE in order to explore how the presence of boys may impact on girls' perceptions of their bodies and willingness to participate in sport. The results suggest that while girls still feel pressure from a male gaze to present their bodies to boys as passively beautiful, they also feel pressure to be competent at sport and thus present their bodies as active. However, single-sex PE does not provide a space where the male gaze is absent, suggesting this gaze has been internalized. This article explores the nature of school space in explaining differential participation rates, highlighting how sports within the space of the school, with an emphasis on competition and under the evaluative gaze of teachers, intensify some girls' fears of inadequacy in sports. The findings illustrate the complexities and contradictions present within and between girls' experiences of their bodies and sports and the relationship between school space and adolescents' bodies.

‘Siento Verguüenza’: Cuerpos de jovenas Y participación endeportes

Este artículo se ocupa de los enlaces entre espacio, género, y los cuerpos de adolescentes. Utilizando datos de una investigación cualitativo y cuantitativo que se llevó a caber con adolescentes de 13 hasta 16 años en Liverpool en 2001, examino el nivel bajo de la participación de jovenas en educación física. Las experiencias de jovenas de la educación física sólo para niñas se comparan con sus percepciones de la educación física mixta para explorar como la presencia de jóvenes (niños) influye la percepción de jovenas de sus cuerpos y sus buenas disposiciones para participar en deportes. Los resultados sugieren que mientras las jovenas sienten presión de las miradas masculinas para presentar sus cuerpos a ellos como pasivamente hermosos, sienten también la presión para estar capaz en los deportes y así presentar sus cuerpos como activos. Sin embargo, la educación física sólo para niñas no provee un espacio donde no hay una mirada masculina por que ésta mirada se ha sido interiorizado. Deportes en el espacio de la escuela tienen un énfasis en la competición y una mirada evaluativa de maestros y como consecuencia se intensifica el miedo de jovenas de ser inadecuado en deportes. Las conclusiones ilustran las complejidades y contradicciones en y entre las experiencias de jovenas de sus cuerpos y deportes, y la relación entre el espacio de la escuela y los cuerpos de adolescentes.     

Anticipating fatness: childhood, affect and the pre-emptive 'war on obesity'

This paper draws together recent geographical work on fatness, pre-emptive biopolitics, affect and childhood in order to question the spatiotemporalities of obesity policy in the UK. Through analysis of key policy documents and associated media coverage, the paper questions the dystopian production of the future nation in obesity policy; the role of affect in making futures felt as realities which can be acted on in the present; and the role of childhood and children's bodies within such policy. It argues that children are central to the production and pre-emption of obese futures because of the affective potential of childhood and the paradoxical position of children's bodies both as children in the present and adults of the future. The paper concludes by arguing that obesogenic environment theories are fundamentally problematic and that recognition of the temporalities as well as the spatialities of obesity is necessary for a balanced critical geography.     

Protocol for Recording Enamel Hypoplasia in Modern and Archaeological Caprine Populations

This paper outlines the first methodology for recording dental enamel hypoplasia in the high‐crowned dentition of modern and archaeological caprine teeth. The method has been developed and trialed on five caprine populations from Orkney (UK); two modern populations (Shetland and North Ronaldsay breeds) and three Neolithic assemblages from the archaeological sites of Knap of Howar, Skara Brae and Holm of Papa Westray. Problems associated with differential tooth wear, as well as the presence of coronal cementum, are discussed, and recommendations are given on the identification and recording of hypoplastic dental defects in caprines. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Representation of Joe Whelks: Charles Dickens’s Reflections on a Theatre Audience

This article explores how Charles Dickens both alludes to and occludes the Victoria Theatre’s looking-glass curtain in his article ‘The Amusements of the People’ (1850). This vast mirror curtain hung at the Victoria in the early 1820s and again in the mid-1830s. Contending that Dickens would have been aware of this spectacular novelty, this article argues that his reference to the Victoria Theatre’s management ‘holding up a mirror’ to its audience is an allusion to the curtain. The mirror curtain reflected the working-class audience at the theatre back to itself, putting it ‘on the stage’, a comment on the nature of representation and its relationship to reality. Like theatre itself, which it also figured, the mirror curtain had a heterotopic nature, both representing and contesting reality. This challenge was particularly unsettling to middle-class onlookers in the context of the representation of an unrepresented (disenfranchised) plebeian audience. I argue that Dickens’s article, like the mirror curtain, reflects the Victoria’s working-class audience and that he alludes to the mirror when making radical arguments concerning the political and class-based nature of aesthetic judgements about representation. His article, however, remains equivocal about the right to working-class self-determination and enfranchisement that the mirror curtain represented. Dickens gestures to, but occludes, the curtain and displaces it with his own representation of the Victoria’s audience and his mediation on their behalf. Ultimately, the challenge posed by the looking-glass curtain to the social and aesthetic order is too great to be fully acknowledged.     

Country Music and the South: A Cultural Geography Perspective

Cultural geographers have failed to examine one of the most significant culture items unique to the American South— country music. Examination of the history, folklore, and sociology literature provides data on the area of origin and diffusion routes of the vocal and instrumental characteristics of early country music. The mixing of musical cultures in the South led to the origin and evolution of seven substyles of country music during the twentieth century: traditional, singing cowboy, western swing, honky tonk, bluegrass, country pop, and country rock. Despite recent cultural homogenization in the United States, country music continues to maintain its regional association with the American South.     

Western North Carolina: Culture Hearth of Bluegrass Music

This study explores the long-debated question concerning the geographic origins of bluegrass music. Using the Sauerian culture hearth concept, western North Carolina is identified as the source area for the distinguishing elements of the bluegrass sound. Western North Carolinians pioneered the innovative instrumental sounds of bluegrass on the five-string banjo, fiddle, and guitar as well as the harmonies and repertoire of bluegrass vocals. A music culture infrastructure emerged in western North Carolina based on a network of local musicians and social institutions, including fiddle contests, music festivals, radio stations, and recording studios.