‘Lived bodies’ and the neoliberal city – a case study of vulnerability in London

This article explores the ‘more-than-work’ aspects of the lives of vulnerable women who street-sex work. Particularly, we are interested in the differences between the women’s experiences, within the broader context of power structures as manifested in neoliberal cities. Few studies have explored this aspect of street-sex workers’ lives and theorisations of the co-creation of environments tend to elide the experiences of the most vulnerable people. Specifically, we explore the relationships that these women have with two environments: the quotidian (where they undertake routine everyday activities), and the gentrified (relating to changes in the spaces in which they live and work). We find that their experiences are extremely local, and heavily contingent on the services made available to them (or not) by the statutory and third sectors, and the emotional contacts they make, particularly in third sector support services. This challenges some of the literature which suggests a separation of ‘home’ and ‘work’, and which finds close associations between women who street-sex work. While places designed by the third sector are more responsive to these women, they are also more vulnerable to closure through lack of funding. This contributes to a significant degree of ontological non-linearity and ontological insecurity in these women’s lives.     

‘It's called Girl Scouts,not, like,Woman Scouts’: emotional labour and girls' bodies

A key part of the American Girl Scouts organization is their iconic annual cookie sale, which is promoted as providing girls with invaluable business and leadership skills. We argue that it also trains girls in the gendered practice of emotional labour. By learning how to suppress or express certain feelings in public spaces in order to net more profit, girls are socialized to not only regulate their emotions, but also their bodies. This becomes complicated as girls become teens, as they receive mixed messages regarding their bodies. No longer considered to be ‘cute girls’, teens' bodies occupy a space between adolescence and adulthood, which often creates tension in public space. We explore this tension and teens' responses.     

Insecure bodies/selves: introduction to theme section

This short piece introduces a three-paper theme section on the theme of ‘Insecure bodies/selves’, growing out of a conference session held in 2012. Using the brief example of a brain-injured soldier's ‘shattered world’, creating a thoroughly ‘unsecured’ self/body, attention is given to how contemporary human geography has gradually opened itself to engaging with the multiple spaces of insecure bodies/selves. The three papers are then formally outlined and situated within these new currents of geographical and trans-disciplinary scholarship.     

试述汉代官营手工业中的商品生产

汉代官营手工业主要是统治为满足自身需要而组织的生产形式,由于商品经济的影响,官营手工业也部分从事商品性生产。两汉官营手工业中的商品性生产,是商品生产的一种畸形化,严重阻碍了商品经济的发展。     

Mothering,digital media and emotional geographies in Hamilton,Aotearoa New Zealand

This article traces a line between two literatures that can usefully be drawn into deeper conversation: geographies of digital media, and geographies of emotion. Its broad theoretical aim is to ascertain what insights might be gleaned by increasingly bringing together these two literatures. The more specific and primary aim, however, is an empirical one and that is to offer a materially grounded example of 35 mothers who live in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand who use digital media to communicate with their children. Particular attention is paid to the capacities of different digital media, both individually and combined, to help facilitate, but certainly not guarantee, different emotions. The research is informed by a feminist geographical reading of theories of digital media and emotion. Findings illustrate that increasingly mothers are making use of digital media, both singularly and collectively, to increase the chances of a particular desired emotional outcome with their child or children. This article concludes that bodies, devices, screens, sounds and images comingle to mediate emotions over time and space.     

What Use Are Units? Critical Geographies of Alcohol Policy

Abstract: This paper interrogates the multiple spatialities bound up with the consumption of units as the dominant means of diagnosing “health‐related” alcohol problems and measuring “drunkenness” in international alcohol policy and research. In order to question the power afforded to units, we work at the intersection of theoretical debates concerning biopower and governmentality; emotional, embodied and affective geographies and actor network theory. Presenting empirical research from the UK we contribute to geographical agendas that seek to consider the ontological and epistemological understandings of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. The paper concludes by calling for dialogue between social, health and medical scientists in order to develop more pertinent ways of understanding and representing the risks and benefits of alcohol consumption.     

Being(s) in relation at home: socio-natures of patio ‘gardens’ in Managua,Nicaragua

Human–nature relations of home have been gaining more attention in geography, especially in the study of gardens. This article contributes to this growing literature, but in contrast to much research, it examines human–nature relations in the patios (garden) of homes in a marginalized barrio (slum) of Managua, Nicaragua. I suggest that the human–nature relations in these patios need to be understood differently than those in North American and European gardens. Based on research carried out in Managua, I argue that such relations are at the centre of everyday domestic activities and are critical in producing home as a liveable space in the city. The article draws on feminist geographic understandings of home and current work around human–environment relations, and identifies three different sets of socio-ecological relations: corporeal, aesthetic and economic. It argues that these three different relations between humans and the plants and trees in their patios are critical in the imaginaries around home and in the production of habitable spaces in cities, as well as to our understanding of urban natures.     

Creating twenty-first century Korean bodies: public movement education practice,cultural policy and therapeutic ethos

This article focuses on the public movement education practices of a group of middle-class, Korean dance instructors at the Korea Laban Movement Institute (KLMI), a recently established civil institution in Seoul, South Korea. The KLMI classes promote self-directed and well-rounded Korean bodies through student-centered and egalitarian movement instruction. In recent years, these classes received public funds from the culture and arts foundations supported by the state’s cultural policies, as well as attention from Korean public media. This research introduces the public movement education practices that have aligned well with the state’s early twenty-first century cultural policies by making culture and arts education more accessible to the average Korean. In addition, the study shows the broader impact of KLMI’s public movement education practices, which have merged into the political and social landscapes of contemporary South Korea.     

Talking about bodies online: Viagra,YouTube, and the politics of public(ized) sexualities

The development of Viagra in the late 1990s ushered in a new age of conversation about sex and sexuality, as men's bodily abilities were put on display for all to discuss. In 2005, the video-sharing technology YouTube was launched. Taken together, these technological innovations – both biomedical and representational – have produced debate around sex, sexualized and gendered bodies, and sexual health. This article interrogates Viagra-related representations posted on YouTube and analyzes sexuopharmaceuticals as a set of intertextualities that create space for both normative discourses and social critiques. Three analytic themes illustrate how Viagra-related YouTube videos (1) reinforce a regime of self-care within a wider context of individualized responsibility for one's sexual health, (2) highlight the values attached to the pharmasexed gendered body for men and women in the age of Viagra, and (3) provide disruptions, in the form of criticism, to the assumption that healthy bodies and relationships need pharmasexual enhancement. The article concludes by suggesting that social networking sites such as YouTube are managed public spaces through which one can interrogate the intertextualities that link discourses related to bodies and sexual health to the virtual and material spaces of everyday life.