Tourism in an unstable and complex world? Searching for relevant a political risk paradigm and model for tourism organisations

This work has a single aim, focusing on developing a political risk model relevant for tourism organisations, which are operating in an increasingly complex and turbulent international environment. It pays particular attention to the language of risk (how risks are articulated and described), the culture of risk (how risks are viewed), and the risk process (how they are analysed and assessed). The work critically evaluates a variety of methods that can be utilised to scan, analyse and assess political hazards and risks. It finds that many of the existing methods of political and country risk assessment are limited and not sufficiently contextualised to the needs of the tourism industry. Whilst many models can have an attractive façade of using positivistic methods to calculate political risks, in practice these are fraught with problems. The study also highlights a more complex relationship between tourism and political instability, whereby tourism can be characterised as much by its robustness, as its sensitivity. A model is developed which primarily adapts a systems theory approach, whereby a language, culture and practical process is developed through which the analysis of various factors and indicators can take place. The approach adopted has a number of stages, which vary in the amount of data necessary for the analysis and assessment of political risks. The model begins by utilising existing travel advice databases, moving onto an analysis of the frequency of past events, then to the nature of the political system itself, finishing with an analysis and assessment of more complex input factors and indicators which relate to notions of causation. One of the more provocative features of the model is the argument that it is more than possible to make an assessment of the risks that the political environment can pose to a tourism organisation, without necessarily understanding theories of causation

Humanist Narratology and the Suburban Ensemble Dramedy

What is a “humanistic drama”? Although we might describe narrative works as humanist, and references to the humanistic drama abound across a breadth of critical media, including film and literary theory, the parameters of these terms remain elliptical. My work attempts to clarify the narrative conditions of humanism. In particular, humanists ask how we use narrative texts to complicate our understanding of others, and question the ethics and efficacy of attempts to represent human social complexity in fiction. After historicising narrative humanism and situating it among related philosophies, I develop humanist hermeneutics as a method for reading fictive texts, and provide examples of such readings. I integrate literary Darwinism, anthropology, cognitive science and social psychology into a social narratology, which catalogues the social functions of narrative. This expansive study asks how we can unite the descriptive capabilities of social science with the more prescriptive ethical inquiry of traditional humanism, and aims to demonstrate their productive compatibility. From this groundwork, I then look at a cluster of humanistic film texts: the suburban ensemble dramedy, a phenomenon in millennial American cinema politicising the quotidian and the domestic. Popular works include The Kids Are All Right, Little Miss Sunshine, Little Children, Junebug, The Oranges, and what is arguably the inciting feature in a wave of such films entering production, American Beauty. I provide examples of humanist readings of these films at two levels: an overview of genre development as social phenomenon (including histories of suburban depiction onscreen, ensemble cinema and affective experimentation in recent American filmmaking), followed by a close reading of a progenitor text, Ron Howard's 1989 film Parenthood

UK Election Analysis 2017: Media, Voters and the Campaign

Featuring 92 contributions from over 100 leading UK and international academics, this publication captures the immediate thoughts, reflections and early research insights on the 2017 UK General Election from the cutting edge of media and politics research. Published 10 days after the election, these contributions are short and accessible. Authors provide authoritative analysis of the campaign, including research findings or new theoretical insights; to bring readers original ways of understanding the campaign. Contributions also bring a rich range of disciplinary in uences, from political science to cultural studies, journalism studies to psychology. We hope this makes for a vibrant, informative and engaging read

The Child, the Emperor, and the Fabulous Clothes: Constructing a theory of how interpersonal difficulty in gifted adults arises, is perpetuated, and can be overcome

In the literature and research on giftedness there are ubiquitous references to interpersonal problems. This project investigated this by comprehensively bringing such references together and analysing them (textual analysis), and by interviewing 20 gifted adults about their interpersonal experiences. A Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology was employed to build a theory grounded in research data that could explain how interpersonal difficulty in gifted individuals arises, is perpetuated, and can be overcome. A Psychosocial (Hollway 2016) interpretation of the data examined not just its explicit cognitive and behavioural content but also the more hidden nuances of intersubjective experience – termed ‘unconscious processes’ – that the giftedness literature neglects. An ‘Overview Model of Giftedness’ was constructed to organize the research findings, which emphasizes the importance of person-environment interaction, belonging, competition, and collaboration. Interpersonal difficulty was found to arise predominantly through relating categorized as naïve (‘Child’, including autism) or arrogant (‘Emperor’, including narcissism). It was demonstrated how interpersonal difficulty is perpetuated through unconscious processes such as transferences, valencies, and intersubjective complementarities. It was found that interpersonal difficulty was overcome by changing environments (gaining contact with more similar others); changing the level of self-expressiveness (‘hiding self’); or changing the nature of self-expressiveness (such as tempering naivety and arrogance through improving interpersonal understanding and skill). These findings were consolidated in an original model titled ‘Giftedness and Interpersonal Relating’ that shows the optimal movement away from being interpersonally inhibited, despairing, or provoking, towards thriving. Conclusion: Atypically efficient neural functioning, and minority status, make gifted individuals vulnerable to interpersonal difficulty. Recognising the individual differences involved, their impact, and their unconsciously perpetuating intersubjective patterns, and taking this into account when communicating with others, improves interpersonal relating and the actualizing of gifted potential. The project’s main products are a website offering services designed to “help high-ability adults thrive”, and a book proposal