The prosody of Barra Gaelic epenthetic vowels

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Rethinking activism: tourism, mobilities and emotion

This article seeks to trouble distinctions between activism and tourism, and activism and regionality. It does this by exploring the role of tourism, mobilities and emotion for a regional Australian queer collective, and their 1400 km return journey to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. In illustrating the ways this touristic journey represents alternative ways of performing queer activism, I argue that the existence of regional activism deconstructs notions that non-normative sexualities and queer politics do not exist beyond urban centres. Granting attention to the alternative ways the queer collective utilises tourism mobilities as part of their activism strengthens characterisations of leisure as always more than a space of hedonism and escape. Understanding the broader significance of events enables scholars to rethink festivals as spatially and temporally bounded, one off events but rather crucial to the ongoing sustainability of regional queer collectives and performances of queer activism in peripheral areas

Unpacking Pride’s commodification through the encounter

Debates complicating universal constructions of tourist commodification are far from new. Yet, within tourist studies distinctions continue to resurface that reify boundaries positioning processes of commodification as necessarily liberating, victimising or pathologising. Through these boundary making processes there is potential that the meanings, politics and memories of individuals, invested in experiences deemed ‘commodified’, become devalued as tourist scholars praise pre-commodified experience. This paper responds to these tensions through utilising a feminist embodied framework focused on the encounter. The paper troubles innate constructions of commodification, by showing how interpretation of commodification is spatially and socially specific to the moment of encounter. It is thus argued that analysis of the encounter offers a way to negotiate sponsorship requirements during event planning

Food tourism and events as tools for social sustainability?

Purpose: Food tourism and events are often prefaced as tools for sustainability within national and intra-national food and agricultural policy contexts. Yet, the realities of enhancing sustainability through food tourism and events are problematic. Sustainability itself is often conceived broadly within policy proclaiming the benefits of food tourism and events, with a need for further deconstruction of the ways each dimension of sustainability – economic, environmental, social and cultural – independently enhances sustainability. The lack of clarity concerning the conceptual utilisation of sustainability works to compromise its value and utilisation for the development of food tourism and events in peripheral areas. In recognition, this paper turns attention to social sustainability within the context of a local food festival, to ask: in what ways is social sustainability enhanced through a local food festival, who benefits from this sustainability, and how? Design: The paper examines the development of a local food festival in a rural coastal community, on Scotland’s west coast. The concept of social capital is utilised to examine the unfolding power relations between committee members, as well as the committee and other social groups. Observant participation undertaken over a 10 month period, between December 2015 and September 2016, renders insights into the ways event planning processes were dependent on the pre-existing accruement of social capital by certain individuals and groups. Findings: Local food festivals have the potential to enhance social sustainability, in offering opportunity to bridge relations across certain diverse groups and foster an environment conducive to cohabitation. Bridging, however, is dependent on preconceived social capital and power relations, which somewhat inhibits social integration for all members of a community. The temporally confined characteristics of events generates difficulties in overcoming the uneven enhancement of social sustainability. Care, thus, needs to be upheld in resolutely claiming enhancement of social sustainability through local food events. Further, broad conceptualisations of ‘community’ need to be challenged during event planning processes; for it is difficult to develop a socially inclusive approach that ensures integration for diverse segments without recognising what constitutes a specific ‘community’. Originality: This paper is situated within the context of a peripheral, yet growing body of literature exploring the potential of events to develop social sustainability. In extending this work, the paper turns attention to the gastronomic - examining the extent to which social sustainability is enhanced through a local food festival, for a rural coastal community – Mallaig, on Scotland’s west coast

Queer trans-Tasman mobility, then and now

This article situates queer mobility within wider historical geographies of trans-Tasman flows of goods, people and ideas. Using case studies of women’s and men’s experiences during the early twentieth century and the twenty-first century, it shows that same-sex desire is a constituent part of these flows. Conversely, antipodean mobility has fostered particular forms of desire, sexual identity, queer community and politics. Rural and urban landscapes in both New Zealand and Australia shape queer desire in a range of diverging and converging ways, and political and legal shifts in both countries have fostered changes in trans-Tasman travel over time. Our investigation of the circuits of queer mobility urges a wider examination of the significance of trans-Tasman crossings in queer lives, both historically and in contemporary society

Reshaping gender and class in rural spaces

Reshaping gender and class in rural spaces, edited by Barbara Pini and Belinda Leach, Burlington, Ashgate Publishing, 2011, 266 pp., £30.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-1-4094-029106, Gender in a Global/Local Word Series