Embodying geographies : clothing consumption and female embodied subjectivities

This thesis is situated within three main developments within social and cultural geography concerned with the practices and spaces of consumption, the corporeal turn as a means to embody geographical knowledges and the role of clothing in the materialisation of bodies. The main intention of this thesis, therefore, is that it acts as a means of animating theoretical articulations of the body with in-depth empirical work (individual and group interviews and accompanied shopping) concerned with women's embodied experiences of clothing consumption. Therefore, the practices of consumption form a vehicle through which a detailed account of the intricacies of female embodiment can be discerned. Female embodied subjectivity is made sense of through post-structural work on the (female) body which works against dualistic and static understandings of embodiment to highlight the fluid and messy constitution of subjectivity (Grosz 1994). Empirical articulations of female consuming bodies focuses on what this subjectivity looks/ feels/ sounds like, through elaborating upon the tension between material and discursive bodies, the ability of bodies to co-produce each other (including my own), and identifying a need to move beyond understanding the body as a presence which must be materially there to 'matter'. Instead, this account of female corporeality presents a more nuanced account of how women experience their bodies and thus, the role that theoretical bodies have for making sense of these embodied experiences. Female embodied subjectivity is discussed as, what I have termed, 'bodily doings'. These are Slimming, Sizing, Zoning and Looking and are presented as independent yet related theoretically annotated empirical accounts of female embodiment. Through these 'bodily doings', I will highlight how the female body figures in accounts contemporary consumption beyond a victim/resistance dichotomy, rethink the typology of flesh in order to unsettle categories of bodies such as big and small, focus on the potential for the matter of female bodies, such as flab, for understanding women's experiences with their own materiality and re-orientate debates about 'body image' and what it means for women to look (at themselves and each other) and be looked at. In a sense this thesis has no closure, and instead, concludes highlighting the potentialities that this thesis has for empiricalising female embodied subjectivity in its inherent fluidity and indeterminacy and emphasises the importance of situating 'the bod)" as a place to theorise from and work with rather than upon, in order to get at what is too often uncritically posited as "the geograph)' closest in'

Increasing uptake of improved land management practice to benefit environment and landholders: insights through a transaction cost lens

Transaction costs, related to either investigating improved land management practices (ILMP), engaging in adoption support programs for these practices and/or implementing changes on-ground, create barriers to ILMP adoption. Perceived and actual transaction costs have long been hypothesised as a potential barrier to grazier adoption of ILMPs in catchments to the Great Barrier Reef. Applying a framework derived from transaction cost theory, we assess this hypothesis. Through semi-structured interviews of a sample of participants in two ILMP programs, we find that ILMP adoption support program characteristics have a large influence on perceived and actual transaction costs of landholders seeking to engage in ILMP programs or adopt ILMPs. The importance of establishing and nurturing relationships between landholders and extension officers was also highlighted as critical to reducing landholder transaction costs. The degree to which relationships reduce transaction costs demonstrates the importance of fostering landholder leadership in ILMP program design as well as targeted extension in supporting adoption

Proof of Life: Mark-Making Practices on the Island of Alderney

Currently, mark-making practices as a form of identification and proof of life are an unrealized resource. Over a three-year period, systematic walkover surveys were conducted on and within fortifications and other structures on the island of Alderney to locate historic and modern marks. The investigations presented in this article demonstrate the importance of non-invasive recording and examination of marks to identify evidence connected to forced and slave labourers, and soldiers present on the island of Alderney during the German occupation in World War II. Names, hand and footwear impressions, slogans, artworks, dates, and counting mechanisms were recorded electronically and investigated by using international databases, archives, and translation services. We discuss the value and challenges of interpreting traces of human life in the contexts of conflict archaeology and missing person investigations and underline the need for greater recognition of marks as evidence of past lives

Use of trait concepts and terminology in freshwater ecology: Historic, current, and future perspectives

1.Trait-based approaches have received increasing interest among freshwater scientists given their capacity to predict community structure and biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning. However, the inconsistent development and use of trait concepts and terms across freshwater scientific disciplines may have limited realisation of the potential of traits. 2.Here, we reviewed trait definitions and terms use to provide recommendations for their consistent application in freshwater science. To do so, we first reviewed literature to identify established trait definitions, historical and current use of trait terms and challenges restricting the application of trait-based approaches in freshwater science. Next, we surveyed 414 freshwater researchers from 54 countries to assess variability in the current use of trait terminology in relation to respondent characteristics (i.e., professional experience, geographical region, research discipline, and focal freshwater ecosystem, biotic group, and ecosystem function). 3.Our literature review identified two well-established trait definitions, which emphasise individual phenotypic characteristics that influence either eco-evolutionary aspects (i.e., organism performance and fitness) or ecosystem dynamics and processes (i.e., responses to the environment and/or effects on ecosystem functioning). Publications used a range of trait-related terms and their frequency of use varied among scientific fields. The term functional trait dominated fields such as biodiversity conservation, environmental sciences and ecology, plant sciences and microbiology. In contrast, the terms biological trait, functional trait, and species trait were used with similar frequencies in fields such as entomology, fisheries, marine and freshwater biology, and zoology. We also found that well-established trait definitions are difficult to apply to freshwater unicellular organisms, colonial multicellular organisms, genomic information, and cultural traits. 4.Our survey revealed highly inconsistent use of trait terms among freshwater researchers. Terms including biological trait, functional trait, structural measure, and ecosystem function were commonly used to describe the same traits or functions. Variability in the use of terms was generally explained by research discipline, geographical region, and focal biotic group and ecosystem functions. 5.We propose making the trait concept flexible enough to be applicable to all freshwater biota and their characteristics, while keeping and integrating links to eco-evolutionary and ecosystem aspects. Specifically, our new definition expands the established functional trait definition by considering also supra-individual scales of trait measurement (colonial- or community-mean traits), genotypic traits (e.g., functional gene markers of enzymes) and cultural traits (e.g., feeding behaviours, communication skills). To reduce terminological ambiguity, we also recommend that researchers define trait terms, prioritising the use of functional trait as an overarching term over alternative terms (e.g., biological trait), and restricting specific terms (e.g., morphological trait) to situations in which such precision is desirable. The findings of our integrative study could help to improve terminological consistency across freshwater disciplines and to better recognise the potential of traits to elucidate the mechanisms behind ecological patterns

Big Bodies Dancing: reflections on doing fat research

Recording of presentation given at Vital Signs 2 Conference, 7-9 September 2010, University of Manchester Recent work in geography and beyond has begun develop critical accounts of obesity and obesity science which include challenging and providing alternatives to medical knowledges that link obesity to ill-health, identifying and legislating against forms of discrimination associated with body size and developing various activist strategies, including academic, artistic and online and real-life initiatives in order to counter dominant understandings of the fat body and to provide support for and to celebrate fat bodies. This paper is informed and inspired by this work and centres upon research carried out ‘with’ fat bodies in a ‘size accepting space’. This space was a nightclub event for Big Beautiful (BBW) and Big Beautiful Men (BBM) and their admirers (FA or fat admirers). The research involved periods of participant observation in the night club space, interviews and online questionnaires with participants and discussion boards on social networking site with attendees of the club. The paper will reflect upon particular methodological issues I experienced when conducting fieldwork concerned specifically with how to narrate, position and move my body within a ‘size accepting space’, how to capture fat and the relations between, within and upon fat bodies, beyond a purely visual register and how to ‘perform’ the identity and politics of the research across a range of social and professional settings. In carrying out the research, it has become important to think about how the fat subject and ‘fat’ researcher is constituted at different stages of the research process in ways which both facilitate the politics of size acceptance and yet which also question the capacity of the researcher and the research itself to adequately ‘re-present’ fatness back to fat bodies

Embodying responsibility: children’s health and supermarket initiatives

In this paper we interrogate the ways in which supermarkets ‘place’ responsibility for children’s ‘healthy’ eating with parents and/or children, as set within the contemporary British public health concern with the prevalence of childhood obesity. We use British food retailers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies as a way of identifying specific relations of responsibility between supermarkets, parents, and children. We do this through focusing upon a critical interrogation of two supermarkets’ children’s ‘healthy’ eating initiatives; a supermarket own-brand range of children’s ‘healthy’ food products; and a supermarket in-store ‘healthy’ food tour. The emergent geographies of embodied responsibility illustrate a deferral of responsibility from supermarkets to parents. This is problematic because it conversely excludes the possibilities for the child to be a consumer on the grounds that they are irresponsible and incapable of engaging with ‘healthy’ food. We suggest that this implied model of responsibility, which conceptualises responsibility as contained within the individual, is unhelpful because of its exclusivity and suggest that a collective notion of responsibility is necessary to understand fully the relations of responsibility that exist between bodies. This opens up possibilities for a more nuanced account of the ‘child’ consumer and the relationships that children have with ‘healthy’ food.

‘Getting in and going’: Access to onboard toilets for fat and disabled people on commercial aircraft

In this paper we explore the accessibility of toilets onboard commercial aircraft for passengers who identify as fat or fat and disabled. Drawing on qualitative survey and interview data, we discuss people's experiences of inaccessible onboard toilet spaces including getting to and into the toilet, managing bodily matter, anticipating a lack of accessible toilets, and the (il)legitimacy of fat and disabled air passengers within commercial aircraft regulations. Our data illustrate that current provision of onboard toilets is wholly inadequate for fat and disabled passengers, requiring strategies to manage bodily matter which are detrimental to health. We further 'fat ge-ographies' research and relational understandings of embodiment that attend to spatial and temporal contingency by drawing together insights from disability, crip, gender, queer and trans theory, in particular conceptualisations of 'misfit(ting)', crip time, and (il)legitimate lives

Moving beyond walkability: On the potential of health geography

In the context of the substantial volume of research focused in recent years on the walkability of the built environment, this report presents some initial thoughts on what the sub-discipline of health geography might be able to contribute, beyond what it currently does, to existing debates. It is posited that at one level this contribution could be critical yet constructive, focussing on the limitations of current epistemological and methodological approaches but offering ideas on how they and others might be developed. At another level, given the limited scope of existing walkability research, a further contribution could be to pay attention to different forms of embodiment, movement activities, their relationships to health, and the places, experiences, agency and cultures involved