'Sexercise': Working out heterosexuality in Jane Fonda’s fitness books

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Leisure Studies, 30(2), 237 - 255, 2011, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02614367.2010.523837.This paper explores the connection between the promotion of heterosexual norms in women’s fitness books written by or in the name of Jane Fonda during the 1980s and the commodification of women’s fitness space in both the public and private spheres. The paper is set in the absence of overt discussions of normative heterosexuality in leisure studies and draws on critical heterosexual scholarship as well as the growing body of work theorising geographies of corporeality and heterosexuality. Using the principles of media discourse analysis, the paper identifies three overlapping characteristics of heterosexuality represented in Jane Fonda’s fitness books, and embodied through the exercise regimes: respectable heterosexual desire, monogamous procreation and domesticity. The paper concludes that the promotion and prescription of exercise for women in the Jane Fonda workout books centred on the reproduction and embodiment of heterosexual corporeality. Set within an emerging commercial landscape of women’s fitness in the 1980s, such exercise practices were significant in the legitimation and institutionalisation of heteronormativity

Making Space for Failure in Geographic Research

The idea that field research is an inherently “messy” process has become widely accepted by geographers in recent years. There has thus far been little acknowledgment, however, of the role that failure plays in doing human geography. In this article we push back against this, arguing that failure should be recognized as a central component of what it means to do qualitative geographical field research. This article seeks to use failure proactively and provocatively as a powerful resource to improve research practice and outcomes, reconsidering and giving voice to it as everyday, productive, and necessary to our continual development as researchers and academics. This article argues that there is much value to be found in failure if it is critically examined and shared, and—crucially—if there is a supportive space in which to exchange our experiences of failing in the field

Diversity in collaborative research communities: a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group in public health

Writing groups for doctoral students are generally agreed to provide valuable learning spaces for Ph.D. candidates. Here an academic developer and the eight members of a writing group formed in a Discipline of Public Health provide an account of their experiences of collaborating in a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group. We consider the benefits of belonging to such a group for Ph.D. students who are operating in a research climate in which disciplinary boundaries are blurring and where an increasing number of doctoral projects are interdisciplinary in nature; in which both academic staff and students come from enormously diverse cultural and language backgrounds; and in which teamwork, networking and collaboration are prized but not always proactively facilitated. We argue that doctoral writing groups comprising students from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds can be of significant value for postgraduates who wish to collaborate on their own academic development to improve their research writing and communication skills; at the same time, such collaborative work effectively builds an inclusive, dynamic research community.Cally Guerin, Vicki Xafis, Diana V. Doda, Marianne H. Gillam, Allison J. Larg, Helene Luckner, Nasreen Jahan, Aris Widayati and Chuangzhou X

Mining Big Data for Tourist Hot Spots: Geographical Patterns of Online Footprints

Understanding the complex, and often unequal, spatiality of tourist demand in urban contexts requires other methodologies, among which the information base available online and in social networks has gained prominence. Innovation supported by Information and Communication Technologies in terms of data access and data exchange has emerged as a complementary supporting tool for the more traditional data collection techniques currently in use, particularly, in urban destinations where there is the need to more (near)real-time monitoring. The capacity to collect and analise massive amounts of data on individual and group behaviour is leading to new data-rich research approaches. This chapter addresses the potential for discovering geographical insights regarding tourists’ spatial patterns within a destination, based on the analysis of geotagged data available from two social networks. ·info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Young ghosts: ethical and methodological issues of historical research in children's geographies

This paper was published in the journal, Children's Geographies [© Taylor & Francis] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2012.693838Geographers researching children and young people have often been at the forefront of disciplinary debates in geography surrounding methodological practice and ethical considerations (Matthews et al. 1998, Valentine 1999, Pain 2004, Hemming 2008, Hopkins and Bell 2008, van Blerk and Barker 2008). In this short paper, I want to focus on a less-popular research method used by children’s geographers – archival methods (cf. Gagen 2000, 2001) – and reflect specifically on some of its methodological and ethical challenges. I argue that thinking about historical research can challenge children’s geographers to consider other types of encounter from that of the (embodied) encounter between a researcher and a child (Horton 2008). These different and multiple encounters include those between the (adult) creator of ‘material’ and a young person, a young person (as creator) and their intended audience, and the further encounter between a young person from the past and a present-day researcher during fieldwork. The spatial and temporal deferral in some of these encounters suggests a re-thinking of how we approach and conceptualise research ‘with’ young people. Furthermore, these (dis)embodied encounters can challenge ethical norms in children’s geographies such as consent, confidentiality and positionality in different but overlapping ways. I contend that children’s geographers are well versed in these ethical issues, some of which transfer well into the practice of historical research. For example, issues surrounding children’s ‘voice’ and responsibility are quite similar (as I later discuss), but there is a difference between contemporary and historical research in terms of the media involved (your own tape recordings or someone else’s recorded tapes; fresh participatory artwork or dust-covered diaries) and a different retrieval process (direct embodied research with young people or deferred connections in another building, time and place)