Retreating to nature : rethinking 'therapeutic landscapes'

There is a long history of removing oneself from ‘society’ in order to recuperate or repair. This paper considers a yoga and massage retreat in Southern Spain, and what opportunities this retreat experience might offer for recuperation and the creation of healthy bodies. The paper positions ‘nature’ as an active participant, and as ‘enrolled’ in the experiences of the retreat as a ‘therapeutic landscape’, and questions how and what particular aspects of yoga practice (in intimate relation with place) give rise to therapeutic experiences

Music-making and forced migrants’ affective practices of diasporic belonging

Amid the normalisation of xenophobic narratives surrounding migration, and an overarching ‘hostile environment’ regulating asylum in Britain, this paper explores music-making as a unique lens to highlight the negotiation of belonging, uncertainty and marginality amongst a group of fifty forced migrants in Bristol. Through a focus addressing the nexus between power, affect and the everyday, this paper discusses how the dehumanising processes that characterise the British asylum regime operate in and through the spaces, bodies and objects constituting its ‘ordinary’ materiality. Concurrently, this paper addresses how the entanglement of bodies, ‘things’ and sounds emerging from the co-creation of weekly music groups enabled the group participants to negotiate pleasure, expression and sociality in a context of enforced marginality and uncertainty. Consequently, this paper discusses the music-making sessions as affective practices of diasporic belonging: relationalities arising from multiple forms of displacement that enabled momentary, but productive domains of sociability, co-presence and solidarity beyond ethnic, national, gendered and religious lines. The conclusions consider the contributions of theoretical approaches enabling researchers (and potentially advocates and community organisers) to recognise the stakes and significance of forced migrants’ (in)visible forms of sociality that take place beside the discursive and institutional frames of State and humanitarian interventions

Urban civic pride and the new localism

Civic pride relates to how places promote and defend local identity and autonomy. It is often championed as a key value and aspiration of local government. This paper argues that civic pride has been under‐examined in geography, and in particular the emotional meanings of pride need to be better understood. In response, I present an emotional analysis of civic pride and discuss its role in British cities, particularly in the context of urban regeneration and the UK's new localism agenda. In the latter part of the paper I provide a case study of Nottingham in England, where I employ a discourse analysis of recent urban policy and local media to examine how civic pride is being mobilised and contested in the city. Examining civic pride is important because it shapes and reflects the political values that local governments stand for and provides a basis for thinking about how emotions are used strategically (and problematically) in urban policy. This paper complements and challenges existing literature on cities by showing how civic pride shapes, but also obscures, the ideological politics of local government and how, as geographers, we might consider more seriously the ways forms of power, identity and inequality are reproduced and contested through emotions such as pride

Long-Term Trends in Phytoplankton Chlorophyll a and Size Structure in the Benguela Upwelling System

This is the final version. Available from American Geophysical Union (AGU) via the DOI in this record.The Benguela Upwelling System (BUS) is among the most productive ecosystems globally, supporting numerous fisheries and ecosystem services in Southern Africa. Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor and Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer-Aqua chlorophyll a (Chla) concentrations between September 1997 and February 2018 were used to investigate long-term trends in phytoplankton biomass and size structure (microphytoplankton [>20 μm], nanophytoplankton [2–20 μm], and picophytoplankton [<2 μm]) in the Northern Benguela, Southern Benguela (SB), and Agulhas Bank (AB) shelf and open ocean regions of the BUS. Trends in upwelling and correlations with Chla and size structure were examined. Increasing Chla and microphytoplankton trends occurred in the Northern Benguela shelf and open ocean, while decreases were evident on the SB shelf in all seasons. In the SB open ocean, small increases occurred during austral winter, with a decrease in spring. On the AB shelf, increases in Chla and microphytoplankton occurred in summer with decreases during the other seasons. Patterns differed in the AB open ocean, with increases in winter and spring and decreases in summer and autumn. Although R 2 values indicated that linear trends accounted for a reasonable portion of the variance, and most trends were statistically significant, they showed only small changes on the shelf domains and little to no change in the open ocean. Strong correlations between upwelling, Chla, and the size classes were observed, but distinct seasonal differences occurred in each region. This is the first 20-year analysis of phytoplankton biomass and community structure in the BUS and provides a baseline against which future changes can be monitored.NERC National Centre for Earth ObservationSouth African National Research Foundation (NRF)South African Department of Environmental Affair

The sexuality-assemblages of young men: a new materialist analysis

This article presents a new materialist exploration of young men and sexuality that shifts the focus away from bodies and individuals, toward the affective flow within assemblages of bodies, things, ideas and social institutions, and the sexual capacities this flow produces. Using data from two empirical studies, we explore the sexuality assemblages of teen boys and young men, and the micropolitics of these assemblages. We find that the sexuality produced in the bodies of young men is highly territorialised and aggregated by various materialities. However, we also reveal how young men resist these conventional sexualities

Transcultural body spaces: re-inventing and performing headwrap practice among young Congolese women in London

This article examines embodied representation of race, ethnicity, and gender, questioning ideas of cultural appropriation. Using the London-based Congolese transnational fashion brand Kiyana Wraps as a case study, the article addresses how young Congolese designers re-invent their cultural heritage to conceive the label stylisation and construct meanings of Blackness/Africanness. The article also explores the brand’s social spaces, where the headwrap ritual is used by different actors to perform hybrid identities. In addition, wearing the headwrap reveals symbolic metaphors of empowerment, through which intertwined ‘feminist’ and ‘feminine’ identities are evoked. The paper examines how Congolese women are creatively taking inspiration from the environment of London to produce innovative fashion trajectories as lived socio-cultural experiences. It argues how the headwrap ritual signifies an aesthetic and material process through which specific racial and ethnic boundaries are transcended, fabricating transcultural body spaces which encompass individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds

‘Video Replay: Families, films and fantasy’ as a transformational text: Commentary on Valerie Walkerdine's ‘Video Replay’.

In this commentary I explore the significance of Valerie Walkerdine's paper ‘Video Replay: Families, Films and Fantasy’. I review its impact in 1986 and then discuss how some of its ideas about subjectivity and popular culture – specifically film - can be developed in the contemporary context. A recurring fantasy of Rocky II and its reception is that of social and psychological transformation. I address this theme by drawing on the work of Christopher Bollas to argue that Walkerdine's psychosocial analysis continues to facilitate, across a range of contexts, some of the transformational processes described in her article