From ethical consumerism to political consumption

This article reviews some of the recent literature in geography and related disciplines on ethical consumerism and political consumption. Many geographers began their engagement with questions of ethics, politics, consumption and consumerism inspired by critical theory, commodity chain analysis and a sense that geographical knowledge might have a central role to play in progressive social change. Since these early engagements, it has been established that consumption practices are rarely the practices of rational, autonomous, self-identified consumers, and so-called ethical consumption practices are rarely detached from organisations and their political activity. Over time, therefore, some researchers have gradually shifted their focus from consumer identities and knowledge to consumption practices, social networks, material infrastructures and organisations of various kinds. This shift in focus has implications – both for the field of political consumption and for how the discipline of geography relates to this field

Geographies and politics of localism: the localism of the United Kingdom's Coalition Government

There has always been a localist element to British politics. But recently, a particular version of localism has been moved to the foreground by the 2011 Localism Act. This paper identifies various uses and meanings of localism, maps their geographical assumptions and effects, and critiques their politics. It does this using the localism of the United Kingdom’s Coalition Government as a case study of localism in practice. The rationalities, mentalities, programmes, and technologies of this localism are established from Ministerial speeches and press releases, along with Parliamentary Acts, Bills, White Papers, Green Papers, and Statements – all published between May 2010 when the Coalition Government was formed, and November 2011 when the Localism Act became law. We argue that localism may be conceptualised as spatial liberalism, is never straightforwardly local, and can be anti-politica

Do all stars in the solar neighbourhood form in clusters? A cautionary note on the use of the distribution of surface densities

Bressert et al. recently showed that the surface density distribution of low-mass, young stellar objects (YSOs) in the solar neighbourhood is approximately log-normal. The authors conclude that the star formation process is hierarchical and that only a small fraction of stars form in dense star clusters. Here, we show that the peak and the width of the density distribution are also what follow if all stars form in bound clusters which are not significantly affected by the presence of gas and expand by two-body relaxation. The peak of the surface density distribution is simply obtained from the typical ages (few Myr) and cluster membership number (few hundred) typifying nearby star-forming regions. This result depends weakly on initial cluster sizes, provided that they are sufficiently dense (initial half mass radius of <0.3 pc) for dynamical evolution to be important at an age of a few Myr. We conclude that the degeneracy of the YSO surface density distribution complicates its use as a diagnostic of the stellar formation environment.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, MNRAS Letter; Updated to match final journal styl

The political ethics of consumerism

This article draws on research into the development and growth of ethical consumption in the UK to suggest why consumerism and citizenship are not necessarily opposed practices. Consumer-oriented activism offers important pathways to political participation for ordinary people. The organisations involved in this field embed consumer-oriented activism in wider programs of mobilisation, activism, lobbying and campaigning, enrolling ordinary people in active political engagement

Athlete Monitoring in Canadian Football

INTRODUCTION: Sports performance optimization relies heavily on the balance between increasing training load (TL) and appropriate recovery. In high performance settings, the crucial role that athlete monitoring plays in this intricate balancing act is widely recognized. PURPOSE: Due to the violent and unique demands of Canadian football, minimal research and few practical monitoring tools are available for coaches and practitioners. The thesis aim therefore, is to provide a body of research that begins to address athlete monitoring challenges in Canadian football. CHAPTER III: Study 1 was designed to validate the Session-Ratings of Perceived Exertion (sRPE) method of quantifying internal TL in football players. Statistically significant correlations for all individual players between sRPE and two criterion heart rate-based measures were found. Results confirm that sRPE is a highly practical and valid tool for Canadian football application. CHAPTER IV: Despite frequent use in other sports, the high injury occurrence in football often prevents consistent neuromuscular fatigue (NMF) monitoring using a maximal countermovement jump (CMJ). Further, little direct evidence exists supporting the relationship between athlete CMJ performance and NMF. Study 2 addressed these issues by assessing the acute-fatiguing effects of a game simulation (G-Sim) on postural sway (PS), CMJ performance and lab-based NMF measures in football players. Congruency between all measures post G-Sim suggests that submaximal PS monitoring has the potential to supplement CMJ in NMF tracking of football players hampered by minor injuries. CHAPTER V: Recognizing that acute-fatiguing effects may misrepresent fatigue across extended training periods, study 3 applied previous methodology (study 1 & 2) to evaluate PS as a valid NMF indicator over a competitive 11-week season. Significant associations between both CMJ and PS performance with weekly Global TL fluctuations provided evidence of NMF assessments valid across a football season. There was no evidence of differences in NMF status between starters and non-starters of the weekly game. CONCLUSION: Thesis findings confirm the validity and practicality of sRPE and the NMF monitoring tools of CMJ and PS across a competitive football season. This initial work provides a spring-board for future research as it has broadened our knowledge of athlete responses to- and monitoring in- Canadian football

FOUR MODES OF NEIGHBOURHOOD GOVERNANCE: The View from Nanjing, China

In a context of global moves towards decentralization and neighbourhood governance, this article focuses on neighbourhood governance in Nanjing, China. We draw on interviews and observations in 32 neighbourhoods to examine how neighbourhood governance plays out in different neighbourhoods. We identify and describe four modes of governance—collective consumption, service privatization, civic provision and state-sponsored—to argue that neighbourhood governance develops on the ground in diverse and complex ways, necessitating scholars to be cautious when seeking to generalize about it at the scale of the city, let alone that of the nation-state or the globe. We argue that relationships between actors are important units of analysis when considering how effective governance is achieved in different neighbourhoods; diversity and complexity in neighbourhood governance partly reflect the role of the state in these relationships. In turn the role of the state partly reflects processes of policy evolution in particular neighbourhoods

Problematising practices: Authors' response

Authors' response to reviews of Globalising Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption (Wiley-Blackwell)

RIVPACS database documentation. Final report

With the advent of the EU Water Framework Directive the concept of the 'reference condition' has become explicit within the legislative framework of the European Union. Reference condition has been established as a quality standard against which assessments of biological degradation must be compared. It is therefore essential that Member States can demonstrate that the biological datasets used to define their reference conditions meet the criteria of the WFD. The RIVPACS reference site dataset is therefore central to the definition of reference conditions for macroinvertebrates in streams and rivers in the United Kingdom. Objectives of research: • To establish the ownership of the RIVPACS reference site dataset • To liaise with all stakeholders of the dataset to establish unhindered access to the RIVPACS reference site dataset for the UK agencies (in perpetuity) • To deliver the RIVPACS reference site dataset to the UK agencies and to the public domain in a readily accessible database together will its accompanying physicochemical variables (both existing and newly collated as part of this project), historical and current anthropogenic stress data, and a range of calculated biotic indices. Key findings and recommendations: Ownership of the RIVPACS dataset resides with no single organization and several different organizations consider that they own different portions of the dataset. Formal permissions to release the dataset into the public domain have been obtained from all twelve extant organizations that have been identified as having funded various phases of RIVPACS research. In addition, CEH/NERC has also agreed to release the RIVPACS dataset to the public domain. Terms and conditions relating to the end use of the RIVPACS dataset have now been established. The RIVPACS database has been assembled in Microsoft® Access and can now be downloaded from the CEH web site. This report details the terms and conditions that apply to all end users of the database and it documents the tables given in the database, their structure and the origin of their data. A separate Pressure Data Analysis report describes the screening of the RIVPACS sites in terms of the current and emerging definitions of reference condition