Decommodifying grassroots struggle against a neoliberal tourism agenda: Imagining a local, just and sustainable ecotourism

© 2016 selection and editorial matter, Jan Mosedale; individual chapters, the contributors. It is not surprising that an advanced welfare state such as Sweden has significantly decommodified social policies and also demonstrates some of the community based ideals and best local practices of an ethical and socially just ecotourism. The areas covered by Swedish certification include animal welfare, waste and resource management, use of local goods and services and use of fuel-efficient and sustainable transport alternatives. There are also limitations on the capacities of local economies and communities to resist, challenge and in some cases robustly respond to the imperatives of neoliberalism. Alternative ecotourism development is not the same as alternative social development because the tourist/client is dependent on highly unregulated market forces to sustain tourism (Salole, 2007). The impact of market principles on small-scale tour operators and hosts cannot be ignored in the drive for profits. Nonetheless, global capitalism has a way of delivering paradoxical movements to the modes of profit making, competition amongst economic interest and production that reflect the neoliberal agenda. Our arguments here suggest that there is some dynamic for a countermovement from local operators and hosts to such economic globalization in order to drive forward decommodified agendas in ecotourism

Best Practice Interpretation Research for Sustainable Tourism

This article outlines the development of a framework that enables the classification of different interpretation research so that it can be linked to management needs in protected areas. The developed framework has been linked to selected case studies, thus enabling this research to be systematically placed in a protected area management context. A real life context for interpretation research is important if park managers are to take new knowledge of interpretation and apply it to their operational practices

Troubled men: ageing, dementia and masculinity in contemporary British crime drama

Focussing on three recent British film and television crime dramas, Mr Holmes, The Fear and the English language version of Wallander, this article argues that older men in these texts are a site through which contemporary social and cultural anxieties about ageing and dementia are played out in highly gendered ways that link to social and philosophical reflections on power, autonomy and selfhood. The dramas, while very different in affective orientation and tone, nonetheless all produce reflections on the meanings of memory loss within figurations of masculinity in the crime genre which have a broader significance for thinking through the representational dilemmas of dementia

Frames of dementia, grieving otherwise in The Father, Relic and Supernova: representing dementia in recent film

In recent years, the number of ‘critically acclaimed’ films in Europe, the UK and the US about dementia has continued to flourish. This chapter analyses three films, all released in 2020: The Father (Dir. Florian Zeller), The Relic (Dir. Natalie Erika James) and Supernova (Dir. Harry MacQueen). These films differ in significant ways; they cover a range of genres, from the family melodrama to romance and horror. Such genre differences produce a wide range of ‘feeling tones’, with the potential to elicit a range of affective responses in the viewer, which may, in turn, have a transformative impact on how the condition is understood culturally, socially and politically. But how far do these recent films challenge the problems that have already been identified as key questions for thinking through representations of this condition? (Or, more accurately, range of conditions.) Namely, the dangers of entrenching stigma, fear and denial and the production of ‘epistemic injustice’ that ultimately dehumanises and renders abject the character (and, by implication, anyone else) who is identified with dementia? These preoccupations reflect the critical challenges that the field of dementia studies explores. The films in question raise a range of potentially productive issues specifically for critical accounts of the portrayals of dementia on film. For example, has the perspectival shift, widely reported in press reactions to The Father, answered the critique of cinema that it has too often focused on the traumas of the caregiver and failed to attempt to represent the embodied experiences of dementia? If so, to what extent does this shift reflect a more progressive cultural narrative? Supernova explores a same-sex couple’s experiences of dementia. Does this narrative rearticulate the gendered dimensions of dementia and care that have interested critics or does the figuration of loss and grief and the invocation of suicide override these potential considerations? And, finally, what shape does the cultural imaginary of dementia take in The Relic when inflected through the horror genre? What might this offer to critical accounts concerned with questions of personhood and the ethics of representation? This chapter takes the opportunity afforded by this cluster of films all released in the same year to produce a ‘snapshot’ of both the range of representations currently circulating and contemporary critical approaches to the representation of dementia on film

I am not particularly despondent yet: the political tone of Jill Craigie’s equal pay film to be a woman

To Be a Woman is a short campaigning film made in 1950-1 by documentary film-maker Jill Craigie. This article offers an account of the film which aims to recover the affective life of both the film text and the archival correspondence between Craigie and the General Secretary of the National Union of Women Teachers, which refers to its production history. The article analyses the 'feeling tones' of the letters that describe both Craigie's attempts to get the film made and her difficulties in distributing it. It is argued that paying attention to these affective aspects of the archive and the film together enables a recalibration of (in a variant of Raymond Williams's formulation) the structure of feminist feeling in both the film and, to an extent, the wider public realm in the immediate post-war period. Paying attention to the film's affective dynamics in this way is also revealing, it is suggested, of its class and race positionality, enabling a more nuanced critical account of its politics

Are short sellers stakeholders?

This paper analyses the role of short sellers in the context of stakeholder theory and poses the question: should short sellers be considered as stakeholders? The paper examines the conditions under which short sellers operate and how short selling can be a profitable activity. Next the paper considers the view of short sellers from the perspective of the finance literature and this perspective is contrasted with concerns which are frequently expressed in the news media about the activities of short sellers. The constraints on short selling are discussed, together with the phenomenon of optimism in analysts’ forecasts which is believed to support ‘high’ share prices. The usefulness of the preceding analysis is then discussed in the context of stakeholder theory and the paper discusses some potential policy implications in terms of corporate governance and financial reporting. The paper concludes that short sellers can legitimately be regarded as stakeholders and, indeed, encouraging short sellers to operate more effectively in the market as well as providing fuller disclosure of their activities could provide a useful anti-dote to some of the excessive and unjustified share price rise which have been seen in recent years in failing companies

The Effect of Corporatism on Contemporary Public Attitudes to Welfare

This article examines evidence for the possible link between public support for increased spending on government welfare programs and the strength of government welfare intervention in six OECD countries; Austria, Germany, Britain, the USA, Australia and Italy. Data is used from a 1985 international survey to question the congruence between the public\u27s support for state welfare and the degree of corporatism as an indicator of state intervention in these countries. The concept of corporatism is limited to an analytic device that indicates the form of state intervention and policy making in particular historical periods and within sectors of state activity. The argument that state welfare action is directly constrained by public attitudes to welfare-the \u27popular constraints\u27 thesis-is questioned using this data. Other possible explanations for the lack of congruence between mass preferences and state welfare provision are also examined

Changes in fluxes of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from small catchments in central Scotland

Concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) measured within water bodies have been increasing on a global scale over the last two decades. Changes in temperature and rainfall have been shown to increase the production and export of DOC from catchments with peat soils in the UK (Freeman et al., 2001). However it is not clear whether increases in DOC concentrations are caused by production increases induced by temperature changes or by a greater incidence of high flows induced by rainfall changes. Increases in both temperature and rainfall have been predicted in Scotland over the next few decades (Kerr et al., 1999) which may further increase current DOC concentrations and exports. The implications of this include both a decrease in water quality and an increase in mobility of metals in upland water bodies. The overall aim of the thesis is to determine if the relationship between dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations and discharge has changed over a 20 year period in small stream catchments in Scotland, in order to better understand the role of hydrology, in driving changes in DOC concentration. To achieve this streams draining two coniferous forest sites and one moorland site were monitored intensively between June 2004 and February 2006. Analysis of the relationship between DOC and discharge, within the catchments, identified the importance of the amount of precipitation falling on the catchment, antecedent precipitation and season, on the concentration of DOC that was measured within the stream. Models were then developed using variables to represent these drivers in terms of both the production (seasonal sine values and 14 day average temperatures) and movement (log of discharge (log Q), days since previous storm event and rising or falling stage) of DOC. In the Ochil Hills catchment, the best predictive model, used 4 hour average discharge and 1 day average 30cm soil temperatures (R2= 0.88). In the Duchray and Elrig catchments, the best predictive models produced used discharge and seasonal sine values; the strength of the model was greater in the Elrig (R2= 0.80) than the Duchray (R2= 0.48) catchment. The strength of the regression models produced highlighted the importance of precipitation in the movement of DOC to the stream and temperature variables representing production in the surrounding catchment. To determine if dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations had changed within the three study catchments, since previous research was conducted at the same sites in the early 1980s and 1990s (Grieve, 1984a; Grieve, 1994), then regression analysis conducted in the previous research was repeated, so changes in the DOC and discharge relationship could be identified. Analysis of the Ochil Hills regression equations identified higher log of discharge and lower temperature and seasonal sine values in the present study (2004-06), when compared to the previous study (1982-83). This suggests that more DOC is now available for movement from the soil, and that the difference between winter and summer DOC production has decreased, potentially because of increasing temperatures. This would explain the limited increase in DOC concentration within the Ochil Hills stream. In the Duchray and Elrig streams, a large increase in DOC was identified at all discharges when all the models produced were compared between the two sampling periods (1989-90 and 2004-06). The increasing trend in DOC concentrations is too large to have been produced by change in temperature alone and it is suggested that the measured reduction in acidic deposition has resulted in the increased DOC concentrations measured in the Duchray and Elrig. The results from this research have identified that concentrations of DOC have increased in Scottish streams over the last 20 years and that the increases in DOC have been induced, potentially by temperature changes in climate. However, changes in temperature are not the only driver of this change as the reduction in acidic deposition is potentially more important, specifically in areas with base poor geology such as the Duchray and Elrig catchments