Jon Anderson

• Cardiff University

On a literary walking tour, many emotional ‘states’ are experienced by participants. These states have multiple causes, products and consequences, influenced in part by the socio-spatial identities of participants, their own imagined versions of the novel, and the material and cultural geographies of the tour itself. The Literary Atlas project soug...

Broadly welcoming Peters and Steinberg’s ongoing contributions to moving human geography away from the landlocked, this paper emphasises the importance of repurposing the modern language of hydrology to not only move beyond land versus ocean dichotomies, but also resist the urge to dissolve all hydro-worlds into the excessive ocean. The paper argue...

This article examines the different ways in which local civil society has responded to refugees and asylum seekers in different parts of Wales in the wake of the recent “refugee crisis”. While the events of summer 2015 have generated a considerable amount of scholarly attention, including empirical accounts that look into local community responses...

In recent years, both within and beyond academic and clinical spheres, medical and health humanities have become increasingly influential. Drawing from interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, medical and health humanities present unique lenses for considering nuanced spaces and lived experiences of health and heal...

This article examines the ways in which Fflur Dafydd’s 2008 novel Twenty Thousand Saints negotiates notions of the island space in a post-devolution Welsh context. It argues that the novel is a rich site in the analysis of the literary dimension of what Baldacchino describes as the “island-mainland […] dialectic” (Baldacchino, 2006, p. 10). Set on...

Ecosophical communities are utopian projects that have the potential to empower socio-ecological transformation. However, due to their tactical withdrawal from the mainstream, they also face a tension at the heart of their transformative project; namely, how do they forge their (re-)connections to the broader population? This paper draws on researc...

Clothing, as both functional and fashionable, has become a key marker in signifying and shaping personal identity. This is particularly clear in a range of “lifestyle sports” [Wheaton, B. 2004. “Introduction: Mapping the Lifestyle Sportscape.” In Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity, and Difference, edited by B. Wheaton, 1–28. Lond...

Over recent years social scientists have acknowledged the agency and affect of non human entities and processes on human life. In a sense, this is an increasingly sophisticated and nuanced exploration of a process that human geographers have built their discipline upon: the influence of ‘place’ on the human condition. This paper seeks to frame thes...

Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces offers a comprehensive introduction to perhaps the most exciting and challenging area of human geography. By focusing on the notion of 'place' as a key means through which culture and identity is grounded, the book showcases the broad range of theories, methods and practices used within the discip...

The recent attention to affect and emotion promises a cultural geography attentive to the dynamics of how life is lived and how a life takes place. This chapter briefly summarizes what work on affect and emotion holds in common: a break with a “regulative idea” of culture based on signification. Touching on the difference different theories of affe...

Geography emphasises the spatial influence on human identity; however, this influence is often seen as exclusively terrestrial in nature. This paper focuses on a group of individuals for whom geographical identity is both terrestrial and littoral in constitution. It introduces how surfers’ identities are not only defined by the terrestrial co-ingre...

Our world is a water world. Seventy percent of our planet consists of ocean. However, geography has traditionally overlooked this vital component of the earth's composition. The word 'geography' directly translates as 'earth writing' and in line with this definition the discipline has preoccupied itself with the study of terrestrial spaces of socie...

This paper explores the potential of the written word to evoke emotional engagement with place. Through focussing on the relational sensibilities created through the act of surfing, the paper seeks to explore how these emotions are articulated by surfers in order to share their feelings with others. In doing so it draws attention to the ‘intersubje...

This paper explores the place of the surfed wave as not simply a site of human–nature relations, but also as a space of spirituality. Surfing is widely considered as a sport of hedonism and risk, but this paper suggests it can also be understood as a means to experience the transcendent. By first introducing the surf zone as a space of liminality a...

This study contributes to the debate over the potential of film as a pedagogical aid. It argues that integrating film production into the assessment of undergraduate modules secures advantages for student learning: students connect their ideas more explicitly to “real world” examples; new voices and understandings are introduced to communication, a...

This paper explores the consequences of mobility for those engaged in long-distance, high-speed travel. It reclaims the notion of jet lag and repositions it as the broader phenomenon of ‘travel disorientation’ which involves geographical dislocation, circadian disruption, psychological disorientation and cultural displacement. It is through this te...

It has become commonplace to describe new social movements as 'rhizomic' in form, yet the full implications of this metaphor are rarely teased out, and the corollary that other political organisations are arborescent in form has been largely neglected in social science research. In this paper we employ Deleuze and Guattari's concept of rhizomic and...

This paper critically evaluates the use of journals as a pedagogic tool to encourage reflection, critique and self-analysis by students. Based within a postgraduate teaching module that has operated annually since 2008 and was awarded the Royal Town Planning Institute's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2009, reflexive journals were employed as a me...

The role of emotion in social movement mobilization and political protest has received renewed attention in the past decade. However, few, if any, studies have followed the emotional trajectories of activists through their involvement in protest activity. This paper explores the significance of emotion in rural protests in Britain since 1997. Drawi...

Taking the lead from social science moves to frame places as "open-ended, mobile, networked, and actor-centred geographic becoming[s]" (M Jones, 2009, "Phase space" Progress in Human Geography 33, page 5), this paper introduces how the 'surfed wave' can be understood as a relational place. Drawing on commentaries from surfers on the practice of wav...

This paper explores the changing relations between people and place that are set in motion through mobility. Examining the mobilities of lifestyle travellers, it argues that new relations are sought by this group that undermines traditional assumptions of stability and preservation in the person–place relation. In their stead, lifestyle travellers...

The individual has been cast as both the source of and solution to many contemporary environmental problems. Although some individuals may display concern for the environment, actions are undertaken within a societal context that is often ambivalent to environmental issues. To 'become green', therefore, individuals have to negotiate a range of trad...

Film as a tool for learning offers considerable opportunity for enhancing student understanding. This paper reflects on the experiences of a project that required students to make a short film demonstrating their practical understanding of qualitative methods. In the psychogeographical tradition, students were asked to ‘drift’ across the urban envi...

Environmentalism is in trouble. Some denounce it for being ‘depressing and dowdy’; others have announced its ‘death’. Environmentalism faces three problems: the disconnection of ‘the environment’ as an intellectual concept from popular understandings, the broader development culture in which environmentalism is preached and the denial discourse it...

This article focuses on the difference that place makes to methodological practice. It argues, following Sin, that the spatial contexts in which methods are carried out remain ‘largely excluded from any theorization of the social construction of knowledge’ (2003: 306). Through viewing ‘place’ as both a social and a geographical entity (following Cr...

This chapter explores how the ideal of autonomous ecological living – ecotopia – is created and compromised by the everyday cultural life of mainstream society. It investigates the degree to which the structures of the mainstream are eluded, changed and subverted to create ‘ecotopia’, and also how this ideal is everyday compromised to survive. Draw...

The paper builds on the critique of what Latour (1993) terms the ‘modern constitution’ and its configuration of nature as an independent and external entity to human culture and politics. The paper suggests that, firstly, moving beyond the modern constitution to a world of amodern or postnature (Braun, 2004; Hayles, 1999) marks a shift from ontolog...

While it has been argued that conventional methodological resources are incapable of effectively representing ‘everyday social practice’ (see Latham 200330. Latham , A. 2003 . Research, performance, and doing human geography: Some reflections on the diary-photograph, diary-interview method . Environment and Planning A , 35 : 1993 – 2017 . [CrossRef...

Planning systems are not the property of planners alone, rather they are collectively owned by the broad range of stakeholders that planning involves and affects (after Hague, 2000). As a consequence, issues of participation, responsiveness and relevance are fundamental to the health and vitality of planning systems. To accurately diagnose this asp...

Anderson, J., Askins, K., Cook, I., Desforges, L., Evans, J., Fannin, M., Fuller, D., Griffiths, H., Lambert, D., Lee, R., McLeavy, J. et al (2008). What is geography?s contribution to making citizens? Geography, 93(1), 34-39.

This paper explores how understandings of the knowledge and lives of individuals can be gained through making geographical context more explicit within qualitative research methods. The paper will focus on ‘conversations in place’. More particularly, it will suggest that conversations held whilst walking through a place have the potential to genera...

This paper explores what happens to the identity of self when entering a place of protest, and what happens to it on leaving. In short, it explores the relations between identities of self and place. Acknowledging the presence of a multiplicity of identities in relation to both notions, it examines the ways in which aspects of the self influence pl...

According to many commentators, Environmental Direct Action (EDA) has become a growing political force in recent years. This paper explores the style and substance of EDA by focusing on one indicative example of EDA activity, the anti-quarry campaign at Ashton Court, Bristol, UK. The paper will argue that EDA is a political practice constituted by...

Background The government of rural Britain has changed radically in recent years as a new local governance structure has been constructed, engaging the voluntary and private sectors and individual citizens in the governing process alongside traditional state agencies (Goodwin 1998). One of the key features of this transition has been the encouragem...

During the last decade resistance against environmental destruction has spread throughout much of the developed world. Over this period Environmental Direct Action (EDA) has evolved into an inventive and dynamic movement that not only rallies against specific environmental damages, but also the broader political and economic systems that are percei...