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Girls’ ‘Safety’ in Unfamiliar Landscapes: The Necessity of Non-Hegemonic Femininities
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This chapter presents the findings from go-along, walking interviews conducted with teenage girls, visiting a National Park for the first time to participate in a geocaching activity (run by Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, Wales, UK). The chapter asks: How do girls, deemed as inaccessible users of large park spaces, experience an activity in that space? What role does the concept of ‘unfamiliar landscapes’—defined as encounters with what is inaccessible and unknown—play in representing these spaces as unsafe, and what kind of adjustments do girls themselves need to make in becoming knowing, skilled and pleasurable users of such spaces? The findings show that young girls encounter protected landscapes as spaces of inaccessibility that is challenging for traditional femininities, requiring new and hybrid forms of femininities. These alternatives do however provide space for new pleasures and exploration of inaccessible landscapes.
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To understand the connectivity in human-landscape ecosystems, a multidirectional concept of landscape transformation, socio-cultural development, and human response cycles needs to be considered. In this context, societal decision-making is controlled by the ecosystem's functionality; the human perception, experience, memory, and tradition; and the individual configuration of landscape components: a conceptual framework that is herein referred to as landscape affordances. In contrast to defining environmental components as passive resources, the concept of landscape affordances entails dynamic and processual feedbacks of an individual and the environment in the moment of mutual interaction-thus actively integrating human ingenuity in the production of landscapes, biological processes, and sociocultural patterns. This article contextualizes the concepts of landscape affordances and functional ecosystem connectivity to evaluate human behavioural patterning and the production of landscapes in a methodological landscape archaeological approach.
Despite numerous studies on how gender differences affect transport mobility choices and perception of safety, there has been little emphasis on the influence of spatial and socio-cultural constructs on it, particularly in the Southeast Asian context. This article investigates this relation through (1) an on-street survey involving 383 participants in eight neighbourhoods in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, (2) analysing videos taken with the walking with video approach, and (3) a computational analysis of the street network using space syntax. Findings suggest that a large proportion of women ascribed to negative perceptions of safety as compared to men. Negative perceptions of safety were related to wariness towards motorcycles in Jakarta and absence of other pedestrians and the image of the place in Kuala Lumpur. This difference can be attributed to distinctions in spatial configurations and socio-cultural constructs between both cities. Findings provide practical insights – mode segregation or changes to street design – to address gendered mobility for sustainable urban transport in the region.
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Articles
Negotiating alternative femininities? Gender identity construction in female Basque pelota players
Uxue Fernandez-LasaORCID Icon,Oidui Usabiaga ArruabarrenaORCID Icon,Lorena Lozano-SufrateguiORCID Icon &Kevin J. DrewORCID Icon
Received 11 Nov 2019, Accepted 28 Dec 2019, Published online: 04 Jan 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2019.1710699
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ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to explore how female players of Basque pelota (pelotaris) construct their gender identity in a traditionally masculine sport. The theory of performativity is used to understand how females negotiate, resist or challenge the dominant gender discourse. Data were collected through 10 in-depth interviews with players. Through inductive analysis we found that the sociocultural context surrounding Basque pelota reinforces the binary system of gender embodiment, which includes hegemonic masculinities and idealised femininities. However, our findings also suggest that whilst some players adhere to this dominant discourse, others actively resist and transgress it through the embodiment of alternative identities. In doing this, these players create new and inclusive identities, therefore escaping a simplistic binary and embracing a multiplicity of gender identities. As a result, they can become active agents in the promotion of equity in sport.
This article reflects on the relations between health and natural landscapes. The study explores how the landscape context - its textual and sensory aesthetics - positively shapes experiences and perceptions of the landscape, for those people who seek out natural environments for health. While health promotion is designated along the lines of encouraging choice or improving access to natural environments, this article wants to show how physical activities are intertwined with atmospheres and affects emanating from the natural and human world. An in-depth case-study of trail running across two sites (New Zealand, United Kingdom) is used to analyse the interconnections between health landscapes. It finds that when participants say that landscape 'matters' for health, they are referring to: (1) aesthetics and feelings, (2) flexibility and adaptiveness and (3) exploration and adventure. Avoiding the conclusion that the landscape is merely a resource for health, the analysis confirms that it is the complex of spaces, social practices, along with their physical fleshy selves, minds and emotions, and the particular quality of the earth beneath them, that gives rise to positively perceived health, for both immediate and enduring benefit.
Greenspace research has been driven by an emerging interest in the impact that biodiversity and ecosystem function has on life in urban areas. Studies from multiple disciplines across the life, physical and social sciences investigate the interactions with or within greenspace, creating a wide range of potentially related, but disparate findings. In order to understand whether these unconnected findings might be integrated, it is important to be able to make comparisons and build meta-analyses. In a review of journal articles about greenspace, we found that less than half of the 125 journal articles reviewed defined what greenspace was in their study; although many articles implied a definition. In those that provided a definition, we identified two overarching interpretations of greenspace using six different definition types. Perhaps arising from how the term has been lexicalized, this suggests that researchers do not have the same understanding of greenspace and limits the ability of researchers to draw meaning from multiple contexts or create syntheses. Rather than suggest a single, prescriptive understanding of greenspace, we propose that researchers construct a definition of greenspace for the context of their research that utilises both qualitative and quantitative aspects.
The aim of this research is to show how the spatial features of urban environments affect women and men’s behaviour pattern. The paper’s first part reveals the concept flâneuse in the relationship with the flâneur. Then the spatial parameters of built environments are discussed. As the results from this inquiry show, correlations between the spatial configurative structures and how men and women use urban space were found on the one hand. In spatially integrated streets, an equal number of women and men were found. The more segregated the streets tend to be the more they were dominated by men. On the other hand, as soon as the shops were closed, men dominated the streets. Women are using the street as corridor and not as a destination itself. When women are using the squares in the evening or at night, they are usually accompanied by others. The use of space syntax showed that liveliness could be predicted by the structure of the city. Not only do the crowd provide the flâneuse a valid excuse to wander around the streets, a sense of security, but it’s also a component of flânerie: to see and to be seen. Namely, for the flâneuse liveliness is one of the conditions to stroll around. Hence, knowledge provided from research seems to be essential for designing urban environment attractive for women as well for men.
The premise of this article is that, by introducing domestic space in the analysis of gender identity, one might gain a more nuanced understanding of how gender and power are co-constitutive. The research question is what one could learn from the conclusions of recent studies about the relationship between gender identity and domestic space, by analyzing it as a way of “doing and undoing gender” through spatial practices. We conducted an interpretive synthesis, focusing on 20 articles published in the last ten years on the topics of domestic space, masculinity, and femininity. We show the traditional normative model of gender identity is still strong, but there are some signs, of the emergence of alternative domestic masculinity and femininity, based on the tendency to reconsider the value of domesticity, and to transgress traditional gender oppositions (mind and body, rational and emotional, public and private, work and domesticity). We discuss the implications of the findings for understanding and refining the concepts of doing and doing gender, and gendered space.
Women’s participation in adventure tourism is growing, yet few studies have explored this group of tourists. This conceptual paper seeks to extend our understanding of female adventure tourists by examining the empowering journey women can take through constraint negotiation to enjoy the benefits of adventure tourism. Using content analysis to review the literature on women’s adventure experiences in tourism and recreation settings reveals prominent themes that have been consolidated to propose constraint, negotiation and benefit categories. A conceptual model is presented that illustrates the opportunities for women’s empowerment within these categories and examines the interrelationships and interdependency between them. The model shows that constraints, negotiations and benefits can be experienced simultaneously, at different points in a woman’s adventure tourism journey and used as a vehicle for empowerment. Women will also re-evaluate these categories before, during and after their adventure tourism experience. Therefore, the categories are not fixed and evolve each time a woman participates in adventure tourism throughout her life. Suggestions are made for further study in this under-researched area.
Neighbourhoods can facilitate or constrain moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among children by providing or restricting opportunities for MVPA. However, there is no consensus on how to define a child's neighbourhood. This study examines the influence of the neighbourhood built environment on objectively measured MVPA among 435 children (aged 9-14 years) in London (ON, Canada). As there is no consensus on how to delineate a child's neighbourhood, a geographic information system was used to generate measures of the neighbourhood built environment at two buffer sizes (500 m and 800 m) around each child's home. Linear regression models with robust standard errors (cluster) were used to analyze the relationship between built environment characteristics and average daily MVPA during non-school hours on weekdays. Sex-stratified models assessed sex-specific relationships. When accounting for individual and neighbourhood socio-demographic variables, park space and multi-use path space were found to influence children's MVPA. Sex-stratified models found significant associations between MVPA and park space, with the 800 m buffer best explaining boys' MVPA and the 500 m buffer best explaining girls' MVPA. Findings emphasize that, when designing built environments, programs, and policies to facilitate physical activity, it is important to consider that the size of the neighbourhood influencing a child's physical activity may differ according to sex.
Feminist geographers and leisure scholars have long argued that one critical way to understand gendered norms and expectations is through examining women's access to and experiences of leisure activities. Set in the context of the rapid economic, political, and social changes that have taken place in Beijing over the past half century, this article draws on in-depth interviews and extensive participant observation to explore the role of newly available public leisure spaces in the lives and leisure of young women in Beijing, in particular by examining the way that these spaces provide an opportunity for the negotiation of new gender norms and identities. Through an analysis of the interaction of gender norms and practices with women's use of and behavior in public leisure spaces, we argue that women's behavior in public leisure spaces in contemporary Beijing remains strongly circumscribed by gendered norms. Rather than their presence itself constituting a challenge to gender expectations, in many cases their leisure behavior and experiences serve to reinforce the social norms that masculinize public leisure spaces. In spite of this, however, the findings of this research suggest that public leisure spaces may, in some cases, provide women with a place from which to challenge gender norms.
Conventional accessibility measures based on the notion of locational proximity ignore the role of complex travel behavior and space–time constraints in determining individual accessibility. As these factors are especially significant in women's everyday lives, all conventional accessibility measures suffer from an inherent “gender bias.” This study conceptualizes individual accessibility as space–time feasibility and provides formulations of accessibility measures based on the space–time prism construct. Using a subsample of European Americans from a travel diary data set collected in Franklin County, Ohio, space–time accessibility measures are implemented with a network-based GIS method. Results of the study indicate that women have lower levels of individual access to urban opportunities when compared to men, although there is no difference in the types of opportunities and areas they can reach given their space–time constraints. Further, individual accessibility has no relationship with the length of the commute trip, suggesting that the journey to work may not be an appropriate measure of job access.
Previous studies have explained children’s experience of place and their special preferences for the unbuilt and unstructured environment. However, the impact of a natural environment on children’s learning and development has been a topic of low priority within child research and the importance of natural playscapes for children has also been neglected in physical planning. The present study focuses on a natural environment, a small forest, as a playscape for children. The forest was used by a kindergarten as a supplement to their traditional outdoor playground and the impact such a landscape might have on children’s motor development was investigated through an experimental study on kindergarten children aged 5, 6 and 7 years of age. The landscape was described and analyzed by methods of landscape ecology and geomorphology implemented in a geographical information system (GIS). We found that the natural landscape had qualities to meet the children’s needs for a stimulating and varied play environment. Landscape ecology metrics showed high values for diversity, evenness and heterogeneity for the study area. The diversity of vegetation and topography corresponded to function-related structures that afforded versatile play. The study indicated a strong relation between landscape structure and play functions. The diversity of the vegetation was related to phytosociology and physiognomy, while the diversity of topography was related to slope and roughness. Diversity in landscape elements such as vegetation and topography might be considered a dimension of quality for a natural playscape. This playscape comprised the ground for training of motor fitness in children. Through all-round playing and exploring the natural playscape, the children’s motor fitness was improved. This proved the learning effects from a natural playscape on children’s motor abilities. This paper will focus mainly on the landscape descriptions and the affordance of versatile play.
This feminist re‐examination of an ethnography of Harley‐Davidson motorcycle owners uncovers a world of motivations, behaviors, and experiences undiscovered in the original work. The structure and ethos of subculture are understood differently when examined through the lens of feminist theory. Through the voices of women riders in a hyper‐masculine consumption context we discover perspectives that cannot easily be explained by extant theory of gender and consumer behavior. We find women engaging, resisting, and co‐opting hyper‐masculinity as part of identity projects wherein they expand and redefine their own personal femininities. This study reveals invisible assumptions limiting the original ethnography and thus reiterates the problems of hegemonic masculinity in the social science project.
Environments shape health and well-being, yet little research has investigated how different real-world environmental settings influence the well-known determinant of health known as stress. Using a cross-over experimental design; this pilot study investigated the effect of four urban environments on physiological and psychological stress measures. Participants (N = 15) were exposed on separate days to one of the four settings for 20 min. These settings were designated as Very Natural; Mostly Natural; Mostly Built and Very Built. Visitation order to the four settings was individually randomized. Salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase; as well as self-report measures of stress; were collected before and after exposure to each setting. Gender was included as a variable in analysis; and additional data about environmental self-identity, pre-existing stress, and perceived restorativeness of settings were collected as measures of covariance. Differences between environmental settings showed greater benefit from exposure to natural settings relative to built settings; as measured by pre-to-post changes in salivary amylase and self-reported stress; differences were more significant for females than for males. Inclusion of covariates in a regression analysis demonstrated significant predictive value of perceived restorativeness on these stress measures, suggesting some potential level of mediation. These data suggest that exposure to natural environments may warrant further investigation as a health promotion method for reducing stress.
Objectives: The main objective was to study the influences of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors on a popular Norwegian outdoor activity: walking in the woods. Design: Data from the large Young in Oslo 2006 (YiO 2006) youth survey is used to investigate the relationship between ethnic and class background and gender in relation to hiking in the woods. In the representative survey sample, 11 529 adolescent respondents aged 16 to 19 were asked how often they participated in hiking in the woods during the season. Results: Analyses show that more girls than boys are active hikers and that fewer descendents from non-western immigrants and working-class youngsters are active compared to ethnic Norwegian and middle-class adolescents, respectively. Furthermore, cultural aspects of class seem to be more important than economic ones. A logistic regression analysis shows that the relationship between country of origin and hiking is significantly reduced when class measures are introduced into the model, which implies that the initial difference between ethnic minorities and ethnic Norwegians to some extent can be considered to be a class phenomenon.
While urban greenspaces play an important role in shaping the cultural and social dimensions of cities, these spaces are also inherently political, often serving to perpetuate the exclusion and subordination of racially marginalized populations. Drawing upon critical race theory, the purpose of this research is to use narratives to highlight how race, structural racism, White privilege, and power continue to shape environmental injustices in the urban landscape. By sharing these stories, we illustrate how (a) environmental injustices stemming from structural and overt racism are often positioned as ordinary experiences, (b) the racialized state continues to foster environmental injustices in Latinx communities, and (c) how techniques of what we refer to as “greensplaining” are deployed by environmentalists and conservationists as further justification for White privilege, racialized marginalization, and processes of gentrification.
Sustainability, especially environmental sustainability, has been a driving force of planning policy for nearly 30 years. A key determinant in shaping cities is the nature of planning policy and thus the perspective and ‘world view’ of the policy-makers themselves, but the ‘dissonance’ between what the planners imagine is required and the realities experienced by the urban population as they seek to access and use ‘the city of everyday life’ is still striking. Solutions appear to be focused upon restriction, control and penalization, or upon condemnation of personal lifestyle choices, without offering alternatives based upon investment in structural spatial change and better transport systems and services. There has been an over-emphasis both upon the environmental and technical aspects of transport planning, at the expense of social considerations, especially gender. Many people, especially women, have found environmentally focused sustainable policies have made their daily lives more difficult, whilst not necessarily enabling them to adopt a greener lifestyle. The differential social impact of physical transport policy on different social groups, especially women, and other relatively powerless and unrepresented groups, is not considered. In order to enable women and men of all ages to travel comfortably and easily it is important to make transport systems accessible and usable, with adequate ancillary facilities. The ‘city of everyday life’ with short distances, mixed land uses and multiple centres would take into account gender considerations as it reduces the need to travel, creates more sustainable and accessible cities, whilst creating a higher quality of urban environment for all. It would provide more jobs and facilities locally and help revitalize declining areas overall.
## Free Access: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PH98rXfzxE4A5kntxNwZ/full?target=10.1080/00222216.2018.1554965 ##
To understand sport participation, multiple scales exist to examine why people participate. However, no questionnaires have been devised to assess what sport experiences people declare most pleasurable. This study aimed to develop and provide initial validation of a scale measuring adolescent athletes’ retrospective reports of pleasure in three modern sports experiences: competition, progress, and risk taking. The first study examined the validity of a pool of 25 items. The second study examined the factor structure and reliability of a 14-item questionnaire among a sample of adolescent athletes, the measurement invariance across sexes and context of participation, and the differential item functioning and possible latent mean differences as a function of age. Results showed initial evidence regarding the reliability and validity of the scale. They showed invariance of the model across sexes and context of participation. This questionnaire could be used by sports federations and could help the development of sport promotion programs.
This chapter investigates past and current perceptions of adolescents and how these perceptions influence policies and practices around the design of public spaces. It explores the need for and benefits associated with public spaces, including natural landscapes, for adolescents. The chapter positions adolescents as a distinct landscape user group with specific spatial needs and examines ways to incorporate teens' developing needs, both physical and psychosocial, into public space design that facilitates their connection with local communities, prioritizing their engagement with public space, civic life, and natural environments. The chapter also discusses ways to harness the power of adolescents in environmental debate and in civic and natural disaster relief efforts.
Physical inactivity and limited time spent in nature are major societal concerns that affect the mental and emotional health of youth in the United States. As such, this study explored girls’ perspectives of barriers to outdoor physical activity using a qualitative participatory action research method called photovoice. Six themes emerged from data representing the girls’ perspectives of barriers to outdoor physical activity through photovoice: Very Busy Schedule, Social Media, Health Concerns, Indoor Activity Instead of Outdoor Activity, Electronic Devices, and Way of Life. Researchers address how counselors can use these findings to advocate on this issue, given that counselors are called to advocate at multiple levels to address barriers that inhibit the growth and development of clients.
Objectives: The main objective was to study the influences of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors on a popular Norwegian outdoor activity: walking in the woods. Design: Data from the large Young in Oslo 2006 (YiO 2006) youth survey is used to investigate the relationship between ethnic and class background and gender in relation to hiking in the woods. In the representative survey sample, 11 529 adolescent respondents aged 16 to 19 were asked how often they participated in hiking in the woods during the season. Results: Analyses show that more girls than boys are active hikers and that fewer descendents from non-western immigrants and working-class youngsters are active compared to ethnic Norwegian and middle-class adolescents, respectively. Furthermore, cultural aspects of class seem to be more important than economic ones. A logistic regression analysis shows that the relationship between country of origin and hiking is significantly reduced when class measures are introduced into the model, which implies that the initial difference between ethnic minorities and ethnic Norwegians to some extent can be considered to be a class phenomenon. Conclusion: Norwegian authorities express great concern over health issues among the large group of non-western descendents in Norway, pointing to the Nordic tradition of outdoor recreation as one means of being physically active. This paper concludes that in the effort to recruit ‘immigrant' youngsters to outdoor activities, one should keep in mind that a large proportion of the minority population also belongs to the working classes.
List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Classicist Criminology: Liberal Explanations of Violence Positivism: Scientific Explanations of Violence Violence and the Three Feminisms Feminist Realism: A Synthesis Researching Violence Revealing the Hidden Figure What Do the Men Say? Male Attitudes to Domestic Violence Violence, Space and Gender: Testing the Theories Tackling Domestic Violence: From Theory to Policy References Index
Objectives:
Public health has recognized that nature is good for health but there are calls for a review of its gendered aspects. This review attempts to develop and explore a broad analytical theme - the differing interconnections between gender, health and nature. The paper summarizes the interconnections that have been subject to extensive academic enquiry between gender and health, health and space, and gender and space.
Methods:
A combination of key terms including place; gender; health; outdoor space; green space; natural environment; national parks; femininity; masculinity; recreation; physical activity; sustainability; ecofeminism; feminism; environmental degradation; and environmental justice were used to search the electronic databases Sociological Abstracts, Web of Science and Scopus to identify relevant articles. We took two approaches for this review to provide an overview and analysis of the range of research in the field, and to present a framework of research that is an analysis of the intersection of gender, health and nature.
Results:
Four dimensions are distinguished: (1) evaluations of health benefits and 'toxicities' of nature; (2) dimensions and qualities of nature/space; (3) environmental justice including accessibility, availability and usability; and (4) identification of boundaries (symbolic/material) that construct differential relationships between nature, gender and health. This paper offers an understanding of how environmental and social conditions may differentially shape the health of women and men. The dimensions direct analytical attention to the diverse linkages that constitute overlapping and inseparable domains of knowledge and practice, to identify complex interconnections between gender, health and nature.
Conclusion:
This review therefore analyses assumptions about the health benefits of nature, and its risks, for gender from an in-depth, analytical perspective that can be used to inform policy.
We examine the extent to which the gender wage gap stems from dual-earner couples jointly choosing where to live. If couples locate in places better suited for the man’s employment than for the woman’s, the resulting mismatch of women to employers will depress women’s wages. Examining data from Denmark, our analyses indicate that (1) Danish couples choose locations with higher expected wages for the man than for the woman, (2) the better matching of men in couples to local employers could account for up to 36 percent of the gender wage gap, and (3) the greatest asymmetry in the apparent importance of the man’s versus the woman’s potential earnings occurred among couples with young children and where the male partner accounted for a larger share of household income before the potential move.
Gender equality is a widely shared value in many western societies and yet, the mention of the term feminism frequently provokes unease, bewilderment or overt hostility. Repudiating Feminism sheds light on why this is the case. Grounded in rich empirical research and providing a timely contribution to debates on engagements with feminism, Repudiating Feminism explores how young German and British women think, talk and feel about feminism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with women from different racial and class backgrounds, and with different sexual orientations, Repudiating Feminism reveals how young women's diverse positionings intersect with their views of feminism. This critical and reflexive analysis of the interplay between subjective accounts and broader cultural configurations shows how postfeminism, neoliberalism and heteronormativity mediate young women's negotiations of feminism, revealing the manner in which heterosexual norms structure engagements with feminism and its consequent association with man-hating and lesbian women. Speaking to a range of contemporary cultural trends, including the construction of essentialist notions of cultural difference and the neoliberal imperative to take responsibility for the management of one's own life, this book will be of interest to anyone studying sociology, gender and cultural studies.
This paper considers girls' participation in running and other outdoor physical activities in their local areas in London, UK. The paper is concerned with the operation of risk discourses in and around this participation and looks at the way that such discourses impacted on girls' opportunities to take part in physical activities that required outdoor space. Drawing on data from longitudinal research into girls' participation in sport and physical activity, the findings suggested that girls, in particular, were subject to risk discourses around their participation in physical activities which constructed the girls as ‘weak’, and ‘vulnerable’. I look at the ways in which girls understood these messages and how they came to define certain spaces and activities as either ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’. I look in particular at how girls were able to resist certain constructions of their embodied physical capacities and also at the ways in which this was constrained by specific incidences of sexual harassment.
In this paper, we argue that a fundamental cultural shift is needed to effectively address anthropogenic causes of climate change. Evidence suggests that youth are well positioned to create such transformation. While various studies have contributed empirical evidence to numerous youth-based non-formal environmental engagement programmes, what is missing in the environmental education literature is discussion of a systematic approach to the development and evaluation of these programs. In this paper, we draw on the youth civic engagement literature to propose a framework that can be used as a basis to guide further development of evidence-based practices. Five major components are described as follows: (1) the engagement activity; (2) the engagement process; (3) initiating and sustaining factors; (4) mediators and moderators; and (5) outcomes. This approach to youth engagement can inform both researchers trying to study effective ways of creating change and practitioners developing environmental programmes that aspire towards a culture of sustainability.
The purpose of this study was to explore how ethnicity/race and gender, in combination, influence person-natural environment interactions. The sample consisted of 525 university students equally representing Black, Hispanic, and White ethnic/racial groups. Two research questions were developed and examined: (a) how ethnicity/race and gender are related to the affective meanings attached to the natural environment, and (b) how ethnicity/race and gender influence preference for environmental settings in outdoor recreation. The results for both research questions suggest that ethnicity/race and gender influence the affective meanings attached to a forest environment and the environmental settings preferred for outdoor recreation. Further analyses were performed across the 12 affective meaning scales on forest environments and six environmental setting preference scales. Differences in meanings and preferences across the ethnicity/race and gender attributes are presented and discussed. The final section of this article discusses some possible theoretical meanings of these relationships and their implications for outdoor recreation management.
This paper draws on materialist feminist theories to rethink relationships between girls' bodies and agency. New feminist onto-epistemologies redefine agency as ‘becomings’ that dynamically emerge through assemblages comprising moving bodies, material, mechanical, organic, virtual, affective and less-than-conscious elements. Vignettes from a multi-modal, ethnographic study conducted over three years are used to demonstrate how place influenced young teen girls' body-movement repertoires. The place was a former coal-mining locale with a proud tradition of masculine, working-class labour. The vignettes focus on corporeality and demonstrate wide variations and fluctuations in girls' experiences of agency, which we theorise through the Deleuzeo-Guatarrian concept of ‘becoming’. We discuss how material feminism(s) helps us to understand girls' becomings as emergent within assemblages that carry legacies of the past. Some girls experienced becomings that could not easily be spoken about yet which allowed them to imagine expansive futures while others felt unable to move on in life.
This paper concerns gender aspects of children's play in nature environments. In an ethnographic study, children between 1½ and 6 years in a Swedish outdoor preschool were videotaped during time for free play. Four different play themes were particularly popular among the children: war and superhero play, family play, animal play and physical play. Each one of these themes has been analyzed from two perspectives: how nature resources are used and which gender positions they provide. Within the themes, nature's affordances are used in various ways. Similarly, a range of gender positions is evident across the themes. The superhero theme includes exclusively gender-stereotyped masculine play positions, while the family theme includes both traditional gender positions and possibilities for transgressions. Further, animal play as well as physical play provides non-gendered play positions. Natural environments are not gender-coded in themselves and they invite certain play activities where girls and boys play together. Thus, nature spaces seem to offer good opportunities to promote gender equity.
This qualitative study examined how participation in an extensive all-female wilderness program challenged conventional notions of femininity for adolescent girls. Interviews were conducted 4 to 5 months and 15 to 18 months after completion of a 23-day canoe expedition. Additional data collection included a focus group, a public presentation, parent surveys, journal entries, and other written materials created by the participants. Results revealed that the girls challenged conventional notions of femininity in diverse ways. This included: 1) perseverance, strength, and determination; 2) challenging assumptions of girls' abilities; 3) feelings of accomplishment and pride; 4) questioning ideal images of beauty; 5) increased ability to speak out and leadership skills; and 6) building significant relationships with other girls. Implications of these results for program planners of all-female programs are discussed.
Early adolescence is a time when a transition away from sport and physical activity participation is at its highest level among female youth (Hedstrom & Gould, 2004). This has led to the identification of barriers and facilitators of physical activity participation for adolescent females. Consequently there have been calls to overcome barriers and augment facilitators via the creation of gender-relevant programming. Despite these calls and efforts, a gender disparity remains, and a detailed understanding of how girls experience and interpret physical activity within the context of their lives is still lacking. The current project aimed to gain further insight into the foregoing using tenets of Interpretive Phenomenology to further understand the lived physical activity experiences of females during early adolescence, delineating their barriers to participation and the factors enabling participation. Five themes were identified and made into vignettes to facilitate understanding from adolescent females' perspectives: friends or don't know anyone, good or not good enough, fun or not fun; good feeling or gross; and peer support or peer pressure. The physical activity promotion implications for female youth are discussed within the context of these themes.
Social scientists have begun engaging with participants ‘on the move’ in a variety of ways. This paper presents the results of a pilot study, which deployed a qualitative GIS technique to analyse the effectiveness of walked interviews in capturing data relating to people’s understanding of place. We give an account of the walking interview exploring two issues: the relationship between what people say and where they say it; and qualitative and quantitative differences between data generated by walking and sedentary interviews. Our results indicate that the data generated through walking interviews are profoundly informed by the landscapes in which they take place, emphasising the importance of environmental features in shaping discussions. We also demonstrate a measureable difference between walking and sedentary techniques in the production of rich place narratives both in terms of their quantity and spatial specificity to the study area. The paper concludes by acknowledging that a technocentric analysis of place runs the risk of emphasising locational above humanistic elements, but argues that, done sensitively, a qualitative GIS approach offers great potential for engaging planners and policy makers with the importance of local connections to place.
It seems an appropriate moment to assess the impact of the corpus of feminist geography, its assumptions and suppositions and its impact on the discipline as a whole as a new phase of work is initiated. This article is concerned mainly with what has already been achieved and the succeeding article is primarily an outline for work that is yet to be undertaken. The first aim is to provide a bibliography guide. The guide is offered as a source for teachers and students of feminist/gender-based courses in geography departments. The articles have a second aim: to provide an assessment of the intellectual history of feminist geography and a possible map for its future development. Here the purpose is to try to link developments within feminist scholarship, broadly defined, with the focus and interests of human geography in order to trace the shifting preoccupations of that group of geographers who are defined, or define themselves, as feminists. -from Author
This article contributes to the discussion of hegemonic and alternative femininities through an ethnographic study of Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby. As a site for construction of alternative femininities in the image of a “derby girl,” derby reveals how the understudied intragender relations between femininities can be important in challenging hegemonic gender relations. The dynamics between femininities, and the women who practice them, affect the motivations for challenging hegemonic gender, the transportation of symbolic discourses deployed in the challenges, and the creation of new organizational networks to sustain these challenges. One sees these effects in the organized ways the athletes feminize their participation in an aggressive sport through resistance, adaptation, mockery, and parody of hegemonic femininity, pariah femininities, and sport. This study gives particular attention to the interpretation of the events by the skaters and the histories of the social actors as well the interactions in the collective.
This article draws on Foucault's concepts of discourse and technologies of self to ana- lyze the relationship between young women and the media. More specifically, it sheds light on the various discursive constructions of femininity in the snowboarding media and examines the conditions under which female snowboarders learn to recognize and distinguish between different types of media discourses. It also examines the different ways in which women act on this knowledge, including the production of their own media forms. The article evaluates sexist discourses in the media and their effects on women's snowboarding experiences and considers women-only media forms as a foun- dation for wider social transformation. Ultimately, Foucault's unique conceptualization of power enables an account of the mundane and daily ways in which power is enacted and contested in snowboarding culture and allows an analysis that focuses on the female snowboarder as both an object and a subject of media power relations.
Traditional approaches to mapping fear of crime are limited to describing or explaining the impact of sexual and physical violence as a reflection of gender inequality. Using empirical evidence from recent research, a social geography of women's fear is developed. Four important areas of geographical analysis are highlighted: the imposition of constraints on the use of urban space, the distinction between public and private space in perceptions of danger, the social construction of space into 'safe' and 'dangerous' places, and the social control of women's spaces. Within this framework, it is shown how women's experiences of social class, age, disability and motherhood can determine their experience of, and reactions to fear of, violent crime.
Feminists have long known that gender and mobility are inseparable, influencing each other in profound and often subtle ways. Tackling complex societal problems, such as sustainability, will require improved understandings of the relationships between gender and mobility. In this essay I propose new approaches to the study of mobility and gender that will provide the knowledge base needed to inform policies on sustainable mobility. Early in the essay I survey the large literature on gender and mobility, teasing out what I see as two disparate strands of thinking that have remained badly disconnected from each other. One of these strands has informed understandings of how mobility shapes gender, while the other has examined how gender shapes mobility. Work on how mobility shapes gender has emphasized gender, to the neglect of mobility, whereas research on how gender shapes mobility has dealt with mobility in great detail and paid much less attention to gender. From this overview of the literature, I identify knowledge gaps that must be bridged if feminist research on gender and mobility is to assist in charting paths to sustainable mobility. I argue for the need to shift the research agenda so that future research will synthesize these two strands of thinking along three lines: (1) across ways of thinking about gender and mobility, (2) across quantitative and qualitative approaches, and (3) across places. In the final part of the essay I suggest how to achieve this synthesis by making geographic, social and cultural context central to our analyses.
Aims:
This paper discusses the use of ethnographic approaches to explore how engagement with natural landscapes might benefit people's health.
Methods:
Drawing on a selected review of empirical research we identified 30 relevant research papers that utilised qualitative methods to explore health issues and engagement with nature. Three examples of 'alternative' - i.e. non-mainstream qualitative approaches - are used to illustrate how different methods can be used to explore people's experiences of engaging with nature for health.
Results:
While quantitative methods are dominant in health research, qualitative approaches are becoming more widely used. Approaches such as autoethnography can add value to nature and health studies by providing opportunities for researchers to be self-critical of their role as a researcher. Accompanied visits and visual ethnography can afford the researcher rich data about bodily movement, facial expressions and journeys, as well as dialogues associated with the meanings of nature for health.
Conclusions:
The paper concludes by suggesting that ethnographic methods can provide useful and important insights into why people engage with the natural environment and the range of health benefits they may gain from contact with nature.