Linda Price

'Doing it with men': feminist research practice and patriarchal inheritance practices in Welsh family farming.

Internationally, the gender relations of the family farming ‘way of life’ have been shown to be stubbornly persistent in their adherence to patriarchal inheritance practices. This article demonstrates how such ‘agri-cultural’ practices are situated both within the subjective sphere of farming individuals’ and within global agri-economics, bringing new challenges to patrilineal farm survival. It is suggested here that the recent tendency for post-structuralist theorisation in rural studies has underestimated the existence and impact of patrilineal patterns in family farming. Such patterns mean that women are shown to largely occupy relational gender identities as the ‘helper’, whilst men are strongly identified as the ‘farmer’. Drawing on repeated life-history interviews conducted with farming men and women from Powys, Mid Wales, the aim of this article is to generate debate as to the extent to which men can be brought into feminist research practice in order to reveal patriarchy to a greater degree. The article begins by situating the near-exclusion of men from feminist research practice within theoretical developments in feminist geography. This discussion also assists in deriving issues of research methods, positionality and interpretive power which focus the integration of empirical material in the methodological reflections provided in section three. In section two, the rationale for the epistemological stance taken in the research is provided. The article provides an example of the successful integration of men into a feminist research frame, suggests avenues for theoretical development and identifies future research directions which can be informed by ‘doing it with men’.

Personal Tutors’ Responses to a Structured System of Personal Development Planning: A Focus on ‘Feedback’

Abstract Being a personal tutor is something that most university lecturers experience. The role of the personal tutor varies and sometimes is combined with elements of personal development planning. This paper is aimed at practitioners developing and experiencing their system of personal development planning/personal tutoring. It outlines the development of a new model of such a system within the BSc. in Environmental Planning at Queens University Belfast. The paper provides the context and rationale for the development of the system which aimed to embed reflection on skills development and experiences inside and outside of university within its format. Examples of this embedding via assessment, induction and careers events are provided. Subsequently the paper draws on interviews conducted with personal tutors of Level One students at the end of the first year of its implementation. This enables an exploration of how tutors experience and approach their roles and the ways in which ‘holistic’ feedback is built into the system. Therefore the paper interrogates the nature of ‘feedback’ within the system, the extent to which tutors believe they can be effective and the developing relationship between tutor and tutee. Thus the paper is intended to be useful to practitioners and concludes by reflecting on the system of personal development planning/personal tutoring, providing suggestions for its ongoing development.

The trouble with accessing the countryside in Northern Ireland:A comparison with Great Britain

The twenty-first century has seen a shift in emphasis from enabling local authorities to provide opportunities for recreation on private land to the conferment of a general right to access certain types of land in Great Britain. Similar liberalisation has not occurred in Northern Ireland. This article examines features of the Northern Ireland context that might explain why landowners’ rights continue to trump those of recreational users, drawing on stakeholder interviews and a rural geography conceptual framework. Following historic struggles for land in Ireland, any erosion of owner control is perceived to undermine hard-won rights; in a relatively rural society and agrarian economy, farmers are readily accepted as having the ‘right’ to determine the function of rural land; and recent conflict has depressed outdoor leisure and tourism. Consequently, productive uses of land remain central to rural policy and a countryside movement able to overcome objections to liberalisation has not emerged. Conflict and instability have also left a legacy of social problems and ‘legislative lag’ in higher priority areas that must be addressed before countryside access can move up the political agenda. The article reveals how, in stakeholders’ eyes, these factors combine to limit the prospects of reform.

Where conflict and peace take place: Memorialization, sacralization and post-conflict space

This chapter is concerned with the disruptive potential of memory in peacebuilding processes where and when they materialize in the built environment. There is a diverse literature on how museums, memorials and sculpture are used to signify, electively narrate or even erase history and condensed forms of heritage (Schramm 2011). However, there is comparatively less work on how such processes confront mainstream policy communities concerned with place-making in uncertain and vulnerable post-conflict conditions. This analysis aims to evaluate the confrontation between public policy (in planning, urban management and development) with places that are loaded with meaning and memory for ethnic groups determined to legitimate their past as well as their future claims. It sets the context by conceptualizing the technical routines of planning and its concern with mediating interests, communicative action and collaborative practice, with the need to understand how space is socially constructed and, in particular, how memorialization elevates place from the mundane to the sacred.

Gender, Historical Geographies of

This article discusses the ways in which gender-aware work has impacted on the historiography of historical geography and the ways in which historical geographies of gender have been illuminated. The article begins by identifying the key exchanges relating to a historiography of historical geography whereby approaches to gender, women, and their contribution to geography are changing the ways we think about the discipline and the topics we study. By weaving in the way in which gender theorization has influenced historical geographies of gender the article takes the reader through the key influencing ideas from feminist geography from the 1960s onwards. The trajectory of feminist and nonfeminist approaches to gender based on ideas of gender roles, relations, and identities are integrated into key themes which have been illuminated by gender-informed perspectives in historical geography. Thus, new ways of looking at the way in which the past impacts on the present and material and symbolic connections across time and space are discussed with reference to areas such as Western industrial capitalism, colonialism, landscape, representation, and environment. The article concludes by highlighting the range of theoretical approaches to historical geographies of gender which are continuing to infuse ways of studying and thinking about historical geography through ideas of, for example, globalization, migration, heritage, and the body.