Nick Osbaldiston

The Role of Horror and Dread in the Sacred Experience

In this article we seek to add to the debate/discussion into so called ‘Dark Tourism’. While a plethora of studies analyse this phenomenon through binaries such as authentic/inauthentic, we seek here to approach sites of historical death with a less sceptical view. Rather, like others, we understand tourist engagement with ‘dark’ sites as a source of ritualistic engagement. Using the Australian and New Zealand iconic place of Gallipoli in Turkey as a case study, this article will argue that the experience of pilgrims to sites of death is best discussed through the concept of the sacred. However, it is true that these sites can also disturb visitors. Thus, we propose that the often under-utilized figure in sociology, Hertz, can be consulted in order to comprehend how people negotiate places of ‘dark’ properties, particularly those with national or international heritage value.

The authentic place in the amenity migration discourse

The amenity migration movement has garnered significant interest across the wider academic community. In recent works, the emphasis on the investigation into this phenomenon has centered on the aesthetic attractiveness, both culturally and environmentally, of regional locations. This article follows this theme and explores the role of place in the amenity migration discourse. Using a theoretical framework emerging from the cultural sociology of Smith, it is shown through various metanarratives that authenticity plays a major role in the promotion and protection of amenity migration places. Specifically, natural landscape, cultural heritage, and community are discussed as significant contributors to this aura of authenticity. Maintaining this, however, is somewhat problematic as the phenomenon continues to gather momentum.

New Horizons in Lifestyle Migration Research: Theorising Movement, Settlement and the Search for a Better Way of Life

In 2009, Benson and O’Reilly (2009a and b) noted a burgeoning field of research investigating what they labelled lifestyle migration, the migration of ‘relatively affluent individuals, moving either part-time or full-time, permanently or temporarily, to places which, for various reasons, signify for the migrants something loosely defined as quality of life’ (2009a: 621). This is a migration phenomenon distinct from other more-documented and researched forms of migration (such as labour migration and refugee movements) that has some similarities with elite travel and migration (see, e.g., Amit 2007; Birtchnell and Caletrio 2013), and has developed into a healthy field of scholarly enquiry, generating its own corpus of literature. As Knowles and Harper succinctly define it, ‘[These] are migrations where aesthetic qualities including quality of life are prioritized over economic factors like job advancement and income’ (2009: 11). The centrality of such aesthetic qualities both to the decision to migrate and experiences of post-migration life results in explanations privileging the socio-cultural dimensions of the decision to migrate. As we demonstrate in this introduction, these explanations, developing out of the research traditions of sociology and social anthropology, are often underpinned by a strong commitment to social theory.

Academic work/life balance: A brief quantitative analysis of the Australian experience

In this article, we explore the discourse of work/life balance and how academics experience and understand it. Using survey data from research conducted in 2014, the article argues that the concept of ‘life’ within the dichotomy of work/life has often assumed characteristics. While we find in our survey work that academics are indeed working longer hours and often sacrificing leisure time for outputs such as publications, it is still widely unknown how academics understand ‘life’ in relation to their occupation/vocation. Our data indicates further that pressures on academics to establish their credentials through quantifiable data (such as publication statistics) causes notions of work/life balance to become porous, with many academics reporting working from home and in ‘non-labour time’ such as the weekend. Despite these results, we argue that a more nuanced account of work/life balance needs to be attained for the discussion to proceed further.

Elementary forms of place in Seachange

The recent migratory movement known as Seachange is investigated in this article through the concept of place. Using Smith’s ‘Elementary Forms of Place’ model as a guide, and textual/media analysis coupled with qualitative research as examples, it is argued that the Seachange narrative is constructed on a dichotomous relationship to the city. While metropolitan areas are perceived as dull, stressful and degrading, the country and beach are sacralized through narratives of peace, quiet and serenity. Furthermore, the Seachange locales are also considered as places entrenched in the past, invoking aesthetics of traditional community values. Yet the sacralization of Seachange places is threatened by counter-narratives such as gentrification, commodification and sustainability issues which degrade the attractiveness of the locale.

Toward a critical sociology of lifestyle migration: reconceptualizing migration and the search for a better way of life

This article places under critical and reflexive examination the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of lifestyle migration. Developed to explain the migration of the relatively affluent in search of a better way of life, this concept draws attention to the role of lifestyle within migration, alongside understandings of migration as one stage within the ongoing lifestyle choices and trajectories of individual migrants. Through a focus on two paradigms that are currently at work within theorizations of this social phenomenon – individualization and mobilities – we evaluate their contribution to this flourishing field of research. In this way, we demonstrate the limitations and constraints of these for understanding lifestyle migration; engaging with long-standing debates around structure and agency to make a case for the recognition of history in understanding the pursuit of ‘a better way of life’; questioning the extent to which meaning is made through movement, and the politics and ethics of replacing migration with mobilities. Through this systematic consideration, we pave the way for re-invigorated theorizing on this topic, and the development of a critical sociology of lifestyle migration.

ePortfolios and eGovernment: from technology to the entrepreneurial self

Abstract We analyse the electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) in higher education policy and practice.While evangelical accounts of the ePortfolio celebrate its power as a new eLearning technology,we argue that it allows the mutually-reinforcing couple of neoliberalism and the enterprising self to function in ways in which individual difference can be presented, cultured and grown, all the time within a standardised framework which relentlessly polices the limits of the acceptable and unacceptable. We point to the ePortfolio as a practice of (self-) government, arguing that grander policy coalesces out of a halting, experimental set of technological instruments for thinking about how life should be lived.

Characteristics and future intentions of second homeowners: a case study from Eastern Victoria, Australia

Underpinning much of the literature surrounding lifestyle migration, counter-urbanisation and second-home use is the question of motivations and future intentions. In this paper, we explore the characteristics and orientations for future use of land by second-home owners in two locales in Victoria Australia, Phillip Island and Inverloch. Using both qualitative and quantitative survey data we find that there are three areas of second-home governance which ought to be considered strongly for future planning in these areas, health, roads and infrastructure and climate change or sustainability. Using data from permanent residents and second-home owners from these areas in collaboration with demographic data, we argue that underlining these areas is a primary concern, that of ageing. However, while these issues burn brightly for both users of property in these places, the ability for the local government authorities to deal with them is limited because of a lack of resources.

‘I love my work but I hate my job’—Early career academic perspective on academic times in Australia:

There has been significant interest of late into how academics spend their time during both their working and personal lives. Inspired by research around academic lives, this paper explores the narratives of 25 early career academics in Australian institutions across the country. Like several others, we propose that one of the fundamental aspects of time in academia is that of labour spent doing formal, instrumental and bureaucratic tasks. This impinges on the other side of academic life, the writing, research and discovery that bring subjective value to the academic. Using a Weberian framework however, we argue that there are two distinct rationalisations of these ‘times’ occurring. One is the formal, instrumentally imposed rationalisation of the university itself and the second is a more personally defined subjective rationalisation of research and writing. In terms of the latter, we argue that younger academics are not only seeing these times as important for their sense of self in the present but also for their projected vision of what they will become later in their professional career.

Beyond Ahistoricity and Mobilities in Lifestyle Migration Research

Lifestyle migration is a complex phenomenon. There is no clear and precise theoretical model that is going to produce the sort of explanatory power that will help us understand all the facets of this modern-day movement. If we attempt to do so, such is the folly of macro social theory perhaps, we risk losing sight of the ‘other parts’ which O’Reilly (2012: 33) reminds us exist in most migration stories. As Favell (2008: 3) contests in his work on ‘Eurostars’, even concepts like freedom have distinct empirical flavours which different groups experience along the fractured social lines of norms, classes, statuses and other characteristics. In lifestyle migration, broad considerations of the movement usually couched as a middle-class quest for the better life, need to be mindful of the other end of the spectrum including gentrification of new areas (Moss 2006), consumer ethics and the visual appropriation of place (Van Auken 2010) and migration patterns of those low-paid ‘service’ workers who follow the wealthier for material and not lifestyle purposes (Nelson and Nelson 2011). Many of these faces of the movement are large enough to warrant not only their own research agendas but also their own theoretical footings.