O Jones

Driving and 'Passengering': Notes on the Ordinary Organization of Car Travel

We spend ever‐increasing periods of our lives travelling in cars, yet quite what it is we do while travelling, aside from driving the vehicle itself, is largely overlooked. Drawing on analyses of video records of a series of quite ordinary episodes of car travel, in this paper we begin to document what happens during car journeys. The material concentrates on situations where people are travelling together in order to examine how social units such as families or relationships such as colleagues or friends are re‐assembled and re‐organised in the small‐scale spaces that are car interiors. Particular attention is paid to the forms of conversation occurring during car journeys and the manner in which they are complicated by seating and visibility arrangements. Finally, the paper touches upon the unusual form of hospitality which emerges in car‐sharing.

Dwelling, Place, and Landscape: An Orchard in Somerset

In this paper we seek to develop the concept of dwelling as a means of theorising place and landscape. We do this for two interconnected reasons. First, dwelling has come to the fore recently as an approach to nature, place, and landscape, but we argue that further development of this idea is required in order to address issues relating to romantic views of places, authenticity, localness, and the way we ‘see’ landscapes. Second, we turn to the notion of dwelling to develop interconnected views of the world which can still retain a notion of place, a key but problematic concept within geography, landscape studies, and environmental thinking. In particular, we seek to develop ideas of place within the context of actor network theory. We explore the notion of dwelling in Heidegger and as adapted by Ingold, and we trace how dwelling has been deployed subsequently in studies of landscape and place. We then develop a more critical appreciation of dwelling in the context of an orchard in Somerset which we have researched as a place of hybrid constructions of culture and nature.

Construction design and management safety regulations in practice-progress on implementation

Abstract A brief review of accident history and the introduction of health and safety legislation in the UK is included. The main requirements of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations are reviewed together with enforcement by the Health and Safety Executive. The problems associated with implementing the Regulations are addressed, based on findings from practitioners. Client involvement is discussed in relation to the timing of appointments and the assessing of competence for principal contractors. Designer involvement is analysed in relation to awareness and assessment of risk, the recognition of the planning supervisors role and transfer of requirements to operational safety on site. Finally, an approach to design and management is recommended with increased client and designer involvement.

Rural challenge(s): partnership and new rural governance

In this paper we consider issues surrounding the formation of partnerships for the delivery of rural regeneration. Partnership processes are of vital importance because of the central role they play in the emergent culture of governance which is now receiving a great deal of theoretical attention. We argue that the characteristic forms of governance emerged in the urban sphere and have now `spreada to rural area, bringing with them the requirement for rural organisations and actors to form partnerships in order to secure funding and to deliver services. We believe that this relatively uncritical transference of partnership requirements into rural areas fails to take account of the very di!ering socio-economic conditions which may exist in such areas. In a consideration of the Rural Development Commissions Rural Challenge scheme we draw attention to the considerable internal tensions hindering the formation of partnerships in rural areas and the conflicting pressures and constraints surrounding their implementation. We question the culture of partnership and its suitability as a means of securing efective regeneration, arguing for greater scrutiny to be paid to its increased political currency and practical application.

‘True geography [ ] quickly forgotten, giving away to an adult-imagined universe’. Approaching the otherness of childhood

In this paper I seek to explore the idea of the otherness of childhood. I suggest that there are considerable differences between the becomings of children and the becomings of adults. In the face of these a number of questions need to be asked about adult–childhood relations in society and about academic approaches to children and childhood, particularly in terms of representing childhood and the implications of such representing. The paper sets out the idea of otherness, locates this within current debate about the crisis of childhood, and then argues that non-representational approaches might be particularly relevant to progressing childrens geographies. These approaches stress modesty, practice, experimentation, messiness, creativity and openness. As we age, childhood becomes another country, a disputed territory of memory and meaning. Its true geography is quickly forgotten, giving away to an adult-imagined universe. The contemporary adult vision of childhood has become so distorted as to render it opaque, and this opacity is seriously affecting how children grow up today. (Brooks 2006, pp. 4–5)

Endlessly revisited and forever gone: On memory and emotional imaginations in doing children’s geographies. An ‘Addendum’ to ‘“To Go Back up the Side Hill”: Memories, Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood’ by Chris Philo

The intention of this article is to expand some of the contexts and some of the conceptual and methodological trajectories presented Philos (2003) paper. In particular I explore the relationship of adulthood and childhood as articulated through memory and how this may impinge upon the practices of adults researching into, and writing about, childhood. The key and complex question of the otherness of childhood is raised through the questioning of the extent to which adults can imaginatively re-enter childhood. Differing forms of memory, and how these may interconnect with emotion and imagination in writings about childhood are explored as a means of trying to make connection with the conditions of childhood.

Turning in the graveyard: trees and the hybrid geographies of dwelling, monitoring and resistance in a Bristol cemetery

This paper explores the historical development of a Victorian cemetery in Bristol - Arnos Vale - in order to discuss how the nonhuman agency of trees has been enrolled into particular networks of environmental change and conservation. We argue that trees have both acted as socialized actors in the narrative of the changing nature of Arnos Vale and contributed significantly to the relational agencies involved. Trees have thereby been implicated in processes of resistance at the site, particularly through their incorporation in practices of monitoring and surveillance. The changing tree presence at Arnos Vale has served to recontextualize and resignify the site, and the monitoring of trees has made this bricolage known, prompting the construction of a significant site of resistance where the privatization of public space has been contested.

‘Unclaimed territory’: childhood and disordered space(s)

This paper explores adult discourses in literary references which revolve around the relationship between childhood and disordered space. This association is often constructed as a positive expression of the romantic innocence of childhood and nature, but it can also be construed as negative in cases where ‘little devils’ are let loose in hazardous urban settings. The complex dynamics of disorder relating to childhood are discussed in terms of the disorders both of nature and of injustice. The paper argues that childhood needs to be conceptualized less in terms of innocence and more in terms of otherness. Disordered spaces in these terms represent territories of becoming-other, where rhizomatic scrambling of adult-ordered striated space makes room for upwellings of the immanent othernesses of children.

Grounding ethical mindfulness for/in nature: trees in their places

In this paper we examine attempts to reframe the ethics of nature–society relations. We trace a postmodern turn which reflects a distrust of overarching moral codes and narratives and points towards a more nuanced understanding of how personal moral impulses are embedded within, and inter-subjectively constituted by, contextual configurations of self and other. We also trace an ethical turn which reflects a critique of anthropocentrism and points towards moves to non-anthropocentric frames in which the othernesses and ethics of difference are shaped by an acknowledgement that human and non-human agency are relationally bound and assembled in networks and places. These turns suggest the need for a more sensitive ‘ethical mindfulness’ which is grounded in particular space–time contexts. Throughout the paper we draw on research we have conducted on the interconnections between trees and places, and in particular we describe three specific tree-places—an urban square, an urban cemetery and an orchard—which provide grounded contexts of encounter and potential for ethical mindedness. We conclude that notions of intrinsicality, otherness, enchantment and hybridity are helpful in configuring the search for grounded ethical mindfulness, both for and in nature.

Lunar-solar rhythmpatterns: towards the material cultures of tides

The movements of the oceans, and the liminal margins of sea, land, and fresh water have profound implications for human/nonhuman life. Those movements and margins are rhythmically affected by tides which are thus a key means by which the forceful materiality of water is animated. Where salt water meets land and river mouths, ceaseless, varying, daily, monthly, and seasonal rhythms of sea level rise and fall occur. Complex patterns and rhythms of intertidal areas, currents, mixing of salt and fresh water, erosion, transportation, and deposition, and many impacts on human systems are created. Due to location, orientation, and sea/land topography, coastal areas around the world are subject to microtides, mesotides, or macrotides (4 m and higher). Particularly in the case of the last, the rhythms of the tides extend out into a range of intersecting ecosocial assemblages. This paper discusses tides and their rhythms, sets them in debates about temporality/nature, and introduces the idea of rhythmpattern which is timespace animated. It also considers dissonance and consonance within and between tidal rhythmpatterns and their overwriting by development.