bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hospital based palliative care teams improve the symptoms of cancer patients
Authors: Jack Barbara , Hillier Valerie , Williams Anne , Oldham Jackie
Published: November 2003

Despite the increase in hospital palliative care teams, there is little research into their impact on symptom control in patients. A nonequivalent control group design, using a quota sample, investigated 100 cancer patients who had been admitted to hospital for symptom control. Fifty patients received hospital palliative care team intervention compared with 50 patients receiving traditional care. Data was collected using the Palliative Care Assessment (PACA) symptom assessment tool on three occasions. Both groups showed a statistically significant improvement in their symptoms. This significance failed to meet the criterion of one point on a four point scale and therefore results have to be interpreted with caution. However the intervention group had a greater improvement in all their symptoms, particularly for the pain and anorexia for which there were no differences between the groups on the initial assessment, there was a statistically greater improvement for the intervention group (P < 0.001). Consecutive patients with cancer admitted to hospital for symptom control during this study improved, but those patients who received specialist palliative care had a significantly greater improvement in their symptoms.
Respite in palliative care: a review and discussion of the literature
Authors: Ingleton C , Payne S , Nolan M , Carey I
Published: November 2003

Family caregivers, who are patientsflrelatives and friends (hereafter called carers), play a significant and arguably most important role in enabling patients to make choices about their place of care during advanced disease and in the terminal phase. Relatively little attention has been directed towards identifying the needs of carers who find themselves in this position and what interventions (if any) might best support them in continuing to provide care to the patient during the illness and dying trajectory. What evidence there is suggests that while some aspects of caring are looked on positively, carers also experience challenges in maintaining their physical and psychological health and their social and financial wellbeing. One common recommendation is that respite facilities be provided. The purpose of this paper is to consider the definitions and assumptions that underpin the term ’respitefland its impact on the physical, psychological and social outcomes of carers in palliative care contexts. We conducted a review of the literature, which involved searching five electronic databases: Web of Science, Medline, CINHAHL, Cochrane Database System Review and Social Sciences Citation Index. The search identified 260 papers, of which 28 related directly to adult respite care in specialist palliative care. These papers were largely concerned with descriptive accounts of respite programmes, guidance on referral criteria to respite services or were evaluating the effects of respite on the patient rather than the impact on the carer. We did not identify any empirical studies assessing the effects of respite provided by specialist palliative care services on carer outcomes. There is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions about the efficacy of offering respite care to support carers of patients with advanced disease. We, therefore, draw on the wider literature on carers of adults with chronic disease to consider the impact of respite services and offer suggestions for further research.
Depressive symptoms in advanced cancer. Part 1. Assessing depression: the Mood Evaluation Questionnaire
Authors: Meyer H A Martine , Sinnott Claire , Seed Paul T
Published: November 2003

Objective: A prospective cohort study evaluated the performance and acceptability of the cognitive based Mood Evaluation Questionnaire (MEQ) in assessing depressive symptoms over time in patients with advanced cancer. The structured clinical interview for DSM-III-R (SCID) and the single-item interview screening question were also administered.

Method: Forty-five advanced cancer patients were followed monthly for up to six interviews (108 interviews in total).

Results: The MEQ and SCID had moderate agreement (weighted kappa 0.52 over all interviews). At first interview, 26 (58%) patients were depressed using MEQ, seven (16%) of these severely. Attrition rates were high for subsequent interviews. The assessment process was considered positive by 92% patients, and acceptable as a single and repeat measure. Positive responses to MEQ questions about worthlessness, death and self-harm were strong predictors of current depressed mood.

Conclusion: The MEQ has potential as a useful alternative to SCID in assessing depressive symptoms in a palliative care population, and can be used by nonpsychiatric trained professionals. It is positively received by patients and acceptable as a repeat measure. Most patients appreciate being asked about their mood in depth, including questions around death and self harm.
Low-dose methadone has an analgesic effect in neuropathic pain: a double-blind randomized controlled crossover trial
Authors: Morley John S , Bridson John , Nash Tim P , Miles John B , White Sarah , Makin Matthew K
Published: November 2003

The analgesic effectiveness and adverse effect incidence of a daily dose of 10 or 20 mg of oral methadone were evaluated in 18 patients with a diverse range of chronic neuropathic pain syndromes, who had all responded poorly to traditional analgesic regimens. Analgesia was seen after each dose of methadone. As compared with placebo, the 20 mg daily dose (given as 10 mg bd) resulted in statistically significant (P=0.013–0.020) improvements in patient Visual Analogue Scale ratings of maximum pain intensity, average pain intensity and pain relief, recorded at the same time daily. The analgesic effects extended over 48 hours, as shown by statistically significant (P=0.013–0.020) improvements in all three outcomes on the rest days instituted between each daily dose. Analgesic effects (lowered maximum pain intensity and increased pain relief, on the day of dosing only) were also seen when the lower daily dose of 10 mg methadone (given as 5 mg bd) was used, but these failed to reach statistical significance (P=0.064 and 0.065, respectively). Interpatient analysis showed that the analgesic effects were not restricted to any particular type of neuropathic pain. Patient compliance was high throughout the trial. One patient withdrew during the 10 mg and six during the 20 mg methadone treatment periods. This is the first double-blind randomized controlled trial to demonstrate that methadone has an analgesic effect in neuropathic pain.
Desire/disgust: mapping the moral contours of heterosexuality
Authors: Hubbard Philip
Published: November 2003

Recent studies of sexuality and space have done much to demonstrate that ‘everyday’ space is experienced as aggressively heterosexual by lesbians and gay males. In this review essay, I aim to extend this analysis by examining the (limited) body of work which has explored how heterosexuality has served to create (and justify) other forms of oppression and confinement in western cities. Specifically, this essay examines how heterosexuality has been theorized within and beyond geography, exploring the contention that the ‘performance’ of particular oedipal identities is central to the normalization of heterosexuality. This idea is scrutinized through an overview of the geographies of ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’ heterosexual identities which serves to demonstrate how heterosexuality is territorialized in the city, albeit in an often complex and contradictory manner. Invoking geographic theories of morality, identity and difference, the article concludes that a fuller and more nuanced understanding of heterosexuality needs to be developed in order to understand the role of space in shaping social relations of all kinds.
The social construction of scale
Authors: Marston Sallie A.
Published: November 2003

Over the last ten years, scholars in human geography have been paying increasing theoretical and empirical attention to understanding the ways in which the production of scale is implicated in the production of space. Overwhelmingly, this work reflects a social constructionist approach, which situates capitalist production (and the role of the state, capital, labor and nonstate political actors) as of central concern. What is missing from this discussion about the social construction of scale is serious attention to the relevance of social reproduction and consumption. In this article I review the important literature on scale construction and argue for enlarging our scope for understanding scale to include the complex processes of social reproduction and consumption. I base my critique on a short case study which illustrates that attention to other processes besides production and other systems of domination besides capitalism can enhance our theorizing and improve our attempts to effect real social change.
Place, social relations and the fear of crime: a review
Authors: Pain Rachel
Published: November 2003

This article reviews the literature on fear of crime of interest to the geographical and environmental disciplines. After discussing definitional and methodological issues, the article focuses on accounts which link fear with the physical environment, and then on fear, social identity and exclusion. It considers the significance of one area of recent research that attempts to link place and social relations through developing local ethnographies of fear. The review concludes with some suggestions for building upon this work, and highlights the relevance of the geographical themes discussed to current policy debates.
Geography on the agenda1
Authors: Massey Doreen
Published: November 2003

The article begins by considering the recently revived debate about the ‘North–South divide’ in the UK, and argues that theoretical work in geography on questions of regional uneven developments have had little impact on its political formulation. It takes off from this to reflect on the role of ‘the academic’, on the nature of social science practice and the status of its ‘knowledge production’, and on geography's potential social roles (and current popular image). It argues that geography needs to be more confident of its own specificity, for in that lies its potential contribution. Two elements of specificity are pointed to (among many potential ones): the coexistence of physical and human geography and the significance of, and need for the reformulation of, many popular and political concepts of space.
Culture in the labor market: segmentation theory and perspectives of place
Authors: Bauder Harald
Published: November 2003

Labor market segmentation theory explains the economic marginalization of racial minorities, the working class and women. Economic geographers have contributed a perspective of spatial entrapment and spatially contingent job markets. In this article I emphasize supply-side processes and the role of these processes in labor market segmentation theory. In particular I focus on issues of cultural experience of place and cultural representation of place. I develop this argument by integrating two bodies of literature: (1) segmentation theory, in which the role of experience and representation of place remains undertheorized; and (2) cultural geography, in which such a conceptualization of place exists. The article follows a contemporary trend in human geography that links cultural with economic processes.
Science fiction or future fact? Exploring imaginative geographies of the new millennium
Authors: Kitchin Rob , Kneale James
Published: November 2003

In this article, we examine the imaginative geographies of the new millennium through a critical reading of cyberfiction. This fiction, we argue, through its use of estrangement and defamiliarization, and its destabilization of the foundational assumptions of modernism, provides a cognitive space in which to contemplate future spatialities given the present postmodern condition–a cognitive space which is already providing an imaginal sphere in which present-day individual and institutional thought and practice are partially shaped. Using a detailed reading of 34 novels and four collections of short stories, we illustrate the utility of this cognitive space, and its appropriation, through an exploration of fictional visions of postmodern urbanism in the early twenty-first century. We assess the viability and utility of these visions by comparing them to academic analyses of the sociospatial processes shaping present-day urban form and spatiality.
1968 and all that...
Authors: Watts Michael
Published: November 2003

The year 1968 was a global insurrection but the geography of its genesis and of its legacies remains poorly understood. In relation to the outpouring of work critical of the events of the sixties, and of 1968 in particular, by commentators on the political right and left, this essay attempts to rethink the nature of these global events and traces three paths from 1968, each of which represents a distinctive global–local articulation. It is argued that, while there are many different sorts of 1968s, what they each bequeathed was a rethinking of the politics of the possible, and they unleashed a long march through the institutions which have left an indelible mark on the politics of the contemporary era. The essay concludes with some reflections on the legacy of 1968 for the idea of radical democracy and of real Utopias.
Mapping ‘new’ geographies of religion: politics and poetics in modernity
Authors: Kong Lily
Published: November 2003

This article reviews geographical research on religion in the 1990s, and highlights work from neighbouring disciplines where relevant. Contrary to views that the field is incoherent, I suggest that much of the literature pays attention to several key themes, particularly, the politics and poetics of religious place, identity and community. I illustrate the key issues, arguments and conceptualizations in these areas, and suggest various ways forward. These ‘new’ geographies emphasize different sites of religious practice beyond the ‘officially sacred’; different sensuous sacred geographies; different religions in different historical and place-specific contexts; different geographical scales of analysis; different constitutions of population and their experience of and effect on religious place, identity and community; different dialectics (sociospatial, public-private, politics-poetics); and different moralities.
Interdisciplinarity and social power
Authors: Schoenberger Erica
Published: November 2003

This paper takes up the problem of how to structure a productive and genuine inter- disciplinary engagement from the standpoint of geography. It examines first what makes inter- disciplinarity difficult, focusing on the production of disciplinary cultures that define the material practices, social relations and epistemological commitments characteristic of a field of study. The paper then considers why interdisciplinarity seems to be in the ascendant and why and how geography has been used in this project. It cautions against a reductionist or imperialist style of interdisciplinary work and encourages geographers to develop their own approach to a productive engagement with other fields, in part through attending to the interdisciplinarity inherent in our own.
Realistic spatial abstraction? Marxist observations of a claim within critical realist geography
Authors: Roberts John Michael
Published: November 2003

Critical realism has attracted substantial interest and following within social geography for a number of years. A principal reason for this popularity lies with the critical realist method of abstraction. This method seeks to abstract the underlying causal powers of an object for social analysis at different levels of abstraction. The theoretical movement from the underlying reality of an object to its contingent and everyday appearance therefore enables geographers to explore different spatial scales of the same concrete object of analysis. This ability to take seriously an ‘underlying reality’ also enables geographers to spatialize, and embed themselves within, a radical heritage beginning with Marx. In this paper I wish to question the methodological power of critical realism for social geographical thought. By recourse to Hegel, Marx and Lefebvre, I want to show that critical realists and critical realist geographers in fact pursue different methodological projects to that of Marxism. Whereas Marxists seek to explore the self-movement of a contradictory essence, critical realists and critical realist geographers seek to explore the external and relational connection between causal powers. I argue that within this critical realist exploration there is a tendency to present a rather static account of essence, or causal powers, because of the non-dialectical and dualist assumptions about the world that such an account encourages. It is an account, moreover, which can lead to a somewhat impoverished radical social theory.
Spaces and scales of innovation
Authors: Bunnell Timothy G. , Coe Neil M.
Published: November 2003

Contemporary research on innovative processes makes use of a range of scales, from the global to the regional/local. In addition, network-based approaches have introduced a nonterritorially bounded dimension to studies of innovation. While much of the latter has, to date, been concerned with local networks, recent work has pointed to the importance of non-local interconnections. This paper seeks to build upon such insights suggesting that greater attention be given to extra-local connections in studies of innovation. We explore ways in which extra-local interconnection may be extended beyond the globalization of formalized R&D by, and between, transnational corporations (TNCs), which is the overwhelming preoccupation of existing research. The paper is divided into two main parts. The first consists of a review of work on the three key scales of innovation. The second considers the role of firms and individuals as key actors in systems of innovation, and suggests how network-based approaches may offer the best way for analysing how these actors operate through and across spatial scales. In conclusion, we emphasize the need to further investigate non-TNC-based dimensions of extra-local interconnection.
The limits to scale? Methodological reflections on scalar structuration
Authors: Brenner Neil
Published: November 2003

Fruitful new avenues of theorization and research have been opened by recent writings on the production of geographical scale. However, this outpouring of research on scale production and on rescaling processes has been accompanied by a notable analytical blunting of the concept of geographical scale as it has been blended unreflexively into other core geographical concepts such as place, locality, territory and space. This essay explores this methodological danger: first, through a critical reading of Sallie Marston's (2000) recent article in this journal on ‘The social construction of scale’; second, through a critical examination of the influential notion of a politics ‘of ‘ scale. A concluding section suggests that our theoretical grasp of geographical scale could be significantly advanced if scaling processes are distinguished more precisely from other major dimensions of sociospatial structuration under capitalism. Eleven methodological hypotheses for confronting this task are then proposed.
India.com: the construction of a space between
Authors: Adams Paul C. , Ghose Rina
Published: November 2003

The study of information and communication technologies (ICT) by geographers has evolved over the past third of a century from a concentration on friction of distance and spatial organization toward a set of four interrelated social approaches: ICT as a set of contested terrains, ICT as a means of perception, ICT as a form of embodiment, and ICT as virtual places or spaces (distanciated social contexts). These approaches are complementary rather than contradictory. What is absent thus far from the ICT debate is attention to ethnicity, except as a surrogate of economic class or in vague allusions to a digital divide. Since people use ICT to build a sense of community and personal identity, both of which relate strongly to ethnicity, the topic deserves attention. The four approaches are integrated here to understand the appropriation of the internet by temporary and permanent immigrants to the USA from India (typically called Non-Resident Indians or NRIs). The concept of virtual space can be used to organize discussion of the use of the internet by NRIs. To better encapsulate the virtual space we employ a map of what we call ‘bridgespace’, a virtual space that supports flows of people, goods, capital and ideas between South Asia and North America. We consider the full range of sites involved in the bridgespace, then direct our attention in particular to ‘matrimonial’ sites, those sites designed to support the identification of marriage partners.
Forgetting postmodernism? Recuperating a social history of local knowledge
Authors: Ley David
Published: November 2003

After making a substantial impact across the social sciences and humanities for more than a decade, interest in postmodernism is waning, creating an opportunity to reassess this theoretical programme free of the hyperbole that frequently surrounded discussion in the past. In its contextualism and critique of metanarratives, I approach postmodernism as a form of local knowledge, characterized as knowledge inevitably framed through the here of our collective presence and the now of our collective interests. Knowledge in short is group-centred, and chronocentric in its privileging of the current. This argument is extended to the idea and practice of modernism in the built environment, and contrasted with a postmodernism that reflexively works from an epistemology and ontology of the local. I suggest that lessons drawn from a critical postmodernism, emanating from the social movements of the 1965-75 period, have had constructive results in the built environment. As such, the legacy of postmodernism should not be forgotten as its life cycle seemingly draws to a close.
Restructuring health and rural communities in New Zealand
Authors: Kearns Robin A. , Joseph Alun E.
Published: November 2003

The recent restructuring of health-care provision has particularly a•ected rural communities in New Zealand, a nation characterized by an emerging biculturalism in its policies and outlook. In this article we develop a framework linking health care, the rural experience of place and the national cultural fabric. After presenting the stories of two North Island communities undergoing transition, we consider the role of health care in influencing the broader health of rural settlements as communities. We conclude that for communities as well as their residents, health and place are mutually constituted through the activities of health-care provision.
Development geography and the third-world state
Authors: Glassman Jim , Samatar Abdi Ismail
Published: November 2003

Soon after the third-world state was declared impotent, contradictory evidence pointing to the importance of state leadership in development in the Asian miracles came to the fore. This article, through a critical review of the literature, pushes this argument further and claims that geographers have much to contribute to the analysis of the state and its role in development. An appropriate framework for this kind of work is a marriage of radical political economy and certain strands of neo-Weberianism. We suggest that this conceptual union allows for broad theorizing of the capitalist state in the periphery while minding the institutional details of third-world states in particular regions and countries. This approach can help explain the differential performances of various third-world states within the confines of the world system. Thailand and Botswana are used as comparative cases to demonstrate the utility of this framework.
Towards a geography of heterogeneous associations
Authors: Murdoch Jonathan
Published: November 2003

Dualisms have been a recurring feature of sociospatial analysis. Micro/macro, local/global, subject/object, particular/universal – one or more of these dualistic frameworks can be discerned in many geographical texts. Dissolving the dualisms, somehow finding a way through the gaps which open up between them, requires the development of an approach which allows the various scales of social life to be treated symmetrically so that we never have to shift to a different register when studying large-scale or ‘big’ (usually termed structural) phenomena. It is proposed in this article that a geography of associations, which traces how actions are embedded in materials and then extended through time and space, provides one means of overcoming the dualisms. Drawing upon actor-network theory it is argued that interactions are both ‘localized’ and ‘globalized’ using nonhuman entities and these permit certain actor-networks to act at a distance on others. Patterns of centrality and marginality thus emerge as particular power geometries are drawn. Tracing these power geometries by following the associations can only be undertaken in a nondualistic fashion.
Globalizing Parisian thought-waves: recent advances in the study of social regulation, politics, discourse and space
Authors: MacLeod Gordon
Published: November 2003

In recent years, the French regulation approach has heavily infiltrated the research agendas of the social sciences. This has been particularly conspicuous in economic geography, urban and regional analysis and political economy. Within these subdisciplines, some new research inquiries have departed from the original ‘first generation’ concern with economic crisis to analyse a range of issues such as the state form, and local and regional governance. This article reviews several of the more promising analyses which have consciously sought to fill some ‘missing links’ in the ongoing regulationist research project, and which have considerably enhanced our undertaking of the contemporary regulatory milieu. These post-Parisian themes have focused on the process of regulation and its discursive and political constitution; the geography of regulation and spatial scale; and the role of the state in and through the regulatory process. The article concludes with some implications for applying this emergent regulationist agenda to empirically informed research.
Beyond dualism – the social construction of nature and the natural and social construction of human beings
Authors: Gerber Judith
Published: November 2003

The dualism between society and nature and the processes by which nature is being socially constructed has become an area of increasing concern and interest to geographers in recent years. In this article, the abstract and concrete inter-relationships between nature and society will be problematized, drawing on the work of Lackoff, Wittgenstein, Harré, Bourdieu and Lefebvre, among others. A number of concepts that will enable us to work across the boundaries conceived to exist between the physical, the mental and the social and thus of great importance for the analysis of the social construction of nature will be proposed.
Exit, the firm and sunk costs: reconceptualizing the corporate geography of disinvestment and plant closure
Authors: Clark Gordon L. , Wrigley Neil
Published: November 2003

The objective of this article is to reconceptualize understanding of the economic and spatial processes of corporate restructuring and market exit. We ask what economic logic explains plant closure and firms’ exit from industries, and develop a comprehensive perspective on the nature of the exit process focused on firms in which there is a separation of ownership and control, which are rich in capital assets and that are held hostage by their history and geography. Exit is treated as a sequence of related strategic decisions made by the firm regarding the use of its inherited configuration of capital, and we argue that there is an intimate connection between sunk costs and the logic of those decisions. The broader theoretical challenge addressed by the article concerns the provision of a coherent account of the spatial configuration of the firm in the context of the evolving world of corporate finance, corporate governance and capital specificity. These are important matters for economic geography.
Reading Drumlin: academic geography and a student geographical magazine
Authors: Philo Chris
Published: November 2003

Recent scholarship in the history of geographical inquiry has stressed the many and varied sites in which geographical knowledges have been produced and consumed. The focus has tended to remain on the productions of academic geographers, as linked into broader intellectual, political and social trends, and rarely has attention been paid to the ‘bottom-up’ productions of those who are usually regarded simply as consumers of ‘top-down’ knowledges. There is perhaps warrant for taking more seriously than hitherto the efforts in this respect of student ‘geographers’, and for considering more carefully just how they receive, respond to, reformulate and perhaps reject the knowledges presented to them in lectures, textbooks and journals. Such ‘student’ geographers must therefore be regarded not just as consumers of geographical knowledge but as its producers as well. Through an in-depth reading of one particular student geographical magazine called Drumlin, based in the Geography Department at Glasgow, Scotland, this article explores the changing terrain of student geographical knowledge over the period 1955–96. This reading suggests that Drumlin can be interpreted as a ‘semi-academic space’, one entailing a hybridity of academic and student voices, and also as one opening a window on the tangled sociology of staff–student relationships which both contextualizes and conditions what can appear in the pages of such a student geographical magazine. While not holding great surprises in what student (and academic) contributions to the magazine have entailed and covered, the impression is none the less of important nuances, presences and absences, and lines of acceptance and resistance which do promise the addition of something new to writings on geography's many histories.
How far should we care? On the spatial scope of beneficence
Authors: Smith David M.
Published: November 2003

The question of how far we should care for others, or the spatial scope of beneficence, raises important issues at the interface of geography and moral philosophy. After introducing what is at stake, this article reviews partiality conventions manifest in favouring nearest and dearest people. The possibility of extending the scope of care, in the spirit of impartiality, raises questions concerning spatial relationships, human similarity and care as a moral value. Attention then turns to indications of a contemporary resurgence of partiality. Possible reconciliations of impartiality and an ethic of care are outlined, leading to the conclusion that care should be related to an egalitarian theory of justice.
Rethinking environmental management
Authors: Bryant Raymond L. , Wilson Geo• A.
Published: November 2003

The field of environmental management developed as a technocentric problem-solving initiative, providing ‘practical’ assistance to state officials involved in environmental management. Since the field was largely associated with what state officials and associated experts ‘dO', little effort was devoted to understanding the political, economic or cultural forces conditioning the process of environmental management. The potentially significant contribution of diverse nonstate actors – for example, farmers, shifting cultivators, businesses or nongovernmental organizations – to this process was notably neglected. The field has recently become the target of mounting criticism with ‘environmental managerialism’ dismissed as a research agenda divorced from key issues in human–environment interaction.

This article argues that a recognition of the limitations of traditional understandings of environmental management ought to serve as the basis for a rethink of this field of study. This argument is developed in two stages. The article first explores how the traditional approach understands environmental management as a state-centred process, assesses diverse problems with that understanding and sketches an alternative way of thinking about this issue. The article then assesses how environmental management as a field of study is usually understood, the pitfalls of that understanding and the possible contours of an alternative appreciation of the field of environmental management. By adopting a more inclusive understanding of what environ-mental management is as a process, a broader appreciation of the nature of environmental management as a field of study can be obtained. The article concludes that a revitalized field can overcome existing deficiencies so as to be in a position to make thereafter an important contribution to research on human–environment interaction.
Carnivals for elites? The cultural politics of arts festivals
Authors: Waterman Stanley
Published: November 2003

Despite their ubiquity and cultural prominence, academic study of arts festivals has been neglected. This article examines how cyclical arts festivals transform places from being everyday settings into temporary environments that contribute to the production, processing and consumption of culture, concentrated in time and place. Moreover, festivals also provide examples of how culture is contested. Support for the arts is part of a process used by élites to establish social distance between themselves and others. Festivals have traditionally been innovative and have always been controlled. In the past, artistic directors wielded this control but recent attempts by commercial interests to control festivals reflect a wider situation in which marketing agencies and managers are transforming arts and culture into arts and culture industries. Today, promoting arts festivals is related to place promotion, and this encourages ‘safe’ art forms. This highlights latent tensions between festival as art and economics, between culture and cultural politics.
Public space and the geography of the modern city
Authors: Goheen Peter G.
Published: November 2003

Public space is often seen as problem space in the modern city: it is now as it has always been a space of contention. It is the visible and accessible venue wherein the public – comprising institutions and citizens acting in concert – enact rituals and make claims designed to win recognition. This article discusses two theses which regard the public realm in the modern city from very different perspectives. It then seeks to understand the strikingly contrary conclusions about the public sphere by exploring several of the issues which proponents of the two viewpoints interpret differently.
Residential separation and patterns of interaction between elderly parents and their adult children
Authors: Smith Geoffrey C.
Published: November 2003

For the majority of elderly people, ties with adult children represent the most important extramarital component of their family networks, informal support systems and social relationships. The main purpose of this article is to examine theoretical and empirical research contributions which address the geographical context of these intergenerational ties. Theoretical perspectives are outlined concerning spatial aspects of kin networks in industrial and post- industrial society, and the effects of distinctive life-course events on residential mobility. Empirical research findings on the determinants and social consequences of intergenerational spatial separation are then reviewed. Overall, spatial separation is disclosed as a key factor governing both the amounts and styles of interaction between parents and adult children. However, some recent results suggest that trends towards economic instability and family disruption associated with postindustrial change are limiting the potential for intergenerational spatial propinquity and interaction, especially within lower-income families. On the basis of a discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of the empirical findings, suggestions are offered for further geographical research on intergenerational ties.
Discourse and practice in human geography
Authors: Schoenberger Erica
Published: November 2003

This article examines the way in which our disciplinary discourse shapes our material practices as researchers and our ways of thinking. It uses as a case study the term ‘competitive ness’, considering its origins and meanings within economics and business, the way these are imported into our own work, and the consequences of an unexamined acceptance of the validity and meaning of the term. The article works through two examples of discourse in action, asking to what degree Nike's ‘competitiveness’ depends on access to low-cost labour in offshore pro duction sites, and whether the ‘competitiveness’ of Baltimore would be harmed by adopting the ‘living wage’ as the local minimum. The article argues the necessity of analysing ourselves as social and historical actors and assessing the way we work and the way we use language in order to strengthen our research and improve the standing of the discipline.
Hierarchical households and gendered migration in Latin America: feminist extensions to migration research
Authors: Lawson Victoria A.
Published: November 2003

In this review essay, I argue that migration theory can be advanced by analysing gender differences in migration processes. I bring together feminist empirical work from diverse settings within Latin America in order to illustrate and discuss theoretical extensions to migration research. In particular, the discussion focuses on the centrality of intrahousehold power relations and dynamics for understanding who migrates, and with what consequences. I further argue that these theoretical understandings emerge from the culturally and historically specific operation of processes in particular places within Latin America.
Beyond ‘women and transport’: towards new geographies of gender and daily mobility
Authors: Law Robin
Published: November 2003

Over the last two decades, a feminist critique of gender-blind transportation research and planning has generated a spate of research into ‘women and transport’. This article critically reviews this literature, and argues that it has come to focus on a relatively limited range of research problems (notably journey-to-work travel) at the expense of other relevant issues. An alternative approach is suggested which redefines the topic as ‘gender and daily mobility’ and incorporates it within a larger theoretical project investigating social and cultural geographies of mobility. Some areas of scholarship associated with the ‘cultural turn’ are explored to illustrate the potential for new approaches. The article then argues that future research on the topic must be based on a more systematic treatment of gender as a theoretical concept. A framework of analysis is outlined which identifies aspects of gender as a social category and symbolic code, and links it to aspects of daily mobility. The article outlines potential research questions identified through this analysis, and draws attention to a wide range of literature which may be brought to bear on the redefined topic area.
Space, scale and state strategy: rethinking urban and regional governance
Authors: Macleod Gordon , Goodwin Mark
Published: November 2003

The last decade has seen a proliferation of theoretical approaches, which have sought to uncover the changing form and governance of cities and regions following the dissolution of the Fordist ‘sociospatial fix’. This article provides a critical review of some of the more influential of these debates that have sought to analyse: the central–local relations of government; the growing influence of ‘regimes’ and ‘growth coalitions’ in energizing urban economies; and the rise of the ‘learning’ or ‘institutionally thick’ region. The authors argue that, although providing valuable insights, these theories suffer from: 1) a failure to integrate analytically into their inquiries a relational account of the state, and thereby to neglect the state's influence in actively shaping the urban and regional fabric; and 2) a similar failure to problematize the issue of scale, often taking for granted the spatial context of their own particular inquiry. Thus, terms like urban regimes, urban coalitions and learning regions are deployed as if they were ontological and epistemological givens. Drawing on neo-Gramscian state theory and recent work on the ‘politics of scale’, this article seeks to open up urban and regional research towards a multiscaled analysis, and to consider political economic activity as a series of situated, context-specific and politically constructed processes. These arguments are then briefly deployed to demonstrate the multifarious and multiscalar changes that characterize London's governance in the late 1990s.
Defining an agenda for the geography of children: review and prospect
Authors: Matthews Hugh , Limb Melanie
Published: November 2003

There is still only a limited development of a solidly grounded social and cultural geography prepared to conceptualize children as a neglected social grouping undergoing various forms of sociospatial marginalization. Given the focus and momentum of the ‘new’ cultural geography, we contend that this is an apposite time to define an agenda for the geography of children, which not only takes into account earlier studies which can inform contemporary debate, largely drawn from an environmental psychology tradition, but which also recognizes the interface between sociology, anthropology and cultural studies and draws upon important work being undertaken by feminist and critical geographers. To date, much of the research on the geography of children has been blighted by fragmentation, narrow disciplinary perspectives and methodologies which do not sufficiently engage themselves with the lifeworld of children in the ‘here and now’. In this article we propose a working agenda based upon a set of seven generic propositions which highlight different aspects of children's relationship with their physical and built environment, beyond the home, school and playground. Our emphasis in this review is on work which examines the experiences of children and how they ‘see the world’ around them. We recognize, however, that part of what children see are structures which constrain them. These may include the adult values imprinted on the physical and built landscapes in which they live, or the social constraints of the adult gaze. We argue that research on the lives of children should not just be reported for its own sake, but should lead to outcomes which encourage empowerment, participation and self-determination consistent with levels of competence.
Places, spaces and Macy's: place–space tensions in the political geography of modernities
Authors: Taylor Peter J.
Published: November 2003

Place and space are treated as the fundamental concepts for answering where and what questions. Their relationship is defined as a tension with places tending to be enabling and spaces dis-enabling in progressive political practice. The political geography of this position is explored through identifying nation-state and home-household as exemplary examples of place–space tensions. The addition of nation to state and home to household is interpreted as necessarily resulting from the social turmoil that is modernity. While nation turns state space into place, states remain major space producers of the modern age. The way in which home turns household space into place is derived from the identification of three modernities within which this new place–space tension was created. For both nation-state and home-household their treatment as place–space tension highlights their ambiguous political roles. A final place–space tension is identified at the global scale between a geoecology place and a globalization space.
Regional inequality in China
Authors: Wei Yehua Dennis
Published: November 2003

Regional inequality is one of the major subjects of research on China, and is a major concern to the Chinese government. This article reviews the copious research on regional inequality in China. It is proposed that recent research has significantly improved our understanding of regional inequality but that problems still exist. It is also argued that multiscale studies and investigations of the various mechanisms that affect inequality will further improve future research findings.
Organic mercury compounds: human exposure and its relevance to public health
Authors: Risher John F , Murray H Edward , Prince George R
Published: November 2003

Humans may be exposed to organic forms of mercury by either inhalation, oral, or dermal routes, and the effects of such exposure depend upon both the type of mercury to which exposed and the magnitude of the exposure. In general, the effects of exposure to organic mercury are primarily neurologic, while a host of other organ systems may also be involved, including gastrointestinal, respiratory, hepatic, immune, dermal, and renal. While the primary source of exposure to organic mercury for most populations is the consumption of methylmercury-contaminated fish and shellfish, there are a number of other organomercurials to which humans might be exposed. The antibacterial and antifungal properties of organomercurials have resulted in their long use as topical disinfectants (thimerosal and merbromin) and preservatives in medical preparations (thimerosal) and grain products (both methyl and ethyl mercurials). Phenylmercury has been used in the past in paints, and dialkyl mercurials are still used in some industrial processes and in the calibration of certain analytical laboratory equipment. The effects of exposure to different organic mercurials by different routes of exposure are summarized in this article.