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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Changing Cultures Of Water In Eastern Australian Backyard Gardens, Lesley M. Head, Pat Muir
Changing Cultures Of Water In Eastern Australian Backyard Gardens, Lesley M. Head, Pat Muir
Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)
Research into diverse cultural understandings of water provides important contributions to the pressing global issue of sustainable supply, particularly when combined with analysis of relationships between everyday household practice and larger sociotechnical networks of storage and distribution. Here we analyse semi-structured interviews with 298 people about their 241 backyards in the Australian east coast cities of Sydney and Wollongong, undertaken during the 2002-03 drought. Water emerged as an important issue in both consciousness and practice. In contrast to a number of other environmental issues which stimulate more polarised responses, a commitment to reducing water consumption was shared across the study …
Provincial Paradoxes: 'At Home' With Older Gay Men In A Provincial Town Of The Antipodes, Gordon R. Waitt, Andrew W. Gorman-Murray
Provincial Paradoxes: 'At Home' With Older Gay Men In A Provincial Town Of The Antipodes, Gordon R. Waitt, Andrew W. Gorman-Murray
Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)
In this paper we explore the importance of ‘home’ in the everyday lives of older gay men living in Townsville, a provincial town in tropical north Queensland. To do this we deploy the work of Alison Blunt and Robin Dowling (2006), who present a spatialised understanding of home. Drawing on interview materials with ten men who identified as gay, and who are also over forty years of age, we demonstrate that home is a crucial site in the production of their subjectivities. We argue that a spatialised understanding of home reveals paradoxical qualities of Townsville-as-home for older gay men. Furthermore, …