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Articles 1 - 18 of 18

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Welcome To Bogan-Ville: Reframing Class And Place Through Humour, Chris Gibson Nov 2013

Welcome To Bogan-Ville: Reframing Class And Place Through Humour, Chris Gibson

Chris Gibson

On August 4, 2009, Australian online news commentary website the Punch announced that Albion Park, in the Australian industrial city of Wollongong, was one of the nation's top ten “most bogan” places. This paper explores what it means to be bogan in Australia, tracing historical antecedents, local debate at the time of this media event, and the manner in which the politics of class and place identity are negotiated through humour. Some local residents railed against associations with “lower-class” culture or feared damaged reputations for their neighbourhoods; others responded in sometimes unexpected and creative ways—through humour, and by claiming bogan …


Geographies Of Tourism: Space, Ethics And Encounter, Chris Gibson Nov 2013

Geographies Of Tourism: Space, Ethics And Encounter, Chris Gibson

Chris Gibson

At the heart of tourism is encounter - perhaps its defining, distinguishing feature (Crouch et al., 2001). We travel to encounter other places, landscapes, people, sights, weather. While the tourism industry relies on all manner of material commodities to turen a profit (hotel beds, postcards, luggage, etc.), and has been incorporated into a symbolic economy of marketing representations, its most cherished, commodified, essential elements is cncounter.


"Muting" Neoliberalism? Class And Colonial Legacies In Australia, Chris Gibson Nov 2013

"Muting" Neoliberalism? Class And Colonial Legacies In Australia, Chris Gibson

Chris Gibson

Australian governments of left and right persuasions have seemingly embraced elements of the neoliberal agenda, as in many other parts of the world; but exactly how deeply these have been enacted, and how transformative they have been, must be understood in relation to key colonial, geographical and cultural inheritances. These inheritances include the hegemony of central government stewardship of the economy (essential in a colonized, sparsely populated continent of almost unmanageable scale), a long tradition of social democratic regulation, and cultural expectations of socio-spatial equality. Neoliberal policy projects have been "muted" by on-going equality claims, and some progressive "wins" in …


Making Things In A High-Dollar Australia: The Case Of The Surfboard Industry, Andrew Warren, Chris Gibson Nov 2013

Making Things In A High-Dollar Australia: The Case Of The Surfboard Industry, Andrew Warren, Chris Gibson

Chris Gibson

In August 2011 the announcement by Bluescope Steel of mass layoffs at its Port Kembla steelworks, in the Illawarra region, sparked renewed public debate and media commentary on the future of manufacturing in Australia. The debate has since spread to cars, aluminium smelting - even Mortein fly spray - and has quickly coalesced around the unprecedented high Australian dollar, its impacts on exports, and the prospects of the production of goods shifting overseas. As Australian mining magnates such as Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest attempt to remould Australia around their 'quarry vision' (Pearse, 2009) of extractive minerals exports, …


Mobilité Humaine Et Changement Environnemental: Une Analyse Historique Et Textuelle De La Politique Des Nations Unies, Karen Elizabeth Mcnamara, Christopher R. Gibson Nov 2013

Mobilité Humaine Et Changement Environnemental: Une Analyse Historique Et Textuelle De La Politique Des Nations Unies, Karen Elizabeth Mcnamara, Christopher R. Gibson

Chris Gibson

The United Nations plays a leadership role in protecting the environment as well as people dislocated from their homes; however such roles remain mutually exclusive. At present, there is no United Nations framework for human mobility because of environmental change, even if among other factors. This article conducts a historical analysis of policy documents produced by the United Nations and subsidiary agencies. Specifically, this article unpacks different textual descriptions of people displaced by environmental change in selected United Nations documents over the last 40 years. Based on an assessment of these documents, subject categories of people displaced by environmental change …


Social Media Experiments: Scholarly Practice And Collegiality, Chris Gibson, Leah Gibbs Nov 2013

Social Media Experiments: Scholarly Practice And Collegiality, Chris Gibson, Leah Gibbs

Chris Gibson

We draw out and seek to build on two key insights in Kitchin et al. (2013), namely the possibilities of social media for transforming knowledge production practices and for generating new spaces of collegiality and communality. Most promising are capacities to shape the terms of academic labour and to disrupt binaries of core/periphery, research/impact and academic/public.


Becoming Differently Modern: Geographic Contributions To A Generative Climate Politics, Lesley M. Head, Christopher R. Gibson Dec 2012

Becoming Differently Modern: Geographic Contributions To A Generative Climate Politics, Lesley M. Head, Christopher R. Gibson

Chris Gibson

Anthropogenic climate change is a quintessentially modern problem in its historical origins and discursive framing, but how well does modernist thinking provide us with the tools to solve the problems it created? On one hand even though anthropogenic climate change is argued to be a problem of human origins, solutions to which will require human actions and engagements, modernity separates people from climate change in a number of ways. On the other, while amodern or more-than-human concepts of multiple and relational agency are more consistent with the empirical evidence of humans being deeply embedded in earth surface processes, these approaches …


Engaging Creative Communities In An Industrial City Setting, Chris Gibson, Ben Gallan, Andrew Warren Dec 2012

Engaging Creative Communities In An Industrial City Setting, Chris Gibson, Ben Gallan, Andrew Warren

Chris Gibson

Much has been said about how ‘creativity’ might infuse policymaking and planning – especially in the wake of popular bestsellers by Richard Florida and Charles Landry on ‘creative places’ and the ‘creative class’ (the latter a supposed demographic group associated with creative industries such as film, design and music, who are said to be the key to the economic fortunes of cities). Creativity, it is said, can be facilitated in particular urban environments, given the right preconditions such as ‘hip’ inner-city precincts, café culture and walkable dense clusters of design firms and retail and residential spaces. The common argument is …


Living Together But Apart: Material Geographies Of Everyday Sustainability In Extended Family Households, Natascha Klocker, Chris Gibson, Erin Borger Dec 2012

Living Together But Apart: Material Geographies Of Everyday Sustainability In Extended Family Households, Natascha Klocker, Chris Gibson, Erin Borger

Chris Gibson

In the Industrialized West, ageing populations and cultural diversity-combined with rising property prices and extensive years spent in education-have been recognized as diverse factors driving increases in extended family living. At the same time, there is growing awareness that household size is inversely related to per capita resource consumption patterns, and that urgent problems of environmental sustainability are negotiated, on a day-to-day basis (and often unconsciously), at the household level. This paper explores the sustainability implications of everyday decisions to fashion, consume, and share resources around the home, through the lens of extended family households. Through interviews with extended family …


Is It Easy Being Green? On The Dilemmas Of Material Cultures Of Household Sustainability, Chris Gibson, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head, Nick Gill Sep 2012

Is It Easy Being Green? On The Dilemmas Of Material Cultures Of Household Sustainability, Chris Gibson, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head, Nick Gill

Chris Gibson

In the 1970s ‘greens’ were normally thought of as radicals because of their uncompromising political views about sustainability, non-violence, social justice and grassroots democracy. Sometimes greens were marginalised as ‘tree-huggers’ because of their affinity with the non-human world. Today, in popular discourse, ‘green’ provides the centre of sustainability gravity (Barr 2003). Green has become a definitive reflection of what individuals are to become as both consumers and citizens. It is easy, it is said, to be green. This is evident from product branding to categories used in government survey results to describe the ‘most acceptable’ household practices. But as green …


Sydney's Creative Economy: Social And Spatial Challenges, Christopher R. Gibson Sep 2012

Sydney's Creative Economy: Social And Spatial Challenges, Christopher R. Gibson

Chris Gibson

The recent popularity of Richard Florida's work on the rise of the 'creative class' invites attention not only on the size and impact of the creative economy in Australia, but on its geography as well." At the core of Florida's approach is the premise that places compete with each other for a new kind of economic development, fuelled not by the availability of raw materials, cheap labour, or state investment in infrastructure, but by the decisions of producers in creative industries such as film, music, design and advertising to live and work in particular localities. Such creative producers constitute a …


Get Into The Groove: The Role Of Sound In Generating A Sense Of Belonging In Street Parades, Michelle Duffy, Gordon R. Waitt, Christopher R. Gibson Sep 2012

Get Into The Groove: The Role Of Sound In Generating A Sense Of Belonging In Street Parades, Michelle Duffy, Gordon R. Waitt, Christopher R. Gibson

Chris Gibson

Research undertaken in a range of fields has sought to understand the significance of sound and the processes of listening in making sense of social worlds. This inherently interdisciplinary pursuit has particularly emerged in sociology cultural geography, cultural studies, musicology and music therapy. Yet, a great deal is still not known about the interplays between music, sounds, spaces, bodies and our sense of self


Place And Music: Performing "The Region" On The New South Wales Far North Coast, Christopher R. Gibson Sep 2012

Place And Music: Performing "The Region" On The New South Wales Far North Coast, Christopher R. Gibson

Chris Gibson

This paper draws on research conducted for over a decade on the musical cultures of the New South Wales Far North Coast, as a contribution to debates in geography and popular music studies on the links between music, place and articulations of cultural identities. Patterns of migration and economic restructuring over the last 20 years have transformed the Far North Coast region, with associated changes in the images conjured to describe the region – from those centred on dairying, fishing and sugar harvesting to those of a ‘lifestyle’ or ‘alternative’ region, with growth in employment in tourism, recreational services, ‘gourmet’ …


Place Making: Mapping Culture, Creating Places: Collisions Of Science And Art, Christopher R. Gibson Jun 2012

Place Making: Mapping Culture, Creating Places: Collisions Of Science And Art, Christopher R. Gibson

Chris Gibson

The arts have much to offer the reinvention of places: generating new forms of employment in cultural work, contributing to public culture through festivals and events, and appropriating spaces in the built environments of our cities and towns for artistic expression. Filtering artistic attempts to re-make places are three key competing pressures: first, the demands of regional development managers, treasury bureaucrats and council general managers for accountability, ‘hard data’ and measurable outcomes; second, desires of local residents, non-profit organisations and community development specialists to use the arts as a means to promote social inclusion and recognition of social difference; and …


Elvis In The Country: Transforming Place In Rural Australia, Christopher R. Gibson, John Connell Jun 2012

Elvis In The Country: Transforming Place In Rural Australia, Christopher R. Gibson, John Connell

Chris Gibson

No abstract provided.


Is It Easy Being Green? On The Dilemmas Of Material Cultures Of Household Sustainability, Chris Gibson, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head, Nick Gill Jun 2012

Is It Easy Being Green? On The Dilemmas Of Material Cultures Of Household Sustainability, Chris Gibson, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head, Nick Gill

Chris Gibson

In the 1970s ‘greens’ were normally thought of as radicals because of their uncompromising political views about sustainability, non-violence, social justice and grassroots democracy. Sometimes greens were marginalised as ‘tree-huggers’ because of their affinity with the non-human world. Today, in popular discourse, ‘green’ provides the centre of sustainability gravity (Barr 2003). Green has become a definitive reflection of what individuals are to become as both consumers and citizens. It is easy, it is said, to be green. This is evident from product branding to categories used in government survey results to describe the ‘most acceptable’ household practices. But as green …


Greening Rural Festivals: Ecology, Sustainability And Human-Nature Relations, Christopher R. Gibson, C Wong Jun 2012

Greening Rural Festivals: Ecology, Sustainability And Human-Nature Relations, Christopher R. Gibson, C Wong

Chris Gibson

No abstract provided.


The Parkes Elvis Revival Festival: Economic Development And Contested Place Identities In Rural Australia, Christopher Brennan-Horley, John Connell, Christopher Gibson Dec 2006

The Parkes Elvis Revival Festival: Economic Development And Contested Place Identities In Rural Australia, Christopher Brennan-Horley, John Connell, Christopher Gibson

Chris Gibson

This paper discusses the annual Elvis Revival Festival in the small town of Parkes, 350 km to the west of Sydney, in rural Australia. It explores the way in which a remote place with few economic prospects has created a tourism product, and subsequently captured national publicity, through a festival based around commemoration of the birthday of Elvis Presley, a performer who had never visited Australia, and certainly not Parkes. The Festival began in the early 1990s, when a keen Elvis fan rallied promoters (and other fans) around the idea of bringing Elvis impersonators to the town for an annual …