http://hdl.handle.net/2173/565 Formerly the Institute of Culture, Gender and the City Wed, 22 May 2013 09:49:43 GMT 2013-05-22T09:49:43Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/91041 Title: Mundane mobilities, performaces and spaces of tourism Authors: Edensor, Timothy J. Abstract: Tourism is commonly understood as an exception or special time, a period when the normal everyday constraints are suspended: tourists are temporarily immersed in spaces of difference, free from the bounds of home and work, and may transgress their ordinary 'appropriate' performances. This article questions the extent to which much mass tourism is 'extraordinary', suggesting instead that it is more typically associated with habitual routine, cultural conventions and normative performances which circumscribe what should be gazed upon and visited, and modes of touristic comportment and recording. These conventions are also managed by the directors of the tourist product and encouraged by the production of distinct, serial forms of tourist space in which cultural differences are tamed for easy consumption. The paper argues that such forms of performance and their staging are designed to maximize comfort, a touristic desire that should not necessarily be the focus of critical scorn. On the other hand, so managed can the tourist experience become, that there are frequent attempts - often thwarted - to escape the tourist enclaves and schedules and become more closely acquainted with difference. Tourism then, because it is not separate from the quotidian, is an exemplary site for an exploration of the ways in which the everyday is replete with unreflexive practice and habit but simultaneously provokes desires for unconfined alterity. Description: Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published [following peer-review] in Social & cultural geography, published by and copyright Routledge. Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/91041 2007-04-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/91029 Title: The resistible rise of Islamophobia: anti-Muslim racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001 Authors: Poynting, Scott; Mason, Victoria Abstract: This article compares the rise of anti-Muslim racism in Britain and Australia, from 1989 to 2001, as a foundation for assessing the extent to which the upsurge of Islamophobia after 11 September was a development of existing patterns of racism in these two countries. The respective histories of immigration and settlement by Muslim populations are outlined, along with the relevant immigration and ‘ethnic affairs’ policies and the resulting demographics. The article traces the ideologies of xenophobia that developed in Britain and Australia over this period. It records a transition from anti-Asian and anti-Arab racism to anti-Muslim racism, reflected in and responding to changes in the identities and cultural politics of the minority communities. It outlines instances of the racial and ethnic targeting by the state of the ethnic and religious minorities concerned, and postulates a causal relationship between this and the shifting patterns of acts of racial hatred, vilification and discrimination. Description: Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published [following peer-review] in Journal of sociology, published by and copyright Sage Publications Ltd. Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/91029 2007-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/89138 Title: On the social relations of contract research production: power, positionality and epistemology in housing and urban research Authors: Allen, Christopher Abstract: The growing interest in reflexive social science has been matched by a voluminous literature on the epistemological consequences of positionality in social research. Inter-subjectivist approaches to positionality emphasise how social interactions within the field produce ‘interpretative moments’ and thereby consciously affect the process of knowledge production. Objectivist approaches to positionality emphasise the ‘background thinking’ that social researchers carry into the field, unexamined, as occupants of social positions that are class, gender etc. based. It follows that this (class, gendered) background thinking unconsciously influences the process of knowledge production. However, since this literature has had little impact on the field of housing and urban research, its relevance to these fields remains to be established and vice versa. In this paper, I discuss both of these approaches and find them helpful but limited in their relevance to housing and urban research. Since housing and urban research tends to be undertaken on behalf of ‘policy funders’, I argue that constant exposure to the ‘disciplinary gaze’ of those funders means that the positionality of housing and urban researchers is also moulded during the course of the academic career. This means that the positionality of housing and urban researchers is not simply established within the field nor carried into the field. Rather, the positionality of housing and urban researchers develops over time of constant exposure to the ‘disciplinary gaze’ of research funders and manifests itself in what Foucault refers to as ‘docility’, i.e. research practices intuitively and uncritically oriented to satisfying the needs and demands of research funders. I draw on my own research career experiences to demonstrate this argument and, in doing so, show how my docility manifested itself during recent ‘policy funded’ research into the housing and urban problems of visual impaired children. Description: This article was originally published following peer-review in Housing Studies, published by and copyright Routledge. Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/89138 2005-11-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/87194 Title: Policy analysis from first principles Authors: Moss, Scott J. Abstract: The argument of this paper is predicated on the view that social science should start with observation and the specification of a problem to be solved. On that basis, the appropriate properties and conditions of application of relevant tools of analysis should be defined. Evidence is adduced from data for sales volumes and values of a disparate range of goods to show that frequency distributions are commonly fat-tailed. This result implies that any stable population distribution will generally have infinite variance and perhaps undefined mean. Models with agents that reason about their behavior and are influenced by, but do not imitate, other agents known to them will typically generate fat-tailed time series data. A simulation model of intermediated exchange is reported that is populated by such agents and yields the same type of fat-tailed time series and cross-sectional data that is found in data for fast moving consumer goods and for retail outlets. This result supports the proposition that adaptive agent models of markets with agents that reason and are socially embedded have the same statistical signatures as real markets. Whereas this statistical signature precludes any conventional hypothesis testing or forecasting, these models do offer unique opportunities for validation on the basis of domain expertise and qualitative data. Perhaps the most striking conclusion is that neither current social theory nor any similar construct will ever support an effective policy analysis. However, adaptive agent modeling is an effective substitute when embedded in a wider policy analysis procedure. Description: This article was originally published [following peer-review] in National Academy of Sciences. Proceedings, published by and copyright National Academy of Sciences. Tue, 14 May 2002 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/87194 2002-05-14T00:00:00Z