Janet Banfield

This book breaks down barriers between disciplines engaging with flow, by speaking from geography into psychology to establish geographical foundations for this psychological phenomenon. It frames and works with the multiple contradictions within the extant literature as productive rather than prohibitive, thereby encouraging collaboration across discrepancies as well as across disciplines. It incorporates new materials and perspectives to research on flow, including aesthetic theory, new materialism, more-than-human geographies, and critical development geographies to broaden the theoretical and empirical landscape of future flow scholarship. It also digs more deeply into pre-existing areas of interest within flow research than has been done before, for example, with respect to ‘dark’ flow, ‘flowability’ and (tele)presence, to facilitate more nuanced engagement with such terms. It takes a step back from the detailed empirical work that characterizes most current flow research to pose questions as to how such divergent, even contradictory, findings can emerge from scholarship on a supposedly universal experience that is purportedly robustly constructed, and whether this contrariness is necessarily problematic or emblematic of flow itself and therefore worthy of conceptual elaboration. Finally, it evokes global scale and long-term critical perspectives on the future evolution of flow to counteract the presentism within existing work that emphasizes immediate gains (e.g., performance, wellbeing, profit), in an attempt to pre-empt the worst ramifications of the progressive commodification and strategization of flow. This innovative book is of interest to scholars from a range of fields, from psychology, to business and human resource management, leisure studies, and critical human geography.

This first book-length exploration of geographical engagement with puppets examines constructions of puppets in contemporary popular British culture and considers the various ways in which puppets and humans (not just puppeteers) are unified in diverse cultural media.Organised around themes of metaphorical, performative and transformational puppets, the work draws out how puppets are used in diverse cultural media (fiction, music, television, film and theatre), how they are constructed through those uses, and to what effect. Both puppets as generalised forms (bodily, relational or ideational) and specific puppet characters (Mr Punch, Pinocchio) are explored. Building upon existing associations between puppets and the grotesque, the volume extends understandings of the puppet by elaborating borderscaping strategies through which puppets are constructed and an alternative perspective on the uncanniness of puppets. Geographically, it unearths distinct puppet spatialities, identifies the socially critical potential of puppets, rescales geo/bio-politics at the interpersonal level, and highlights the potential of puppets within posthuman debates about the status of the human.This work will be of interest to anyone fascinated by puppets, as well as those in fields such as geography, anthropology, cultural and media studies, and those interested in the grotesque, posthumanism and/or non-representational scholarship.

This first book-length exploration of geographical engagement with puppets examines constructions of puppets in contemporary popular British culture and considers the various ways in which puppets and humans (not just puppeteers) are unified in diverse cultural media.Organised around themes of metaphorical, performative and transformational puppets, the work draws out how puppets are used in diverse cultural media (fiction, music, television, film and theatre), how they are constructed through those uses, and to what effect. Both puppets as generalised forms (bodily, relational or ideational) and specific puppet characters (Mr Punch, Pinocchio) are explored. Building upon existing associations between puppets and the grotesque, the volume extends understandings of the puppet by elaborating borderscaping strategies through which puppets are constructed and an alternative perspective on the uncanniness of puppets. Geographically, it unearths distinct puppet spatialities, identifies the socially critical potential of puppets, rescales geo/bio-politics at the interpersonal level, and highlights the potential of puppets within posthuman debates about the status of the human.This work will be of interest to anyone fascinated by puppets, as well as those in fields such as geography, anthropology, cultural and media studies, and those interested in the grotesque, posthumanism and/or non-representational scholarship.

This book carries out an in-depth investigation of a neighborhood planning process that engages critically with the issues surrounding articulation of local concerns in a strategic manner and the prospects of implementing ‘bottom up’ community initiatives successfully.It highlights the dynamics involved in shaping the content of a neighbourhood plan and the implications of the different ways in which a place is constructed. The book challenges the notions of a singular place that is described in a neighbourhood plan. It examines conceptual, thematic, strategic and performative constructions of place and the capacity for neighbourhood plans to be developed within this context. It explores the value of connecting the formulation of a neighbourhood plan with the emergence of a relevant local plan, allowing for more meaningful local influence on strategic policymaking.With first-hand insights on neighbourhood planning, this book offers a novel contribution to the fields of planning, urban studies, and urban geography.

This book carries out an in-depth investigation of a neighborhood planning process that engages critically with the issues surrounding articulation of local concerns in a strategic manner and the prospects of implementing ‘bottom up’ community initiatives successfully.It highlights the dynamics involved in shaping the content of a neighbourhood plan and the implications of the different ways in which a place is constructed. The book challenges the notions of a singular place that is described in a neighbourhood plan. It examines conceptual, thematic, strategic and performative constructions of place and the capacity for neighbourhood plans to be developed within this context. It explores the value of connecting the formulation of a neighbourhood plan with the emergence of a relevant local plan, allowing for more meaningful local influence on strategic policymaking.With first-hand insights on neighbourhood planning, this book offers a novel contribution to the fields of planning, urban studies, and urban geography.

This book makes a timely and engaging contribution to geography’s resurgent interest in art and artistic practice, as well as to growing geographical concerns with embodied or pre-reflective experience. It introduces Eugene Gendlin’s philosophical and methodological work to stimulate geographical thinking and practice, and explores its disciplinary potential through innovative practice-based research into artistic spatial experience. Gendlin’s philosophy and techniques for articulating the pre-reflective are explained and illustrated using artists’ accounts of their practices, both retrospectively and during their practice. The geographical implementation of research methods informed by those techniques is detailed and critiqued. Diverse and potentially contradictory findings, and potentially problematic methodological choices, are discussed, accounted for, and reframed through Gendlin’s ideas. Significant geographical potential within Gendlin’s work—philosophical, conceptual and methodological—is identified and described, and avenues and challenges for further investigation are highlighted. This first step towards a Gendlin-informed geography invites further engagement with his work.