Participation in recreational physical activity: Why do socioeconomic groups differ?

This qualitative study explored how influences on recreational physical activity (RPA) were patterned by socioeconomic position. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 10 males and 10 females in three socioeconomic groups (N = 60). Influences salient across all groups included previous opportunities, physical health, social assistance, safety, environmental aesthetics and urban design, physical and health benefits, and barriers of self-consciousness, low skill, and weather/time of year. Influences more salient to the high socioeconomic group included social benefits, achieving a balanced lifestyle, and the barrier of an unpredictable lifestyle. Influences more salient to the high and mid socioeconomic groups included efficacy, perceived need, activity demands, affiliation, emotional benefits, and the barrier of competing demands. Influences more salient to the low socioeconomic group included poor health and barriers of inconvenient access and low personal functioning. Data suggest that efforts to increase RPA in the population should include both general and socioeconomically targeted strategies.

Integrating high and moderate spatial resolution image data to estimate forest age structure

The collection of spatial information to quantify changes to the state and condition of the environment is a fundamental component of conservation or sustainable utilization of tropical and subtropical forests, Age is an important structural attribute of old-growth forests influencing biological diversity in Australia eucalypt forests. Aerial photograph interpretation has traditionally been used for mapping the age and structure of forest stands. However this method is subjective and is not able to accurately capture fine to landscape scale variation necessary for ecological studies. Identification and mapping of fine to landscape scale vegetative structural attributes will allow the compilation of information associated with Montreal Process indicators lb and ld, which seek to determine linkages between age structure and the diversity and abundance of forest fauna populations. This project integrated measurements of structural attributes derived from a canopy-height elevation model with results from a geometrical-optical/spectral mixture analysis model to map forest age structure at a landscape scale. The availability of multiple-scale data allows the transfer of high-resolution attributes to landscape scale monitoring. Multispectral image data were obtained from a DMSV (Digital Multi-Spectral Video) sensor over St Mary's State Forest in Southeast Queensland, Australia. Local scene variance levels for different forest tapes calculated from the DMSV data were used to optimize the tree density and canopy size output in a geometric-optical model applied to a Landsat Thematic Mapper (TU) data set. Airborne laser scanner data obtained over the project area were used to calibrate a digital filter to extract tree heights from a digital elevation model that was derived from scanned colour stereopairs. The modelled estimates of tree height, crown size, and tree density were used to produce a decision-tree classification of forest successional stage at a landscape scale. The results obtained (72% accuracy), were limited in validation, but demonstrate potential for using the multi-scale methodology to provide spatial information for forestry policy objectives (ie., monitoring forest age structure).

From aesthetic principles to collective sentiments: The logics of everyday judgements of taste

Contemporary research into the sociology of taste has, following Bourdieu (1984), primarily emphasised the role of social position, or more broadly as implicated int he reproduction of social inequality. We argue that although important, such a preoccupation with the social distribution of objectified tastes--for example in music, literature, and art--has been at the expense of investigating the everyday perceptual schemes and resources used by actors to accomplish a judgement of taste. Our argument is traced using a range of classical and contemporary literature which deals with the personal/collective tension in taste, aesthetics and fashion. We use data from a recent national survey to investigate how a sample of ordinary fashion. We use data from a recent national survey to investigate how a sample of ordinary actors understand the categories of 'good' and 'bad' taste. The analysis shows a strong collective strand in everyday definitions of taste, often linked to moral codes of interpersonal conduct. Also, taste is largely defined by people as a strategy for managing relations with others, and as a mode of self-discipline which relies on the mastery of a number of general principles that are resources for people to position their own tastes within an imagined social sphere. This paper proposes a schematic model which accounts for the range of discriminatory resources used to make judgements of taste.

Narrating the guillotine: Punishment technology as myth and symbol

The work of Michel Foucault sees modern penal technology its ann expression of power that operates through and is motivated by a dry instrumental reason. This article draws upon Durkheim and Bakhtin to advance a radically alternative approach. It is suggested that such technology is invested with sacred and profane symbolism and is understood via emotionally charged, dramatically compelling narrative frames. Tensions between official and unauthorized discourses can be understood through a center/periphery model of culture. In an extended case study of the guillotine, it is shown dial the apparatus was initially legitimated as an expression of a sacred revolutionary code. Such a discourse was subsequently destabilized by popular medical debates that raised the specter of pain after decapitation. While inconclusive, these new motifs mobilized Gothic and grotesque themes that confronted the rationalist aesthetics of the guillotine. A situation of Bakhtinian hetoroglossia eventuated. Uncertainty, the uncanny and fable entered a discursive field of increasing complexity.