Understanding Blue Spaces: Sport, Bodies, Wellbeing, and the Sea

2020 ◽  
pp. 019372352095054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Olive ◽  
Belinda Wheaton

This article introduces the special issue on ‘Understanding Blue Spaces’ which examines relationships between blue spaces, sport, physical activity, and wellbeing. The articles progress conversations across humanities, social sciences and inter-disciplinary areas of research on diverse sporting practices, that span local to trans-national contexts. This collection offers new insights into politics, possibilities, and problems of the role of blue spaces in our wellbeing—individually, socially, and ecologically. In addition to outlining the 10 articles in the SI, which include ocean swimming, surfing, sailing/yachting, and waka ama paddling, we contextualize this work, discussing key thematic areas both across these papers, and in the wider interdisciplinary body of work on blue spaces, wellbeing, and sport. Specifically, we outline the role of physical activities and leisure practices in how we access, understand, experience, and develop relationships to seas and oceans, as well as to self, places and communities of human and non-human others. We also discuss the ways in which particular bodies, individuals, and communities (human and more-than-human) are marginalized or excluded, and the need for understanding concepts such as wellbeing, place, and self beyond dominant European traditions. This SI highlights how localised experiences of blue spaces can be, while emphasising the need to recognize diverse cultural, economic, geographic, sociodemographic, and political factors that contribute to a disconnect with, or exclusion from blue spaces, impacting who can use blue spaces, how they can be used, how they can be researched, and how power is reproduced and contested.

Author(s):  
Sadegh Fathi ◽  
Hassan Sajadzadeh ◽  
Faezeh Mohammadi Sheshkal ◽  
Farshid Aram ◽  
Gergo Pinter ◽  
...  

Along with environmental pollution, urban planning has been connected to public health. The research indicates that the quality of built environments plays an important role in reducing mental disorders and overall health. The structure and shape of the city are considered as one of the factors influencing happiness and health in urban communities and the type of the daily activities of citizens. The aim of this study was to promote physical activity in the main structure of the city via urban design in a way that the main form and morphology of the city can encourage citizens to move around and have physical activity within the city. Functional, physical, cultural-social, and perceptual-visual features are regarded as the most important and effective criteria in increasing physical activities in urban spaces, based on literature review. The environmental quality of urban spaces and their role in the physical activities of citizens in urban spaces were assessed by using the questionnaire tool and analytical network process (ANP) of structural equation modeling. Further, the space syntax method was utilized to evaluate the role of the spatial integration of urban spaces on improving physical activities. Based on the results, consideration of functional diversity, spatial flexibility and integration, security, and the aesthetic and visual quality of urban spaces plays an important role in improving the physical health of citizens in urban spaces. Further, more physical activities, including motivation for walking and the sense of public health and happiness, were observed in the streets having higher linkage and space syntax indexes with their surrounding texture.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Emilia Bogacka ◽  
Magdalena Fuhrmann

The aim of this paper is to present the significance of the recreational space in Poznań for the physical activity of the city’s residents. The factors considered in the study were the following: the range of possibilities for engagement in paid-for and free-of-charge physical activities, the perceived availability of green areas, the favourite places for physical activity and the role of the neighbourhood and flows in this aspect. The paper presents the results of a survey conducted among 1,244 inhabitants of Poznań in 2017. The respondents positively assessed the possibilities of undertaking physical activity in the context of the city/ space offer. The access to various sports was rated positive, among it the paid activities offered were rated higher than free-of-charge ones. The availability of green areas near the place of residence was assessed as good. Two locations, Cytadela Park and Lake Malta with the surrounding green areas, were the most popular for pursuing physical activity.


TEME ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 309
Author(s):  
Stefan Ninković ◽  
Stanislava Marić Jurišin ◽  
Borka Malčić

The aim of study was to investigate the effects of parents' perceptions of neighborhood safety on outdoor physical activities of preschool children. This was investigated based on a moderating role of a child's gender and parents' age. The results showed that the association of parents’ perceptions of neighborhood safety on outdoor physical activities of children depended of the child’s sex and the parents’ age. Boys whose parents were younger and who positively assessed the neighborhood safety were more inclined to outdoor physical activities. Female children whose parents were below the average age the perceived neighborhood safety hindered frequent outdoor playing. The paper discusses practical implications of the obtained results and recommendations for future research.


Author(s):  
Rkia Wazzani ◽  
Stéphane Pallu ◽  
Céline Bourzac ◽  
Saïd Ahmaïdi ◽  
Hugues Portier ◽  
...  

Physical activity is widely recognized as a biotherapy by WHO in the fight and prevention of bone diseases such as osteoporosis. It reduces the risk of disabling fractures associated with many comorbidities, and whose repair is a major public health and economic issue. Bone tissue is a dynamic supportive tissue that reshapes itself according to the mechanical stresses to which it is exposed. Physical exercise is recognized as a key factor for bone health. However, the effects of exercise on bone quality depend on exercise protocols, duration, intensity and frequency. Today, the effects of different exercise modalities on capillary bone vascularization, bone blood flow and bone angiogenesis remain poorly understood and unclear. As vascularization is an integral part of bone repair process, the analysis of the preventive and/or curative effects of physical exercise is currently very undeveloped. Angiogenesis-osteogenesis coupling may constitute a new way for understanding the role of physical activity, especially in fracturing or in the integration of bone biomaterials. Thus, this review aims to clarify the link between physical activities, vascularization and bone repair.


Author(s):  
Michael F. Roizen ◽  
Jeffrey D. Roizen

Eighty observational association studies and several controlled trials provide strong evidence that exercise, done in appropriate amounts and with appropriate techniques, can dramatically enhance well-being and decrease morbidity and mortality. This chapter summarizes the available evidence so that healthcare providers can write rational prescriptions for physical activity for patients that allow minimal activity for maximum health benefit. In brief, doing four physical activities weekly—(1) any kind, (2) strength building, (3) bone strengthening (jumping), and (4) stamina building—and avoiding prolonged (> 1 hr) inactivity by walking for two minutes every hour—provides maximal morbidity and mortality benefit.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097597
Author(s):  
Nicole Vitellone ◽  
Michael Mair ◽  
Ciara Kierans

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love’s work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love’s provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love’s intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into ‘indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality’ (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love’s invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-61
Author(s):  
Evinc Dogan ◽  
Ibrahim Sirkeci

In this special issue of Transnational Marketing Journal, we brought together a selection of articles drawn from presentations at the Taste of City Conference 2016: Food and Place Marketing which was held at the University of Belgrade, Serbia on 1st September 2016. We have supported the event along with Transnational Press London. We thank to Goran Petkovic, the Faculty of Economics at the University of Belgrade, and Goran’s volunteer students team who helped with the conference organisation. Mobilities are often addressed within social sciences varying across a wide range of disciplines including geography, migration studies, cultural studies, tourism, sociology and anthropology. Food mobilities capture eating, tasting, producing and consuming practices as well as traveling and transferring. Food and tastes are carried around the world, along the routes of mobility through out the history. As people take their own culture to the places, they take their food too. Food meets and mingles with other cultures on the way. Fusion food is born when food transcends the borders and mix with different ingredients from different culinary traditions. Although certain places are associated and branded with food, it is a challenging job to understand the role of food and taste in forming and reformulating the identity of places. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (8) ◽  
pp. 1490-1497
Author(s):  
Eric Knight ◽  
Dariusz Wójcik

In the introduction to the first-ever special issue on the spatial dimensions of FinTech, we show that despite a FinTech fever in business and media, research on FinTech is still niche, particularly in social sciences. We describe FinTech as a research area full of controversies, ripe and in need of geographical research. As we outline, papers in this issue contribute to the debate primarily by examining the role of the state, financial centres and uneven development in FinTech.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
P.V. Sandhya Latha

Physical education is a course taught in school that focuses on developing physical fitness and the ability to perform and enjoy day to day physical activities with ease. Kids also develop skills necessary to participate in a wide range of activities such as cricket,basketball or swimming.Regular physical education classes prepare kids to be physically and mentally active, fit and healthy. Physical education helps students develop physical skills and confidence. They would be expected to journal about how they feel during the process and reflect on how these changes affect performance and mood.Physical education also helps students develop social skills.For example,team sports help them learn to respect others, contribute to a team goal, and socialize as a productive member of a team.This Study is to prove that there is a direct correlation between physical activity and the overall development of the child. It is to prove that there is a systematic, scientific improvement in the cognitive, emotional, social skills and also improvement in Health when physical education is implemented in the Childs day to day programme.The curriculum of physical education possesses a body of knowledge which is basic to health and fitness that leads to a fine living. It has a core of activity skill and technique in its content.We are living in a world layered in technology and convince.Physical Education is so important for our future because it is one of the best natural and pure means we have to promote and foster play and purpose for our children. Children need it more than we know and technology is slowly eating away at something we might never get back. Physical Education's purpose is to preserve the foundational history of health, fitness, and to allow our youth to develop into people with strong intrapersonal skills,core values,and respect and understanding of a healthy mind/body connection.With physical education being a crucial need especially for children, it should be implemented in all the educational organization.To make sure that it is implemented,it has to be a part of the curriculum.Certain norms have to be implemented to make sure PE is a part of the academic curriculum.Regular assessments will be helpful to work on the improvement of the Childs physical as well as overall development


Turyzm ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-88
Author(s):  
Marcin Pasek ◽  
Jacek Olszewski

The aim of the article is to present the factors which affect the choice of place of recreation, as well as indicate the preferred forms of physical activity taken up there. The authors also discussed the relationship between distance from open areas and frequency of visits. Moreover, they evaluated current knowledge about the role of the natural environment as a physical recreation space. The research was conducted among a group of 305 physically active individuals (students of the Academy of Physical Education and Sport in Gdańsk), using questionnaires. The respondents defined the role of location in comparison to other motivational factors for a range of physical activities (recreation). They also spoke about their preferred forms of physical activity in the natural environment, compared to the roles of natural and human environments with regard to physical activity. They also provided an answer to the question whether an open area which does not provide respondents with an opportunity to undertake their favoured recreation would remain of interest. The study results demonstrate the unquestionable importance of having access to attractive natural surroundings with respect to physical activity. This allows a relation to be made between leisure in the natural environment and an improvement in the health of the physically active.


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