scholarly journals “You can go out 14 miles away with the knowledge that you’ve got the battery to help you back if you need it!” Narratives of ranging behaviour and wellbeing in diaries of e-bike trial participants.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Jones ◽  
Ben Spencer ◽  
Carien M. van Reekum ◽  
Nick Beale ◽  
Louise-Ann Leyland

Increasing use of electric power assisted bikes (‘e-bikes’) could play a significant part in expanding the variety of people participating in cycling and contribute to replacing a greater range of journeys that are currently made by car. E-bike use is growing across the Europe and the UK government has committed to establishing a national e-bike support programme (DfT, 2020). This may have a significant impact on the requirements for planning and designing cycle infrastructure. Authorities will need to consider where e-bikes fit within wider policies to promote zero-emission cities. This paper draws on data from a large study on cycling and wellbeing - XXXXXX. Thirty-eight participants aged 50 and over, returning to cycling after a hiatus, were asked to keep a ‘Diary of Cycling Experience’ (DoCE) to record how their experiences of using an e-bike unfolded during an eight-week trial period. Standard tests pre and post revealed that e-bikes, through enabling increased physical activity and engagement with the outdoor environment, can provide positive benefits to cognitive function and wellbeing as reported in XXXXXX (XXXX). The paper expands these findings, drawing specifically on the qualitative component, namely the written and visual material provided in participant diaries to reveal the embodied nature of e-biking, and in particular, the opportunity it provided for longer distance travel, (re)discovery of spaces and places, and human flourishing. It argues for a reappraisal of what constitutes ‘active’ travel and what this might mean for the emerging practice of e-biking in relation to longer distance cycling, for different purposes and in different contexts. This is particularly pertinent in the context of an ageing society, the push towards zero-emission cities and the need to ensure socially inclusive mobility particularly in the time of Covid.Keywords: e-bikes; diary approach; ageing; wellbeing; social inclusion.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nana O. Bonsu

AbstractThe UK Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution aims to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and transition to electric vehicles (EVs). Current business models for EV ownership and the transition to net-net zero emissions are not working for households in the lowest income brackets. However, low-income communities bear the brunt of environmental and health illnesses from transport air pollution caused by those living in relatively more affluent areas. Importantly, achieving equitable EV ownership amongst low-and middle-income households and driving policy goals towards environmental injustice of air pollution and net-zero emissions would require responsible and circular business models. Such consumer-focused business models address an EV subscription via low-income household tax rebates, an EV battery value-chain circularity, locally-driven new battery technological development, including EV manufacturing tax rebates and socially innovative mechanisms. This brief communication emphasises that consumer-led business models following net-zero emission vehicles shift and decisions must ensure positive-sum outcomes. And must focus not only on profits and competitiveness but also on people, planet, prosperity and partnership co-benefits.


2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (8) ◽  
pp. 1151-1167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Adkins ◽  
Donna Hancox

This article examines the case of the Forgotten Australians as an opportunity to examine the role of the internet in the presentation of testimony. ‘Forgotten Australians’ are a group who suffered abuse and neglect after being removed from their parents – either in Australia or in the UK – and placed in Church- and State-run institutions in Australia between 1930 and 1970. The campaign by this profoundly marginalized group coincided with the decade in which the opportunities of Web 2.0 were seen to be diffusing throughout different social groups, and were considered a tool for social inclusion. We outline a conceptual framework that positions the role of the internet as an environment in which the difficult relationships between painful past experiences and contemporary injunctions to remember them, are negotiated. We then apply this framework to the analysis of case examples of posts and interaction on websites with web 2.0 functionality: YouTube and the National Museum of Australia. The analysis points to commonalities and differences in the agency of the internet in these two contexts, arguing that in both cases the websites provided support for the development of a testimony-like narrative and the claiming, sharing and acknowledgement of loss.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 1111-1127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive James Nwonka ◽  
Sarita Malik

‘Diversity’ is an evolving dimension of discursive debates within publicly funded parts of the UK media. This article considers how representations of racial diversity in cinema were articulated in a particular moment in recent history. It traces the relationship between the broader New Labour neoliberal agenda of the late 1990s and the UK Film Council’s (UKFC) New Cinema Fund, the key funding mechanism for supporting black British cinema at the time. The authors suggest that the New Cinema Fund’s ‘institutional diversity’ agenda represented a symbolic effort by both the UKFC and UK public service broadcasters to redevelop black British film vis-a-vis a plethora of cultural imperatives oriented around the notion of ‘social inclusion’. The nature of this intervention, it is argued, was strongly influenced by the 1999 Macpherson Report, which identified ‘institutional racism’ within the fabric of the UK’s organisations. The article examines how such an ‘institutional diversity’ agenda emerged within the production context of a BBC Film/UKFC production, Bullet Boy (2005), thus generating a rearticulated black British cinema that was deeply imbricated in the highly politicised contexts outlined.


Author(s):  
Nathalie Huegler ◽  
Natasha Kersh

AbstractThis chapter focuses on contexts where public discourses regarding the education of young adults have been dominated by socio-economic perspectives, with a focus on the role of employment-related learning, skills and chances and with active participation in the labour market as a key concern for policy makers. A focus on ‘employability’ alone has been linked to narrow conceptualisations of participation, inclusion and citizenship, arising in the context of discourse shifts through neoliberalism which emphasise workfare over welfare and responsibilities over rights. A key critique of such contexts is that the focus moves from addressing barriers to participation to framing social inclusion predominantly as related to expectations of ‘activation’ and sometimes, assimilation. Key target groups for discourses of activation include young people not in education, employment or training (‘NEET’), while in- and exclusion of migrant and ethnic minority young people are often framed within the complex and contradictory interplay between discourses of assimilation and experiences of discrimination. These developments influence the field of adult education aimed at young people vulnerable to social exclusion. An alternative discourse to ‘activation’ is the promotion of young people’s skills and capabilities that enables them to engage in forms of citizenship activism, challenging structural barriers that lead to exclusion. Our chapter considers selected examples from EduMAP research in the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland which indicate that as well as framing the participation of young people as discourses of ‘activation’, adult education can also enable and facilitate skills related to more activist forms of citizenship participation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Mahoney ◽  
Tony Kearon

In this article, we seek to provide a social quality–led analysis of some of the conditions that led to the UK population’s collective decision to leave the European Union in June 2016. We draw on interview data collected between 2010 and 2012 to argue that while not predictable, the seeds of the Brexit vote are well rooted in the conditions experienced by many of the working classes in Britain’s most deprived postindustrial communities. We argue that the ongoing decline in economic security, effective enfranchisement, social inclusion, and social empowerment have all had profound consequences for working-class communities and that the outcome of the Brexit vote was rooted, at least in part, in their subjective experiences and disenchantment forged in this ongoing decline.


2020 ◽  
pp. 194084472096821
Author(s):  
Anne Pirrie ◽  
Nini Fang

This article explores the ecology of contemporary higher education by foregrounding the ethical relation between its authors. The article expresses their commitment to throwing off familiar academic conventions in order to promote human flourishing in a sector that has been colonized by new managerialism and the associated mechanisms of “performance management,” surveillance, and exclusion. The authors write into the emblems of the naajavaarsuk (the ivory gull) and isumataq (the Inuit storyteller). They explore collaborative writing as an ethical, relational practice whilst exposing the lived problematics that have become the “new normal” in the contemporary academy, for instance, the fetishization of “student satisfaction.” The latter has gained traction in the UK in recent years, and in extreme cases can call forth acts of ethical violence that induce deep and long-lasting effects. Their account is visceral rather than abstract, rooted in lived experience and in theory. The authors conclude that the precondition for human flourishing in conditions of constraint is neither all-out resistance nor quietist acceptance of the status quo. It is to open up a space for education that inheres in our relation to the other, and quietly to resist being defined and limited by practices of monitoring and surveillance.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Sinclair ◽  
Glen Bramley

Access to and engagement with information and communications technologies (ICTs) are increasingly important aspects of social inclusion. This paper draws upon analyses of UK survey data and a review of research on communications and social exclusion published in the UK between 2001 and 2006 to examine the social distribution of access to and uptake of ICTs and to explore key factors restricting the digital engagement of young people from lower income households and communities. It argues that effective strategies to bridge digital divisions in the UK must pay more attention to the social rather than technological barriers which inhibit communications inclusion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Holttum

Purpose This paper aims to examine recent papers on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, including implications for some of the groups of people already less included in society. Design/methodology/approach A search was carried out for recent papers on mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings Two papers describe surveys of adults in the UK and Irish Republic in the first days of lockdown. Low income and loss of income were associated with anxiety and depression. These surveys could not examine distress in Black and minority ethnicities, who have higher death rates from COVID-19. Two surveys of children and young people report distress and what can help. One paper summarises a host of ways in which the pandemic may affect mental well-being in different groups, and what might help. Another calls for research to understand how to protect mental well-being in various groups. Originality/value These five papers give a sense of the early days of the pandemic, especially in the UK. They also highlight the needs of some specific groups of people, or the need to find out more about how these groups experience the pandemic. They suggest some ways of trying to ensure that everyone has the best chance to thrive in the aftermath of the pandemic.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Joy Stickley ◽  
Kelly J. Hall

Purpose Occupational therapists are increasingly working in organisations outside of the public sector. UK government policy over the past decade has promoted health and social care provision by social enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to examine the compatibility of occupational therapy practice and a social enterprise environment, within the UK and questions if this approach may enhance experiences of social inclusion for people who use these services. Design/methodology/approach Case study methodology was used with eight social enterprises in the UK. Data were collected through: semi-structured interviews, formal organisational documents, and field visits and observations. Interviews were conducted with 26 participants who were occupational therapists, service users and social entrepreneurs/managers. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Findings Occupational therapists experienced job satisfaction, professional autonomy and were able to practise according to their professional philosophy. Service users valued support with: employment, routine, social relationships, and developing a sense of identity, particularly outside of a medical model definition. To a degree therefore, people using these services claimed socially inclusive benefits. Challenges with funding social enterprises, however, impacted occupational therapy delivery in some cases. Research limitations/implications The majority of social enterprise research is drawn from case study methodology; however, this was the most appropriate research design to gain greatest insight into a small but developing phenomenon. Further research into occupational therapy practice within social enterprises is required, particularly on the effectiveness of returning to work and social inclusion. Social implications Social enterprises can provide therapeutic environments to promote recovery and social inclusion which is also compatible with occupational therapy practice. Originality/value This is the first known national research into occupational therapy provision in social enterprises within the UK, which evidences a compatibility within occupational therapy practice within a social enterprise environment and the benefits of this.


1991 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Gibbs

ABSTRACTAccording to ‘conventional wisdom’ older people are now relatively well off and, as a result, many are in a position to pay for their own care and housing needs in old age. In reviewing the evidence for this latter proposition the article provides a brief overview for the UK population and the implications of an ageing society for the care services. A summary of the main sources of income available to older people is undertaken, including home ownership and ways of releasing equity which might be employed to generate extra income. On the basis that it is also important to match information about financial resources available to older people to the cost of different services, the article reviews the likely costs of residential and nursing home care and the little that is known about the costs of domiciliary services. In short, the article presents a summary of the relevant background information and examines the issue of whether elderly people could (but not necessarily ‘should’) finance their housing and care needs in old age.


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