School of Geography - Theses
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ItemEnabling adaptation in theory and practice: Place-based perspectives from atoll states( 2022)Barriers to adaptation are a well-established concept in climate change research, however, research into ‘enablers’ or the conditions and factors that facilitate the process of adjusting in response to climate change is emerging. This thesis aims to understand how adaptation enablers are framed within adaptation research, selected atoll literature, and by practitioners undertaking adaptation in atoll states. Atoll states are places that are significantly affected by climate change and where adaptation is urgent. This thesis combines a targeted literature review and academic reflections on adaptation enablers with narrative-based interviews to bring together unplaced theory with grounded perspectives. It finds that there is little consensus of typologies of enablers in adaptation literature, with adaptation researchers reflecting they are broad and highlight a lack of engagement with practiced and placed adaptation. A review of atoll literature demonstrates further specificity for enabling adaptation in place, however, suggested enablers are not informed by practitioner perspectives. Finally, narrative-based interviews reveal enablers that are explained as part of a dynamic process. The results of this thesis show that while there are similarities in the definitions, typologies, and explanations of enablers across all three research questions, there are differences between the way enablers are characterised in the global adaptation literature and way they manifest in place and in practice, making the case for place-based understandings of enablers. This also suggests that more research is needed into how exclusive placed-based enablers are to atoll states.
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ItemTowards an Integrative Model of Disability: The Neighbourhood Experience of People with Mobility Limitations in Tegalrejo, Indonesia( 2022)Much of the literature on disability, place, and mobility in urban contexts is biased towards high-income countries’ viewpoints. Meanwhile, people with disability in low-middle-income countries may conceive and experience disability differently because of different locality and socio-cultural contexts. This research aims to interrogate the mobility experience of people with disability in the urban neighbourhoods of Tegalrejo Sub-District, Yogyakarta City, Indonesia. It involves participation of 14 adults with mobility limitations in Tegalrejo. Data were collected through sit-down interviews using semi-structured questions, sketch mapping, go-along interviews, and GPS plotting/tracking from the beginning to the end of February 2022. Thematic analysis and qualitative GIS were the primary method to analyse data. Findings show the strong impact of cultural practices and differences on disablement processes experienced by research participants, highlighting the need to rethink dominant conceptualisations of disability. I argue that an integrative model of disability is thus needed to understand the complexity of disability from diverse cultures without downplaying the influence of physical, social, and psychological factors, and embedding tactical actions to negotiate everyday challenges as part of embodied experiences.
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ItemMicro geographies of youth movement in Darjeeling, India( 2020)This thesis explores the everyday experiences of young women aged 19 to 21, as they navigate their lives as college students in a regional Indian town. It draws on two months of ethnographic fieldwork in the northeast Indian town of Darjeeling, to explore young women’s everyday movements in and around Darjeeling’s urban and natural settings. It examines the walking and wandering practices of both unmarried and married students, whose patterns of everyday movement shed light on the relationship between young people’s engagements with space and their own gendered journeys through the life course. I analyse these routine spatial practices to consider how young women’s everyday movements are folded into the wider spatial and social rhythms of life in the town. In this way, this thesis analyses the micro geographies of people’s movements, asking: how do young women move through local space, and what does this tell us about their gendered experience of youth? It examines the everyday walking and wandering practices of this group to highlight the gendered experiences of everyday life, within a period of youth marked by anticipation and uncertainty, waiting and expectation. It argues that these movements while ordinary and routine, bead together the tensions, joys and contradictions at the heart of small-town life.
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ItemPlanting a stance: food security in solar geoengineering discourse( 2020)In order to reduce the impacts of climate change, Solar Geoengineering (SGE) is a technology proposed to reduce impacts of climate change, without the need for CO2 intake. SGE is a largely contested technology and prediction of its impact are contentious, including its expected impact on food security. This study investigated different conceptualisations of food security within SGE debates. Through discourse analysis of 30 texts, 3 storylines were established, being a) food security is not significantly addressed, b) food security will improve under SGE and c) food security will worsen under SGE. The storylines were largely differentiated in their understandings of food security, impacts, and agents. Material and ideational power each storyline and their attached actors and practices was investigated. Material power was lacking overall, however there were distinct differences in how ideational power was attributed to each group.
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ItemBeach Dynamics in Response to Varying Boundary Conditions: The Role of Rocks & Tidal Deltas( 2020)Climate change induced variations in modal wave conditions as are increasing the rates of beach erosion globally, impacting coastal land use and infrastructure. Current research underpinning coastal management has focused on understanding the response of open-coast sandy beaches to changes in wave and tide conditions. However, current predictive models and understandings of shoreline change do not apply to all beach systems as they ignore the influence of different boundary conditions, such as geological constraints and estuarine processes, on beach dynamics. To create sustainable management plans for coastlines, a comprehensive understanding of shoreline change across different boundary conditions is required. This research aims to understand how annual-decadal scale beach change varies in response to changing boundary conditions, using Inverloch in Victoria (Australia) as a case study site. A combination of modern and historical aerial imagery between 1950-2020 and UAV-derived elevation models, were used calculate the rates and magnitude of shoreline change. Particle size analysis was performed to determine the energy environment and sediment transport pathways within Inverloch. At Inverloch, shoreline change was found to be spatially and temporally variable, with geological controls being a primary factor moderating wave energy and driving alongshore variations in shoreline change. The modern morphology of the Inverloch coastline is inherited from a series of storms in 2012-2013, which removed large volumes of sand from the open coast and into the Inlet. The volume of sediment eroded from the open-coast was found to account for only 1/6th of the total sediment deposited, suggesting that there are additional sediment sources, which are hypothesised to be the flood-tide delta and adjacent barrier island. This research displays the unique morphodynamic behaviour of estuarine and geologically controlled beaches and highlights the potential sediment transport pathways within estuaries, which can be used to refine current models of shoreline change.
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ItemFrom sandcastles to concrete jungles: researching the sand industry in Victoria, Australia( 2020)Carr and Gibson (2016) call for renewed attention to resources which constitute the making of our modern world. I respond to their call by focusing on sand, a primary ingredient in concrete and the making of the contemporary urban form. A critical but under-studied resource, sand requires further research attention and to address this gap, I conducted fieldwork from June to August 2020 into the sand industry in Victoria, Australia. Research included conducting semi-structured interviews, participant mapping, and site observations. I approached this research by bringing together two key frameworks to illuminate the human and non-human actors involved in the production of sand as a resource. First, I deployed frameworks on the tracing or ‘following’ of commodities (Cook et al., 2004; Tsing, 2015). Second, I looked to the literature on 'becoming' a resource (Zimmermann, 1933). This research approach enabled me to not only identify some key actors in Victoria’s sand trade, but also helped to outline the sand production network, from sites of survey and extraction, to consumption and recycling. In outlining the production network of sand, I was also able to show how sand ‘becomes’ a natural resource, attending to both human and nonhuman actors. The key argument I put forward is that a critical part of attending to the production network and the ‘becoming’ of sand is identification of the rhythms and changes in form that it undergoes as it moves across the production network. In doing so, this thesis aims to extend literature on human environment relations to the realm of sand and the sand industry.
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ItemSurfacing, intensifying and accelerating: how COVID-19 changed social relations in Quanzhou, China( 2020)The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a variety of social, political and economic changes at the global scale. In examining the changing social relations under the influence of the pandemic, this thesis reports the findings of an empirical investigation undertaken in Quanzhou, China. While COVID-19 is considered an overwhelming crisis that created a series of disruptions in people’s everyday lives, it is shown here that the pandemic has influenced the ways people interact with others in a more complex and ambiguous manner. Changes include conflicts occurred to parent-child relationships and spousal relationships in private spaces, as well as othering and digitisation of urban life in public spaces. By examining the observed changes, this thesis demonstrates that rather than being the source of changes, COVID-19 and the resulting policies have played a critical role in surfacing, intensifying and accelerating existing process of change in people’s social relations in the private and public spheres of Quanzhou. It is also evident that through these influences, the pandemic has the potential to facilitate a ‘bounce forward’ from society’s former equilibrium to a new state.