Change is inevitable, we are told. A job is lost, a couple falls in love, children leave home, an addict joins Narcotics Anonymous, two nations go to war, a family member's health deteriorates, a baby is born, a universal health care bill is voted into law. Life comprises events over which we have considerable, partial, or little or no control. The distance between the event and our daily lives suggests a quirky spatial politics. Our lives move forward depending upon how events play out in concert with our reactions to them. Drawing on nearly three decades of geographic projects that involve ethnographies and interviews with, and stories about, young people in North and South American, Europe and Asia and using the innovative technique of ethnopoetry, Aitken examines key life-changing events to look at the interconnections between space, politics, change and emotions. Analysing the intricate spatial complexities of these events, he explores the emotions that undergird the ways change takes place, and the perplexing spatial politics that almost always accompany transformations. Aitken positions young people as effective agents of change without romanticizing their political involvement as fantasy and unrealistic dreaming. Going further, he suggests that it is the emotional palpability of youth engagement and activism that makes it so potent and productive. Pulling on the spatial theories of de Certeau, Deleuze, Massey, Agamben, Rancière, Žižek and Grosz amongst others, Aitken argues that spaces are transformative to the degree that they open the political and he highlights the complexly interwoven political, economic, social and cultural practices that simultaneously embed and embolden people in places. If we think of spaces as events and events encourage change, then spaces and people become other through complex relations. Taking poetry to be an emotive construction of language, Aitken re-visualizes, contorts and arranges people's words and gestures to express the importance of emotions as they affect the way we sense the past, present and future, and help us negotiate events.
Societal notions of fathers have evolved from the distant breadwinner through genial dad and masculine role model to today's equal co-parent. This book seeks to explore the spaces and movements of men-as-fathers. Weaving together theories of space, sexuality and political identity with the stories of fathers from a range of sources, including popular culture, it discusses the way in which geographies of space can disconnect and disempower fathers, while societal notions marginalize and disassociate them from raising children. It explores how fathering identities are shaped by family and community spaces and aims to move the definition of 'fathering' beyond its definition in opposition to 'mothering'. In doing so, it provides insights into the contradictory nature of father's lives and argues that, rather than moving away from the traditional notions of masculine roles, that the emotional work of fathering in itself is an heroic act.
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