This article attempts to foreground the importance of everyday life and habit to the reproduction of national identities. Taking issue with dominant linear depictions of the time of the nation, which have over-emphasized ‘official’ histories, tradition and heroic narratives, this article foregrounds the everyday rhythms through which a sense of national belonging is sustained. The article focuses upon institutionalized schedules, habitual routines, collective synchronicities and serialized time-spaces to develop an argument that quotidian, cyclical time is integral to national identity. In (...) conclusion, accounts that discuss the increasing dominance of a postmodern global time are argued to be hyperbolic, since the nation remains a powerful, if more flexible constituent of identity. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate the phenomenon of the meaning of mobility for elders living in rural areas. A phenomenological study was undertaken with older people living in rural South West England and Wales. Ten interviews were undertaken in peoples’ homes and focused on the spatial dimensions of what it was like to live in the rural area and the everyday experiences of traversing rural space. Spatial mobility was experienced by our sample as any of the possible ways that achieved (...) personal life activities where the traverse of space was normally relevant. We describe the meaning of mobility sensitised by the terms used in the “continuum of mobilities” : “literal mobility,” “virtual mobility,” “potential mobility,” and “imaginative mobility.” Our phenomenological findings revealed that the transport and mobility needs of older people living in rural areas could not be meaningfully understood without understanding their well-being priorities, the kinds of movement that constituted well-being, and how this related to the phenomenon of “dwelling,” which included their feeling of “at-homeness” in their rural environment. But also what emerged was a second phenomenon that we have called rural living as a portal to well-being in older people. The connection between well-being and rural place was constituted by two interrelated experiences: the importance of dwelling and slowing down in older age, and the importance of a “rich textured locale” for the well-being of rural older people. We conclude by considering how the elders in our study may have something important to remind us: that mobility and sense of place are mutually implicated and that our present culture places an over emphasis on mobility, which may obscure the value of dwelling. (shrink)

Much commentary indicates that, starting from the 19th century, the home has become the privileged site of private life. In doing so it has established an increasingly rigid separation between the private and public spheres. This article does not disagree with this basic conviction. But we argue that, in more recent times, there has been a further development, in that the private life of the home has been carried into the public sphere--what we call "the domestication of public space." This (...) has led to a further attenuation of public life, especially as regards sociability. It has also increased the perception that what is required is a better "balance" between public and private. We argue that this misconstrues the nature of the relation of public to private in those periods that attained the greatest degree of sociability, and that not "balance" but "reciprocity" is the desired condition. (shrink)