School of Public Health
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1633
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
Note: Prior to July 1, 2007, the School of Public Health was named the College of Health & Human Performance.
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Item 'Right to the Active City': Public Recreation and Urban Governance in Baltimore(2014) Bustad, Jacob; Andrews, David; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since the inception of the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks (BCRP) in 1940, public recreation in Baltimore has continued to be restructured in relation to changing modes of urban governance, in particular in regards to the city's network of recreation centers. More recently, the reorganization of recreation resulted in the 2011 Mayor's Recreation Center Task Force plan, which proposed the further reformation of the department and changes to the provision and distribution of recreation centers and recreational services. This dissertation - entitled Right to the Active City: Public Recreation and Urban Governance in Baltimore - draws from a diverse and reflexive theoretical and methodological approach in exploring the historical and contemporary forms, practices and experiences of public recreation in Baltimore, specifically focusing on the city's recreation centers as social and spatial manifestations of the processes of urban governance. In seeking to engage and analyze the individuals, institutions, spaces and practices of urban public recreation, the primary goals of this research are: 1) to examine the intersection of historical and current formations of recreation policy and broader processes of urban governance, including the implications of these changing arrangements for the localized experiences of public recreation; 2) to analyze the spaces of public recreation, in particular the changing forms and practices of planning and design that is embedded within a shift between different `recreation center' models; 3) to draw out and describe the often complex and contradictory inter-relationships between the City government, BCRP, community and non-profit groups and city residents, focusing on the associations that actively construct and constitute an emergent form of public recreation; and 4) to provide a nuanced research approach that both contributes to relevant scholarly fields, including public health, kinesiology, sociology, urban studies and physical cultural studies, and simultaneously seeks to promote the co-production of research that can be engaged by and with those involved in the processes of public recreation. In short, this research attempts to better grasp the lived experiences of the active urban body and urban physical cultures, through an analysis of the planning and provision of recreational sites, services and opportunities in a specific postindustrial metropolis.Item Postcolonial Play: Encounters with Sport and Physical Culture in Contemporary India(2012) Maddox, Callie Elizabeth; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Drawing upon the idea that India and the West are "tethered geographies" (Reddy, 2006), this dissertation project explores how the ongoing and dialogic relationship between contemporary India and the West is represented, experienced, and contested in and through the realms of sport and physical culture. With escalating rates of economic growth, a rapidly expanding middle class, and increasing international political clout, India is emerging as a global power while simultaneously defining itself as a postcolonial nation against, and in tandem with, the West. Utilizing a fluid theoretical vocabulary (Andrews, 2008) and employing mixed qualitative research methods that include participant observation and interviews, I examine how various sites of physical culture serve as points of meaningful exchange between India and the West. This project presents a necessarily partial and contingent understanding of the chosen sites, tempered by considerable reflexivity and self-awareness, as my own Self is intricately enmeshed in this work. The four distinct, yet related, empirical studies that comprise this project thus focus on the following: 1) the embodiment of gendered nationalism and male power as manifested by the Cheer Queens, a cheerleading squad supporting the Pune Warriors cricket team in the Indian Premier League, and the Great Khali, a professional wrestler from India who performs internationally for World Wrestling Entertainment; 2) the city of Delhi's efforts to (re)create itself as a "world class" metropolis by hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games that resulted in spatial exclusion and the magnification of social inequalities; 3) changing body ideals amongst the young Indian middle class influenced by Western fitness practices and neoliberal discourses of healthism; 4) perceptions of authenticity held by Western tourists traveling to India to study Ashtanga yoga that reject the syncretic evolution of yoga and contribute to a construction of Otherness that continues to mark India and Indians as exotic, primitive, and poor. Also included is an "interlude" chapter centered on my personal experiences as a white, Western woman navigating the complexities of daily life in India and questioning the place of my own body within a context of fear, harassment, and assault.