Whilst recent studies suggest that over 95% of British undergraduate students are regularly using social networking sites, we still know very little about how this phenomenon impacts on the student experience and, in particular, how it influences students' social integration into university life. This paper explores how pre-registration engagement with a university Facebook network influences students' post-registration social networks. Research was conducted with first year undergraduates at a British university using an online survey. Students reported that they specifically joined Facebook pre-registration as a means of making new friends at university, as well as keeping in touch with friends and family at home. The survey data also illustrate that once at university, Facebook was part of the 'social glue' that helped students settle into university life. However, care must be taken not to over-privilege Facebook: it is clearly only one aspect of students' more general social networking practices and face-to-face interrelationships and interactions remain important. Students thought Facebook was used most importantly for social reasons, not for formal teaching purposes, although it was sometimes used informally for learning purposes.

The extension of information and communication technologies is purported to provide great opportunities for women, with the potential for empowerment and feminist activism. This paper contributes to the debate about women and cyberspace through a focus on the role of the internet in the lives of a group of technologically proficient, socially advantaged white heterosexual new mothers. The internet played a central role in providing virtual social support and alternative information sources which increased these women's real sense of empowerment in the transition to motherhood. Simultaneously, however, very traditional stereotypes of mothering and gender roles persisted. A paradox is evident whereby the internet was both liberating and constraining: it played an important social role for some women while at the same time it encouraged restrictive and unequal gender stereotypes in this particular community of practice. An examination of new virtual parenting spaces therefore has a contribution to make in understanding changing parenting practices in the new millennium.Key words: Cyberspace, internet, mothers, empowerment.3 Women, the internet and empowermentRecent research suggests that the extension of ICT (information and communication technologies) into virtually every area of society provides great opportunities for women (Cherny and Weise 1996;Kennedy 2000). It is claimed that ICT have the potential for empowering women, enabling feminist activism and resistance to male power (Harcourt 1999;Sutton and Pollock 2000;Youngs 2001). Much has been made of the support, information exchange and political potential afforded to women through online community membership (Kramer and Kramarae 2000;Pudrovska and Ferree 2004;Vehvilainen 2001) and how ICT offer new opportunities for women to develop as entrepreneurs and innovators (Martin and Wright 2005). Others suggest cyberspatial technologies can enable a radical renegotiation of gender relations and challenge patriarchal hegemony (Haraway 1985;Jenson et al. 2003;Travers 2003).However, over zealous claims of the power of ICT for transforming women's lives are not without critics (Gajjala 2003;Gajjala and Mamidipudi 1999;Mitra 2001;Woolgar 2002). Studies have shown how online discourses and practices continue to reflect and reinforce the unequal gender power relations present in onsite institutions and social conventions (Hocks 1999;Josok et al. 2003) and sexist practices abound (Cunneen and Stubbs 2000). Moreover, while the gender gap with regard to internet use is narrowing, the majority of women on the internet still continue to be white academic professionals (Travers 2003). The majority of participants on bulletin boards and listserves are also still men and men also dominate participation volumes and agenda setting even in feminist and mixed-gender cyberspaces (Gurak 2001). Recent studies suggest that effective use of the internet to increase women's empowerment may be overshadowed by its commercialization (Shade 2003) and its role in affirming norms of femi...

Abstract:Both responsibility and care have much to offer in thinking through the relationalities that make up a postcolonial world. Although contemporary political systems often posit responsibility and care within the context of individuated and autonomous selves, geographers have done much to relocate responsibility and care within narratives of interdependency -spatially and temporally. They have argued that both terms offer a route for thinking about ethical geographical relations between myriad places. In this article we take this project further, by looking at how the nature and shape of these relationships might be construed in a postcolonial world. We suggest that, through a more critical engagement with postcolonial thinking, any exploration of existing practices of responsibility and care will not only reveal the enormous potential of imagining these geographies as forms of existing and evolving relationalities, but will also lead us to interrogate the deployments of these terms in the context of past and present inequalities. We show that routing care and responsibility through postcolonial geographies moves us towards a more pragmatic responsiveness, one that involves a ‗care-full' recognition of postcolonial interaction.

Abstract:This paper responds to increasing discussions about responsibility within geography by exploring some of the spatialities imbued in thinking responsibly about internationalisation in the UK Higher Education system, and it uses the over-determined categorisation of the international student as a way in to this exploration. Although international students have been considered from the viewpoint of migration studies, global education studies and critical pedagogical studies, this paper attempts a postcolonial analysis of international students, to consider what forms of pedagogic responsibility are called forth through this framework.Building on bell hooks' call for an 'engaged pedagogy', this paper shows that routing care and responsibility through postcolonial geographies incites a more sharply demanding political praxis.

This article investigates the geography of fear surrounding the use of public parks in Leicester city, Britain. Fear was a major deterrent limiting the use of parks, especially for women, the elderly and Asian and African‐Caribbean people. Certain fears were particularly important for specific groups: women were particularly fearful of sexual attack, the elderly of mugging and Asian and African‐Caribbean people of racial attack. Women and African‐Caribbean people were most liable to alter their behaviour as a result of their fears. The spatial outcomes of fear thus both reflect and reinforce social injustice based on gender and race inequality. As parks are becoming important foci of new environmental strategies for cities it is essential that local government is aware of the spatial consequences of the socially differentiated geography of fear, if all members of the community are to be encouraged to increase their participation in public parks.