Pairings, duality, amenability and bounded cohomology

We give a new perspective on the homological characterisations of amenability given by Johnson in the context of bounded cohomology and by Block and Weinberger in the context of uniformly finite homology. We examine the interaction between their theories and explain the relationship between these characterisations. We apply these ideas to give a new proof of non- vanishing for the bounded cohomology of a free group.