Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Fields of Research – 370000 Studies in Human Society – 370100 Sociology'
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1
Sullivan, Martin Joseph. "Paraplegic Bodies: Self and Society." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/1917.
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In this dissertation it is argued that humans constitute themselves as subjects in a complex of interrelationships between body, self, and society, The effects of these interrelationships are examined through the ways in which traumatic paraplegics constitute themselves as subjects following their accidents. Subsequent to paralysis there is a radical break in how paraplegics experience their bodies, in what they are physically able to do, and in the ways in which their bodies are interpreted socially, assigned meanings, and allocated space in which to do and be. Experiential accounts of paraplegia are presented as a means to exploring the implications of these changes in the ways paraplegics constitute themselves as subjects.
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Burgering, Wendy Helen Miller. "Reacting to a ‘Discovered’ Social Problem Through Organisational Adaptation: Case Studies of Child Sexual Abuse Investigation of Seven New Zealand Police Districts." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/1963.
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Organisations operate in an environment buffeted by social change. Child sexual abuse became publicly recognised as a social problem from 1986. The first part of this thesis examines public awareness of, and interest in child sexual abuse, how child sexual abuse arose in New Zealand, the influence of international "moral entrepreneurs" in shaping this recognition and the activities of local "moral entrepreneurs"' including some police officers, in assisting the move of child sexual abuse from the private to the public arena. The second part of this thesis examines organisational change and whether the causes for organisational change are environmentally or managerially driven. Or is it, as this thesis suggests a combination of both. This thesis takes these theoretical arguments and applies them to the process of organisational change that occurred in the New Zealand Police Department, from the development and implementation of the National Abuse Policy for the investigation of child sexual abuse and serious physical abuse. The third part of this thesis examines the interlinking between the main theoretical foci, organisational change and the construction of a social problem. The results of an investigation from key staff, Police and other agency personnel, from seven New Zealand Police Department Districts, interviewed in three waves over a two and a half year period, are reported. The total number of key staff from each wave was 93, 80 and 68. The results of the first part of the thesis is that through effective lobbying by the women's movement and child protection groups child sexual abuse has become a recognised social problem. In the second part of the thesis the following were found to be crucial factors in the shaping of organisational responses to child sexual abuse: The role of middle managers in the implementation of organisational change policies in assigning or not assigning appropriate resources. The role of the top management in the ownership of organisational change policies the procedures. Continual staff turnover and the policy of staff rotation limited the successful implementation and continued support for the National Abuse Policy. This factor, staff turn over and/or rotation, will impact on the success of any organisational change policy. The extent of the training provisions for police officers at all levels within the organisation and the maintenance of that training at a national and district level. Acceptance of the multidisciplinary investigative approach which differed from more traditional policing approaches. The internal and external pressure on the Police to implement and maintain a high profile response in the child sexual abuse field. The results of the third part of the thesis is that the Police Department played a role in the public recognition of child sexual abuse as a social problem and as a result had to implement an operational response through the development of a National Abuse Policy.
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Murray, Georgina. "New Zealand corporate capitalism." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2038.
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This thesis describes the process of concentration and centralisation of the top New Zealand corporate class fraction at three levels - the corporate agent, the corporate agency and the corporate structure. These three different perspectives are seen, first, at the level of the empirical evidence of concentration and centralisation over time, and second, at the level of theoretical explanation and lastly, at the level of the sociology of knowledge, that is, how the theories themselves locate within economic cycles. The two empirical bases of this study are the survey of the top thirty companies directors and the top thirty companies networks of.1966, 1976 and 1986. A centrality analysis used on the latter three data sources, found that at the peak of the longwave (1966) when accumulation was high within the protected New Zealand economy, there were few corporate interlocks, suggesting that centralisation (the destruction of already formed capitals) was not a problem. But by the economic downturn (1986) corporate interlocks had proliferated reflecting the insecure nature of the corporate economy in crisis. The main conclusions drawn from the survey and the centralisation data sources positively corroborate the Marxist thesis that the corporate class fraction (as agents of capitalism) are in a free market economy as much directive as reactive to the state, that banks operate at direct and indirect levels of intervention on this class fraction and that there is some evidence of corporate class cohesion.
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Loveridge, Alison 1955. "Class and occupational mobility among farm employees." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2358.
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Class mobility in farming works both ways, some farmer's children are unable to afford a farm, while others from non-farm families do succeed in farm ownership. The literature reviewed in this thesis suggests this situation is related to New Zealand's economic history. In the past small family farms have benefited from both secure markets and governments whose interests have been closely bound up with high productivity. This has led the state to offer cheap credit to prospective farmers with little cap1al of their own. Upward mobility has been possible, but at the same time state support has enabled relatively small farms to remain viable, and many of these are unable to secure farm ownership for all family members. In this thesis I explore class mobility and career patterns among farm employees and consider their wider implications. There are many ambiguities in farm employment in New Zealand which stem from the predominance of petty bourgeois farm owners. Such farmers must deal with the capitalist markets of other sectors when they purchase inputs or sell their product but family workers may act as a bulwark against commercial pressures by accepting lower incomes. Similar conditions may be forced on working class farm employees with no chance of ownership. The high number of people leaving farm employment offers indirect confirmation of such problems and this thesis investigates the context in which departures occurred. Farm employees consist of three groups, those without interest in farm ownership, those with an interest and little chance of success, and those whose family background ensures farm ownership. Many farms only have one employee and take on non-family labour for short periods when the family labour which would otherwise do the task is unavailable. Some of the people they employ are offspring of neighbouring farm owners. This variation in class interests has exacerbated the disinclination of farm employees to lake collective action in the face of poor wages and conditions. By tracing a sample of farm employees through the electoral rolls over a period of ten years, I have been able to contact three groups of farm employees: those who have left for non-farm work in the intervening period; those who have been farm workers for at least ten years; and those who have since become farm owners. This has given me an insight into the proportion of farm employees who take up farming hoping to own their own farm, and the problems involved in succeeding. People who have left farming also provide an important perspective on farm employment. I have correlated outcome of career by various background factors, principally father's occupation, aspiration, and education. Job history is also important to my analysis. All these factors influence class mobility, and may either increase or mask the action of each other in different circumstances. By looking at mobility I will demonstrate the way class relationships impinge on individual lives.
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Gribben, Melodie Jo. "Social attitudes towards the New Zealand superannuation scheme : a manifestation of normative intergenerational justice : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology at Massey University, Palmerston North." Massey University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1253.
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The purpose of the current study is to investigate New Zealanders’ social attitudes towards the economic support for the aged provided by the New Zealand Superannuation Scheme. The structure and nature of those social attitudes is revealed. The study examines social attitude responses to determine if intergenerational justice plays any role in the nature of support for the aged. One thousand and eighty-three participants were selected from the electoral roll and all were sent a survey pack followed by two subsequent reminders. Five hundred and nineteen people agreed to participate. The hypothesis is that New Zealanders agree that economic support for the aged should be provided through the Superannuation Scheme, but that the nature of this support varies according to demographic characteristics and individual perceptions of intergenerational justice. The survey results found that respondents support the economic provision for the aged in the current Superannuation Scheme. However, they are less prepared to support those mechanisms that maintain the Superannuation Scheme and they consider intergenerational transferability of the Superannuation Scheme as important. A generational difference was found in the survey among younger respondents, those forty-one and below, with regard to need taking precedence for supporting the aged, concerning ideas about assessing the economic circumstances of the aged and ideas about the balance of ‘advantages and disadvantages’ distributed to different generations. Older generations, those respondents aged forty-two and above, supported the social democratic form of the Superannuation Scheme. They believed that entitlement to returns was more important than need and they opposed economic assessments for the receipt of the Superannuation Benefit. However, older generations did not believe that differences in the balance of ‘advantages and disadvantages’ between generations have occurred in New Zealand. The survey results indicate that New Zealand is unique compared with other developed countries in that there is little predictor value or correlation value for most of the demographic characteristics pertaining to welfare attitudes towards the economic support of the aged. Meanwhile, generation and household income have some predictor and correlation value in relation to welfare attitudes towards the New Zealand Superannuation Scheme. Finally, the Superannuation Scheme exists in a momentary formal state. It may be the non-transferability of this Scheme between generations that poses a threat to the economic support of the aged, given that the number of people in New Zealand reaching sixty-five is set to increase dramatically.
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Stuart, Kathy Louise. "Emotional labour and occupational identity : passionate rationality in the New Zealand parliamentary workplace : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University, Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand." Massey University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/833.
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This thesis explores parliamentarians’ emotional labour in their workplace, and argues the enactment of passionate rationality is crucial to how parliamentarians accomplish vocational authenticity. The New Zealand parliamentary workplace is characterised by an elaborate set of feeling rules and a complex emotional culture. On entry to parliament, parliamentarians go through a period of identity transformation akin to a moral career. Parliamentarians must manage emotion to achieve their occupational identities according to local feeling rules. Based on analysis of in-depth group and individual interviews with parliamentarians, and focusing on the passage of the Civil Union Bill as an exemplar of parliamentarians’ emotion work, three interpretative repertoires were identified in their accounts of emotion in the workplace. These repertoires, The Game, The Performance and The Crusade are work-place specific meaning-making resources whose flexible deployment enabled parliamentarians to assert claims of occupational identity and vocational authenticity. These repertoires show the emotional labour involved in parliamentarians’ negotiation of shared meanings around ‘entering’ the occupational role and asserting the authenticity of their new identities. In particular, The Crusade repertoire makes available the subject position of the Knight, the subject position important for accomplishment of being a passionately rational worker. In this thesis, I introduce two new concepts for emotional labour in complex workplaces where that labour has both exchange and use value; emotional convocation and personified emotion. Together these concepts allow for a more thorough theorisation of emotion work than do existing concepts of emotional labour. Although developed in relation to the work of parliamentarians, personified emotion and emotional convocation have utility for understanding other contemporary experiences of work where emotion management within a complex emotional culture is fundamental to both occupational identity and the accomplishment of vocational authenticity.
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Ware, Felicity Jane Rachel. "Youth development, Maui styles : Kia tipu te rito o te pa harakeke, Tikanga and ahuatanga as a basis for a positive Maori youth development approach : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Maori Studies at Te Kunenga ki Purehuroa Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." Massey University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1152.
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The Youth Development Strategy Aotearoa has been seen as an innovative approach to youth development. The E tipu e rea – Rangatahi Development Package was particularly useful for organisations implementing the strategy with Maori youth. There have been successful Maori youth development initiatives, though these have been ad hoc. Nonetheless, the realities and experiences of Maori youth are still not being fully addressed in national policy. This has implications for the support and resourcing of Maori youth development initiatives. Maori youth are members of a range of groups including whanau, hapu, iwi and Maori communities in te ao Maori as well as the wider youth population and New Zealand society. The histories, experiences and viewpoints of each distinct group contribute to diversity in the Maori youth population which presents challenges for Maori youth development. Maori development goals do not adequately focus on Maori youth and youth development theory does not fully consider culture. The challenge is to successfully integrate Maori culture and youth culture in a relevant and meaningful manner so that Maori youth can positively contribute to Maori development and wider New Zealand society. This study examines purakau (narratives) about Maui (Polynesian ancestor) as a template for the analysis of Maori youth development. Interviews were undertaken with a group of Maori youth from the Manawatu region. The research showed tikanga and ahuatanga were relevant to the contemporary daily lives of the participants. The study found that positive development and the realisation of potential for Maori youth was affected by individual and environmental influences. This thesis concludes by making recommendations for policy, practice and further research. Finally, it offers a culturally appropriate theoretical approach for positive Maori youth development.
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Martin, Donna. "Narrative connections : promoting the moral economy of fair trade : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." Massey University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1174.
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Fair trade is an alternative approach to international trade. It is both a social movement and an economic approach that aims to make trade fair for the many small scale producers disadvantaged in international trade. This thesis explores the discursive devices used by fair trade organisations to promote fair trade. These devices have two roles: to promote an ethical connection from consumer to producer and to involve the consumer in the work of fair trade through purchasing behaviour and political action. This second role refers to the politicisation of consumption whereby shopping becomes an act of political solidarity with disadvantaged producers. I explore these devices through narrative analysis, focusing on a thematic analysis of Trade Aid’s publication, Vital. My research is framed by Michael Goodman’s (2004) work on the semiotic production of fair trade. The concept of a reflexive consumer is explored. This is the idea that consumer awareness of the conditions surrounding production can lead to purchasing decisions that reflect care for the distant producer. This opening up of the concept of consumption involves an active and engaged consumer who chooses to purchase fair trade because they feel a connection to the work of these organisations. I am interested in the particular form this information takes in Vital. I apply narrative research methods to explore the meta-narrative of fair trade promoted in Vital that tells the reader about the work of fair trade organisations, the impact this has on the lives of producer and how they can be involved in the story as a consumer and as a global citizen.
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Hunt, Lesley M. "Compliance at work: protecting identity and science practice under corporatisation." Lincoln University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1029.
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When the New Zealand Government restructured the system of the public funding of research (1990-1992) it created Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) as companies operating in a global, market-led economy. One CRI, AgResearch, responded to this environment by corporatisation and instituted a normative system of control of workers which, through strategic plans, vision and mission statements, and performance appraisal processes, encouraged workers to adhere to company goals. This thesis, reporting on an ethnographic study of this CRI, shows how most scientific workers (technical workers and scientists alike) experienced insecurity through estrangement because the contributions they wished to make were less valued both in society and in their work organisation. They were excluded from participation in both organisational and Government policy-making, and felt they did not ‘belong’ anymore. Scientists in particular were also experiencing alienation (in the Marxist sense), as they were losing autonomy over the production of their work and its end use. Scientific workers developed tactics of compliance in order to resist these experiences and ostensibly comply with organisational goals while maintaining and protecting their self-identities, and making their work meaningful. Meanwhile, to outward appearances, the work of the CRI continued. This thesis adds to the sociology of work literature by extending the understanding of the concepts of compliance and resistance in white-collar work, particularly under normative control, by developing two models of resistance. It adds to the stories of the impact on public sector workers of the restructuring of this sector in New Zealand’s recent history, and develops implications for science policy and practice.
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Kennedy, Euan S. "Managerialism as a professionalising catalyst for the front-line practitioner community of New Zealand's Department of Conservation." Lincoln University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1031.
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Since 1984, public service occupations in New Zealand have been subordinated to the over-determined bureaucratic structures of contemporary managerialism. The reactions of front-line public servants to New Management’s unfamiliar ‘market-place’ imperatives and the concomitant loss of occupational autonomy have received very little rigorous qualitative analysis. This study addresses that shortfall, taking as its cue a key question in the sociology of ‘profession’—what arouses or subdues the inclination of bureaucratised occupations to professionalise as a means of reclaiming autonomy? It explains the nature and meaning of strategies adopted by front-line practitioners in New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) to defend their marginalised work conventions and collegial culture. Symbolic interactionist analysis shows that profoundly personal values and beliefs connect vocationally motivated practitioners with their ‘mission’ (to conserve natural and cultural heritage). These powerful intuitive connections play a crucial role in subduing interest in resistance and organised strategic action, principally by converting conservation labour into the pursuit of personal fulfilment. Practitioners respond to managerial intrusions on their core work (the source of their fulfilment) by defending these personal connections rather than group interests. As a result of this introversion, perceptions of ‘community’ and occupational identity are disorganised and become a further reason for inaction. Practitioners resolve the conflict between self-interested pursuit of fulfilment and the altruistic goals of conservation by negotiating an unspoken bargain with DOC’s authority structures. The ‘pay-offs’ for deferral to managerial authority win the space to pursue fulfilment through immersion and conspicuous achievement in work, obviating the need for more concerted defensive action. Accordingly, managerialism has not acted as a professionalising catalyst for this group. NB: The abstract has been revised by the author in the electronic version of this thesis, since the print edition was published.
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Read, Marion. "The 'construction' of landscape : a case study of the Otago Peninsula, Aotearoa / New Zealand." Lincoln University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1604.
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This project has sought to answer the question 'How is landscape made?’ by examining the landscape of the Otago Peninsula on the east coast of the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand. By taking a social constructionist approach, an in depth case study has been completed using ethnographic methods combined with discourse analysis. The theoretical framework adopted led to the research question being refined and divided into two parts. The first seeks to determine the discourses that construct the landscape of the Otago Peninsula. Those identified include discourses of Mana Whenua, agriculture, environmentalism, gardening, heritage, neo-liberalism and the picturesque. These discourses interact and resist one another through networks of power. Thus the second part of the research question seeks to understand these networks and the distributions of power through them. The agricultural discourse is the most powerful, albeit under strong challenge from the environmental discourse and from the impacts of neo-liberalism. Mana Whenua discourses have gained significant power in recent decades, but their influence is tenuous. The picturesque discourse has significant power and has been utilised as a key tool in District planning in the area. Thus, the landscape is seen to be made by the dynamic interactions of discourses. This has two consequences, the first, an emphasising of the dynamism of the landscape - it is a process which is under constant flux as a consequence of both the human interactions with and within it, and the biophysical processes which continue outside of human ken. The second consequence is to stress that the landscape is not a unitary object and that this needs to be recognised in the formulation of policy and landscape management.
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Saeni, Fredrick Dear. "Customary land ownership, recording and registration in the To'abaita Region of the Solomon Islands." Diss., Lincoln University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/869.
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Customary land ownership, recording and registration are complex issues in the Solomon Islands. At present, 87% of the land is held under customary laws. Almost all (some 99%) of the land held under customary law is not surveyed, recorded or registered to the tribes. Customary land disputes have been inhibiting rural development initiatives, which is partly responsible for the ill-being of the people. The Family Tree Approach (FTA) is a process being used within the To'abaita region of the Malaita Province to help address problems in the dilemmas of land ownership, land disputes, land recording, land registration and rural development in land held under customary laws in To’abaita. The FTA is a blend of indigenous epistemology, modern practices and Christian principles. Indigenously, the tribes identify with their land by tracing their origins through genealogies, historical narrations, tribal epics and chants, shrines and properties. Rev. Michael Maelia’u, a Church Minister and a former Parliamentarian, promotes the FTA. The FTA has four pillars (principles) – recognition, reconciliation, recording and registration – which are covered within five sequential phases. For instance, recognition is done in phase one of the process, enabling all members of a tribe to recognize each other. Reconciliation is part of the process, promoting forgiveness and acceptance of tribal members. Recording is an important pillar of the FTA, as its role is to produce documents that will be accepted by the law. Research results show that land registration is also a pillar of the FTA; once customary land is registered to the tribes, land disputes will be resolved, thereby enabling sustainable rural development that improves the people’s well-being. The FTA, however, is currently not formally recognized in the country. It has been used by 12 of approximately 20 tribes within the To'abaita region. Some of the To'abaita tribes have not adopted the FTA for various reasons. The FTA has enabled the disintegrated generations to recognize or identify with one another. It enables public recognition of existing tribes, tribal genealogies, tribal tales, tribal epics, the tribal iii shrines, and the tribal land. Reconciliation has been carried out at both intertribal and intra-tribal levels. The FTA enables identification of people who are residing on land and utilizing resources they do not have a right to. It makes people aware of their roots or the land of their origin, which would then lead to reduced land disputes that constrained development initiatives and the well-being of the people. The results, however, indicated that the FTA has problems either in the approach itself or in its management. It is incapable of achieving its objectives (reducing land disputes, enable rural development, enable tribal land registration, and resettling land that was wrongly acquired). People have split perception of the FTA and the legislation; this therefore reduces potential motivation that is needed to advance the approach. Results of the research also indicated that no proper and serious documentation has been done, despite knowing that it is one of the pillars. In To'abaita, gender and culture are contributing issues, which cause difficulties to the FTA. Also, the FTA lacked financial support. Those that have experience with the FTA believe that the FTA objectives need to be made known to promote motivation to the illiterate people of To'abaita. Adequate communication of issues to improve the FTA is essential. Forming a committee that oversees the design and management of the FTA is necessary for its improvement, and adequate financial support will bring the FTA forward. Chief empowerment by the legislation is essential to enable the FTA to achieve its objectives in the future.
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Menzies, Diane. "Clean and green? Environmental quality on the New Zealand dairy farm." Lincoln University, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1553.
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This study explores issues arising from the adoption of the term 'clean and green' for marketing New Zealand dairy products. Three dimensions of environmental quality were investigated: that of sustainable dairying and best practice for the benefit of farmers and the industry; resource management legislation and being a 'good neighbour'; and export marketing opportunities and issues. The study was undertaken during a time of major structural upheaval in the dairy industry, including yearly company amalgamations in the study area, rapid conversion of farmland to dairying, as well as factory expansion to process the increasing supply of product. The focus of the study was on the individual farmer, how perceptions and preferences are formed, and how in turn, these influence farm practice. World views drawn from Cultural Theory were adopted as the basis for analysis. Farmers were classified according to particular world views and the symbolic and reflexive use of concepts such as 'clean and green' was analysed. A model of overlapping ecological, agricultural and social systems was used to develop a wider understanding of preference formation. Through a mixed methodology, focusing on a case study approach, farmer and stakeholder world views were compared on key themes, including the 'clean green' pastoral myth, 'cues for care' and environmental issues. Media discourse as well as consumer views were used to expand understanding of the context. The study found that both farmers (within their groups) and stakeholders held different objectives and opinions on environmental issues and options for change, based on their various world views and preferences. There was general agreement both among farmers and stakeholders on the New Zealand 'clean green' image and 'cues for care', or signs that indicate good farm management. The reason for this was demonstrated to be the way in which these two aspects are communicated; through symbolic images that each individual perceived in terms of their respective world view. A symbolic form of action, an environmental management system, was trialled with farmers. Analysis indicated that national aspirations created by the 'clean green' pastoral myth required farmers to respond to environmental expectations, but that an image that symbolized environment as care and quality, rather than as place was needed to provide a less ambiguous goal. The findings of the trial were integrated with theory to interpret context and develop policy, strategy and action proposals for a system for environmental quality for the industry. The study has implications for non-regulatory mechanisms relevant to sustainable dairy farming, communication within the rural community, and branding.
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Kuiper, Alison C. "Education for occupational change: a study of institutional retraining in New Zealand." Lincoln University, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1068.
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In the Western world, and specifically in New Zealand, a major impetus for retraining has arisen quite recently and gone largely unnoticed. The new social phenomenon, retraining in the sense of education for occupational change, is examined in this study. Alongside the three traditionally recognised groups of adult learners: those learning for leisure; second chance learners who have been previously educationally disadvantaged; and upskillers who seek to enhance their existing credentials through further tertiary education; is a fourth; the reskillers, those who are seeking education for occupational change. Women are shown to be pioneers in leading social change in this area of retraining. The key questions investigated in this thesis concern the existence of this new phenomenon in New Zealand; whether it is national or worldwide; and whether its origins are local or international. Whether there are distinctive characteristics to the manifestation of this phenomenon in New Zealand is investigated by examining current policy and practice. Additional questions concern whether there are feature of New Zealand employment or education which make upskilling and reskilling more or less likely in this country; the significance of women being the first to take up education for occupational change and what can be learnt from comparison with other countries specifically the Netherlands and England. Education takes place within a set of intersecting socio-political contexts. In the modern world these are simultaneously international, national, local and institutional. They impact on participants in a course of study yet are not often manifest to the individual. 'Learning for life’ is a significant area of both international and national socio-political concern, manifesting itself in a significant set of public discourses and in social phenomena which, as in this case of education for occupational change, are little researched or understood. The historical evolution of public policy relating to adult learners, internationally, and in New Zealand, is documented, with a particular focus on the period from the 1960s onwards. The major theoretical and ideological constructs are outlined and critiqued particularly with reference to public policy in New Zealand. Analysis shows an inexorable shift over time away from knowledge and skills attained through praxis, to knowledge and skills attained through formal institutionalised learning. At the same time as this change was taking place, participation rates in first secondary, and then tertiary, education rose. Concurrently more and more women entered tertiary education in order to make their way into an increasingly credentialised workforce. It is suggested that, credentials are used for screening purposes in addition to providing individuals with knowledge and skills needed for the occupations they enter. Case studies are used to illustrate and document these changes. Policies relating to learning for life are examined with reference to three different countries: New Zealand, England and the Netherlands. Provision of tertiary education for adults is investigated, and then illustrated through the coverage provided by institutions in three cities, Christchurch, Leicester and Utrecht. These studies show that different countries are subject to international geo-political and ideological forces but respond to them in locally and historically determined ways. The case study/qualitative analysis of the Christchurch Polytechnic’s Next Step Centre for Women and the New Outlook for Women courses illustrates the ways in which the twists and turns of public policy in New Zealand over thirty years have affected women wishing to seek education for occupational change. A quantitative study of mature students and their motivations for returning to study at the Christchurch Polytechnic allows for the impact of public policy and institutional provision on a group of mature individuals to be assessed. The study concludes that education for occupational change appears to be more advanced in New Zealand than in the European countries chosen for comparison. This may result more from individual initiative and the conditions which promote this, than from state policy direction or institutional provision. Policy consequences are proposed on the basis of these findings.
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Niatu, A. L. "Dosalsal, the floating ones : exploring the socio-cultural impacts of cruise ship tourism on Port Vila, Vanuatu residents, and their coping strategies." Lincoln University, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1383.
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The purpose of this study was to explore the socio-cultural impacts of cruise ship tourism on Port Vila residents and their coping strategies. The study was conducted in Port Vila over the months of June and July 2006. It employs the use of a qualitative research methodology, of participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with a range of tourism stakeholders, including the government, the church and chiefs, as well as a number of small businesses such as public transport operators, small indigenous tour operators and market vendors. These observations and interviews were conducted at the Mama’s Haus project, Centre Point Market Place, and the main wharf area. This thesis was initially aimed at exploring the strategies that the residents of Port Vila used to cope with the impacts caused by cruise ship tourism. As the research progressed, it become apparent from primary data collected that market vendors have not just adapted to the impacts of cruise ship tourism, but that the consequences of their adaptation may be seen as empowering them. They are empowered not just economically, but also psychologically, socially and politically. However, it must be acknowledged that not all small tourist operators in this study felt positively about the impacts of cruise ship tourism; some may be seen as being disempowered. Furthermore, the empowerment of these market vendors is dependent on the continuous flow of cruise ship visits to Port Vila; something beyond their control. The cancellation of future trips or decrease in the number of cruise ship voyages will have significant consequences for the sustainability of this informal sector and the longevity of these micro-enterprises. The study finding implies that coping strategies should not just address how residents and communities cope or respond to tourism, but should also go further by addressing the consequences of the coping strategies adopted.
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Shen, Fujun. "Tourism and the sustainable livelihoods approach : application within the Chinese context : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Lincoln University /." Lincoln University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1403.
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Tourism has been increasingly used for, and directly linked with, rural poverty reduction in developing countries. In recent years, it has, however, been criticised by rural developers for its lack of concern for the rural poor and for being too increasingly focused on tourism specifically. Instead, it is argued that these inadequacies can be addressed by the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), a widely used organising framework for facilitating poverty reduction. But the application, and to an extent the principles, of the SLA may not fully fit the tourism situation, and vice versa. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding about the relationship between the SLA and tourism needs to be explored. This thesis incorporates a review of the literature on rural and tourism development. Gaps between the SLA and tourism are identified. It is suggested that the SLA cannot fully address the issues when tourism is used as a rural livelihood strategy. New knowledge and thinking are needed. Based on the literature review, a Sustainable Livelihoods Framework for Tourism (SLFT) is proposed as a guiding tool in rural development when tourism is a livelihood strategy. For testing the applicability of the SLFT, a mixed methodology and case study research method was adopted. Three mountainous rural villages, respectively at involvement, development and rejuvenation Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) stages, in central China, were examined. Before implementation of the case study, SLFT indicators were firstly developed. Findings show that the SLFT provides an overall organising framework for the consideration of rural development using tourism as a livelihood strategy at all stages of TALC. Revisiting the SLFT, it is argued that an additional attraction capital should be added to the SLFT. Attraction capital includes natural, cultural, and other attractions, and is defined as all resources used to attract tourist arrivals from which local people benefit for better livelihood objectives. Based on the findings, the SLFT and its key elements are revised to offer a more complete insight and understanding of a tourism livelihood system for the purpose of tourism planning and management. Particular attention is drawn to the newly introduced concept of institutional capital, mainly evidenced in community participation practice. Appropriate institutional policies and practices can ensure local people share the benefits from tourism. The implication of a participatory approach is extended to access to tourist markets, benefit sharing, as well as participation in the decision-making. This research indicates that improvement of livelihood assets by tourism enhances local people’s resilience to vulnerability contexts. Institutional arrangements play an important role in mediating this process as well as the impact of vulnerability contexts through the planning portfolio (e.g., planning, policy-making, and legislation). Future research is suggested to evaluate and improve the SLFT’s applicability in multiple development contexts, and to explore ways of further developing SLFT indicators as a means for evaluating the usefulness of the SLFT.
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Lambert, Simon J. "The expansion of sustainability through New Economic Space : Māori potatoes and cultural resilience." Lincoln University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/309.
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The return of Māori land to a productive role in the New Economy entails the innovation and diffusion of technologies relevant to the sustainable development of this land. Sustainable development requires substantive changes to current land and resource use to mitigate environmental degradation and contribute to ecological and sociological resilience. Such innovation is emerging in 'New Economic Space' where concerns for cultural resilience have arisen as political-economic strategies of the New Economy converge within a global economic space. New Economic Space comprises policy, technology and institutional innovations that attempt to influence economic activity, thus directly engaging with local 'place-based' expressions of geohistorically unique knowledge and identity. This thesis approaches contemporary Māori development from three perspectives. First, by viewing the changing links between ecosystems and communities as examples of innovation diffusion, the evolution of relevant policies, technologies and institutions can be examined for their impact upon Māori resilience. Second, such innovation diffusion can be described as a form of regional development, acknowledging the integral role of traditional territories in Māori identity and culture as well as the distinct legislative and governance contexts by which this land is developed. Third, by incorporating the geohistorical uniqueness of Māori ideas, values and beliefs, standard concepts of political-economy can be reformulated to show an explicit cultural economy – Māori Traditional Economic Space – in which Māori horticulturalists participate in parallel with the New Economy. Two methods are used in the analysis of the participation by Māori horticulturalists in New Economic Space. Fuzzy set/Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) allows the rigorous investigation of small-N studies of limited diversity for their partial membership in nominated sets. This thesis uses fs/QCA to organise theoretical and substantive knowledge of each case study to score its membership in agri-food networks, Māori institutions and post-production strategies, allowing the identification of causal configurations that lead to greater resilience for Māori growers and their communities. The second method is Actor-Network Theory (ANT) that incorporates elements of nature and society, showing the extensive and dynamic entwinement that exists between the two. ANT describes the enrolment of diverse 'actants' by a range of eco-social institutions and the subsequent translation of the resulting assemblages into resilience strategies. The results of this research first show a 'System of Provision' (SOP) in which Māori development strategies converge with non-Māori attempts to expand research and marketing programmes. These programmes seek to implement added-value strategies in supplying novel horticultural products within New Economic Space; parallel 'cultural logics' ensure food is supplied to traditional Māori institutions according to the cultural logics of Māori. In addition to this finding, results also show that the participation of Māori growers in New Economic Space can paradoxically lead to an expansion of the Traditional Economic Space of Māori. This expansion is not simply contingent upon configurations of policy, technology, and institutional innovations that originate in New Economic Space but is directed by Māori cultural logics, located in Māori territories but seeking innovations from an amorphous universal 'core'. The interface between the global New Economy and the localities of a Māori cultural economy is defined by the 'interrogation' of these innovations, and innovators, through eco-cultural institutions in their diffusion to and from Māori land, Māori resources and Māori people. Within the boundaries of this interrogation border resides a malleable assemblage of actants, enrolled by Māori as components of resilience strategies, which can lead to the endurance of Māori culture.
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Simpson, Clare S. "A social history of women and cycling in late-nineteenth century New Zealand." Lincoln University, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1693.
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In the final decade of the nineteenth-century, when New Zealand women began riding the bicycle, they excited intense public debate about contemporary middle-class ideals of femininity. The research question posed is: "why did women's cycling provoke such a strong outcry?" Three nineteenth-century cycling magazines, the New Zealand Wheelman, the New Zealand Cyclist, and the New Zealand Cyclists' Touring Club Gazette, were examined, along with numerous New Zealand and British contemporary sources on women's sport and recreation, etiquette, femininity, and gender roles. The context of the late-nineteenth century signifies a high point in the modernisation of Western capitalist societies, which is characterised in part by significant and widespread change in the roles of middle-class women. The bicycle was a product of modern ideas, designs, and technology, and eventually came to symbolise freedom in diverse ways. The dual-purpose nature of the bicycle (i.e., as a mode of transport and as a recreational tool) enabled women to become more physically and geographically mobile, as well as to pursue new directions in leisure. It afforded, moreover, increasing opportunities to meet and socialise with a wider range of male acquaintances, free from the restrictions of etiquette and the requirements of chaperonage. As a symbol of the 'New Woman', the bicycle graphically represented a threat to the proprieties governing the behaviour and movements of respectable middle-class women in public. The debates which arose in response to women's cycling focused on their conduct, their appearance, and the effects of cycling on their physical and moral well-being. Ultimately, these debates highlighted competing definitions of nineteenth-century middle-class femininity. Cycling presented two dilemmas for respectable women: how could they cycle and retain their respectability? and, should a respectable woman risk damaging herself, physically and morally, for such a capricious activity as cycling? Cyclists aspired to reconcile the ignominy of their conspicuousness on the bicycle with the social imperative to maintain an impression of middleclass respectability in public. The conceptual framework of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical perspective is used to interpret the nature of heterosocial interactions between cyclists and their audiences. Nineteenth-century feminine propriety involved a set of performances, with both performers (cyclists) and audiences (onlookers) possessing shared understandings of how signals (impressions) ought to be given and received. Women on bicycles endeavoured to manage the impressions they gave off by carefully attending to their appearances and their behaviour, so that the audience would be persuaded to view them as respectable, despite the perception that riding a bicycle in public was risqué. In this way, women on bicycles attempted to redefine middle-class femininity. Women on bicycles became a highly visible, everyday symbol of the realities of modem life that challenged traditional gender roles and nineteenth-century formality. Cycling for New Zealand women in the 1890s thus played a key part in the transformation of nineteenth-century gender roles.
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Quan, Truong Tan. "Transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture in Quang Binh Province, Vietnam." Lincoln University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1557.
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The purpose of the study was to investigate how farmers in Quang Bing Province, Vietnam have been making the transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture. This process began in 1986 when the Vietnam economy changed from central planning to a market orientation. The research strategy was based on case study analysis of two communes in each of three agro-ecological zones, defined as coastal, plains and mountains. Within each commune there were six embedded household case studies, i.e 36 in total. Case studies were selected purposively to capture diversity of agro-ecological zones, market access and communications, wealth and income status, and ethnic communities. Households were interviewed twice; first in either late 2006 or early 2007, and again in late 2008. The study was approached using a constructivist paradigm and a lens of livelihood analysis, focusing on resources, institutions, interventions and the dynamics of change. Particular attention was given to the development of markets (inputs, outputs, land, labour and credit) and supply chain factors. Separate measures of commercialisation were constructed based on outputs and inputs, and at the level of both individual activities and the overall household. Investigations were informed by existing theory, but no hypotheses were tested. Instead, the research focused on emergent patterns and insights, and the enrichment and modification of existing theory. A review of literature indicated that the transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture in Vietnam was different from other countries on account of the specific combination of low technology agriculture, typical of much of developing Asia, combined with the transformation from a centrally planned economy to a market orientation as occurred in Central and Eastern European countries. At commune level, the key determinants of commercialisation were strong physical connections to markets, with good road access being paramount. Once all weather road access for motorised vehicles was available, then rapid commercialisation occurred. Supply chains typically developed faster for outputs than inputs. New technologies that increased the yield of basic food crops, and facilitated by Government and NGO programs, led to the release of land resources no longer required for meeting food security needs. Households retained their production of food crops that provided food security, and added additional cash earning activities. At the level of individual households, the commercialisation process was led by entrepreneurial families who perceived opportunities relating to profitable activities, and combined this with hard work. Often these opportunities were linked to what they had observed or learnt elsewhere. Once first movers took up a new technology, others observed and followed. There were many enabling factors, such as access to land, access to capital, and access to credit. However, none of these could be considered a determinant, in that the absence of any one factor did not by itself preclude successful commercialisation. Absence of an active male worker was a major constraint to commercialisation, as was lack of necessary crop and livestock skills. There was evidence that income disparities were increasing between the wealthy and the poor. Output commerciality across all households averaged 88 % in 2008 and was higher for wealthy households (95 %) than poor households (83 %). All households still produced their own food crops, but these crops had low market values and hence had a low impact on the output commerciality index. Output commerciality measured in percentage terms obscured that wealthy families had net incomes almost 13 times greater than poor households. A major theoretical insight was that key commercialisation factors are multiple and context dependent. Accordingly, there is a need in any investigation for a holistic approach, based on a livelihood framework that incorporates the complexities associated with the development of markets, as well as giving consideration to the range of interventions and institutional policies that impact on livelihood development.
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Kartikasari, Sri Nurani. "Your biodiversity in my backyard : key local stakeholders' perceptions of biodiversity conservation in Gorontalo, Indonesia." Lincoln University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1188.
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The establishment of protected areas (PAs) has been the key national strategy in biodiversity conservation, through preserving the unique wildlife and ecosystems in Indonesia. As well as their status as sites rich in biodiversity, PAs are also important for socio-economic interactions. Hence the management of PAs has been fraught with technical, social and economic problems. To ensure greater local participation and support in tropical forest conservation initiatives, it is vital to understand how local stakeholders perceive them. This research was undertaken in Gorontalo Province by examining the views of local stakeholders through a combination of qualitative interviews and quantitative ranking exercises. The findings revealed that respondents only understood the concept of biodiversity on a general level. Most respondents defined biodiversity in terms of its elements; only a few were able to describe the interactional attributes, by which biodiversity functions within the ecosystems. Their appreciation of forest biodiversity was primarily due to economic and ecological benefits they derive from local forests. Accordingly, respondents ranked the provision of ecological services from the forests as the strongest reason for protecting it. Using Wood et al. (2000) analytical framework to examine the root causes of biodiversity loss, the findings indicated respondents’ familiarity with human-induced forces resulting in the degradation and loss of natural forests, and they understood how these affect local biodiversity, both within and beyond the forest. Some critical disconnections between national policy in forest conservation and the reality of the local use of forest resource became apparent. At the core of these disconnections was an unequal share of benefits of such policy to local stakeholders. They identified extraction of species and physical alteration of the forest ecosystem as direct drivers of forest loss; these were perceived as rooted in poverty, institutional failures in forest management, ignorance of the wider forest functions, and conflict of development policies at the local level. The main reason for biodiversity loss can be summed up as widespread and persistent failure to properly understand, quantify, or value the goods, services, functions and capital value of the natural forests, at both national and local levels. Overall, most respondents held negative attitudes towards protected forests and their positive attitudes towards conservation activities were linked with tangible benefits they enjoy from the forest. A key finding of this study is that the conservation of biodiversity cannot be considered in isolation from broader patterns of natural resource use and the socio-political context in which people carry out their lives. This study suggests that the implementation of the centrally-controlled and preservationist conservation approach in Gorontalo has been ineffective in achieving conservation goals. This is due to the lack of a clear connection between this policy and the reality of local forest users.
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Winter, N. A. "Change in juvenile justice policy : implications for rights and responsibilities : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Science at Lincoln University /." Diss., Lincoln University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1286.
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Changes in juvenile justice are often attributed to increases in offending and media attention to crime. A "cycle" of reforms, which alternate between punitive and treatment type responses has been identified. This study explores the possibility that wider socio-political events also have implications for reforms. Nations in which welfare and juvenile justice systems are highly integrated, may exhibit different patterns of policy change than those observed elsewhere. Changes in juvenile justice policy in New Zealand and Sweden are examined. The implications of policy change for the rights and responsibilities of those involved in the juvenile justice system are also examined. This includes the State, juvenile offenders and their parents and the victims of crime. Particular attention is given to the status of parental rights.
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Powae, Wayne Ishmael. "Fair trade coffee supply chains in the highlands of Papua New Guinea : do they give higher returns to smallholders? : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science at Lincoln University /." Diss., Lincoln University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/1413.
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This research focussed on Fair Trade (FT) coffee supply chains in Papua New Guinea. Three research questions were asked. First, do small holders in the FT chains receive higher returns than the smallholders in the conventional chains? Secondly, if smallholders in the FT coffee chains receive higher returns from their coffee than the smallholders in the conventional chains, what are the sources of these higher returns? Finally, if smallholders in the FT chains don't receive higher returns than in the conventional chains, what are the constraints to smallholders receiving higher returns from the FT coffee chains than the conventional chains? A conceptual framework for agribusiness supply chain was developed that was used to guide the field work. A comparative case study methodology was selcted as an appropriate method for eliciting the required information. Four case study chains were selected. A paired FT and conventional coffee chains from Okapa and another paired FT and conventional chains from Kainantu districts, Eastern Highlands Province were selected for the study. The research found that smallholders in the FT chains and vonventional chains receive very similar prices for their coffee (parchment price equivalent). Hence, there was no evidence that smallholders in the FT chains received higher prices or returns from their coffee production than smallholders in conventional chains. This study also found that there was no evidence of FLO certification improving returns to smallholders in the FT chains over those returns received in the conventional chains, but the community that the FT smallholder producers come from did benefit. The sources of these community benefits lies in the shorter FT chains and the distributions of the margin that would have been otherwise made by processors to producers, exporters and the community. In addition, this study found that constraints associated with value creation are similar in all the four chains studies. However, there are some added hurdles for the FT chains in adhering to FT and organic coffee standards. Moreover, FT co-oeratives lacked capacity to trade and their only functions were to help with FLO certification and distribute the FT premium to the community. The findings of this research support some aspects of the literature, but not others. The research contribution is the finding that in this period of high conventional coffee prices, returns to smallholders from FT chains were no bettter than the returns gained in conventional chains, which leads to oppotunism and lack of loyalty by smallholders in the FT chains. The other contribution of this research is in identifying a particular type of free rider who is not a member of the FT co-operative but has right to the community benefits generated by the FT chain.
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Thomson, Grant. "Community small scale wind farms for New Zealand: a comparative study of Austrian development, with consideration for New Zealand’s future wind energy development." Lincoln University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10182/961.
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In New Zealand, the development of wind energy is occurring predominantly at a large scale level with very little opportunity for local people to become involved, either financially or conceptually. These conditions are creating situations of conflict between communities and wind energy developers – and are limiting the potential of the New Zealand wind energy industry. The inception of community ownership in small scale wind farms, developed in Europe in the late 20th Century, has helped to make a vital connection between wind energy and end users. Arguably, community wind farms are able to alleviate public concerns of wind energy’s impact on landscapes, amongst a wide range of other advantages. In Austria, community wind farms have offered significant development opportunities to local people, ushered in distributed generation, and all the while increasing the amount of renewable energy in the electricity mix. This thesis investigates whether community small scale wind (SSW) farms, such as those developed in Austria, are a viable and feasible option for the New Zealand context. The approach of this thesis examines the history of the Austrian wind industry and explores several community wind farm developments. In addition, interviews with stakeholders from Austria and New Zealand were conducted to develop an understanding of impressions and processes in developing community wind energy (CWE) in the New Zealand context. From this research an assessment of the transfer of the Austrian framework to the New Zealand situation is offered, with analysis of the differences between the wind energy industries in the two countries. Furthermore, future strategies are suggested for CWE development in New Zealand with recommendations for an integrated governmental approach. This research determines that the feasibility for the transfer of the Austrian framework development of ‘grassroots’ community wind farms in the next 10 years is relatively unlikely without greater support assistance from the New Zealand Government. This is principally due to the restricted economic viability of community wind farms and also significant regulatory and policy limitations. In the mid to long term, the New Zealand government should take an integrated approach to assist the development of community wind farms which includes: a collaborative government planning approach on the issue; detailed assessment of the introduction of feed-in tariff mechanisms and controlled activity status (RMA) for community wind farms; and development of limited liability company law for community energy companies. In the short term, however, the most feasible option available for the formation of community wind farms lies in quasi community developments with corporate partnerships.
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Bedggood, Janet Lindsay. "Bolshie Women: Resisting State Reform in New Zealand." 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/1021.
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This thesis looks at the way the historical oppression of women in capitalist society is reproduced through a continuing gender division of labour at home and in the workplace. Women's primary responsibility for domestic labour in the home both defines and disadvantages them in the labour market. I argue that changing women's inferior status under capitalism depends on women organising for equality in the labour market. I develop the argument around women's status by looking at the way state activity shaped the conditions for social reproduction in the post-war period of capitalist growth followed by the onset of economic decline and state restructuring in New Zealand. I take a classical Marxist political economy approach to explain the end of the post-war boom as a 'structural crisis' of falling profits requiring the state to act for capital by establishing the conditions for the market to 'restructure' production to restore the conditions for profitability. The thesis focuses on the reduction of state welfare provision which impacted on women both as domestic labourers and wage labourers. These measures generated opposition. First, government's proposal for domestic purpose beneficiaries to undertake 'workfare' signaled a (failed) attempt to propel these women into work as a reserve army of labour and out of their primary role as domestic labourers supported by the state. Second, reducing state spending on the 'social wage' impacted directly on women workers in state sector areas of education and health. I interviewed women teachers who were active in their unions in resisting the pressures of reform and defending their jobs. The most politically conscious teachers were Marxists who agitated to advance workers from a trade union consciousness to a class consciousness. They understood that the union struggle was a class struggle of workers against a capitalist class on the offensive. They challenged union bureaucrats in accommodating to this. In their interventions, these women demonstrated the possibilities for overcoming gender inequality not through separatist strategies or liberal reforms that leave capitalist structures intact but through the transformative potential of union struggle for the 'socialist project'.
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Paton-Simpson, Grant R. ""Underconsumption" of Alcohol as a Form of Deviance – Minimum Drinking Norms in New Zealand Society and the Implications of their Production and Reproduction During Social Occasions." 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/1964.
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The deviance and alcohol literatures do not theorise expectations about minimum levels of alcohol consumption in any significant detail. Nor do they develop the notion that drinking less than is expected can be defined as a form of deviance. In response to this gap in the literature this thesis introduces and elaborates the concept of "underconsumption", defined briefly as the violation of minimum drinking norms. The thesis is also concerned to describe the key processes through which minimum drinking norms are produced and reproduced in social occasions' to demonstrate the public health significance of minimum drinking norms, and to provide evidence for the reality of "underconsumption" as a form of deviance in New Zealand society. Empirical research relied on face-to-face interviews, phone interviews, and postal surveys of 113 men - most of them abstainers or "light" drinkers. The main rationale was that likely violators of minimum drinking norms would be the most likely to have noticed and remembered the expression of minimum drinking norms. Transcripts and questionnaires were analysed with the assistance of qualitative database software. An important finding was that minimum drinking norms are in evidence throughout a broad cross-section of New Zealand society. It was also concluded that two of the main processes through which minimum drinking norms are produced and reproduced - people's reactions to abstention and lighter drinking styles and alcohol-centred hosting practices - continue to be in evidence. The relevant reactions and practices were also identified in a wide range of social groups. Furthermore, the case was presented that minimum drinking norms have potentially negative consequences for both individual "underdrinkers" and for societal levels of alcohol-related problems. These findings have important implications for the public health community and it is suggested that reference to a developed theory of "under-consumption" may have potential benefits for the planning of public health strategies and for public health policy. This research can also be seen to contribute to the alcohol literature, the deviance literature on alcohol, and the broader sociological literature on deviance. In the latter case, the analysis of "underconsumption" is most valuable by virtue of its status as "beneficial deviance".
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Suaalii, Tamasailau M. "Le Matuamoepo: competing 'spirits of governing' and the management of New Zealand-based Samoan youth offender cases." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2570.
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This thesis considers the 'spirits of governing' that currently frame youth justice approaches to Samoan youth offending in New Zealand, today. It claims that, in the current management of Samoan youth offending cases, three main spirits of governing are in play. These are the spirits of neo-liberal risk management cultural appropriateness, and faaSamoa. All three spirits operate simultaneously, in multilayered and intersecting ways. Gaining insight into this complexity is critical to building an understanding of the points of tension that may arise in the operationalisation of 'culturally appropriate' youth justice policies in the case of Samoan youth offenders. To highlight the complex character of these spirits of governing and their relationships, the thesis first describes each spirit of governing and then considers how they compete, intersect and/or diverge through a close analysis of seven youth justice cases. Analysis of each of the seven cases is based on interviews with a Samoan youth offender, a family representative, their CYFS social worker, police youth aid officer, Youth Court youth advocate and a community intervention programme worker. The key sites of government examined in this work are those of the family, the Youth Court, the youth justice family group conference and a community intervention programme service. The thesis reveals that to gain nuanced understanding of the complexities of managing a Samoan youth offender case, it is not simply a question of knowing what 'spirits of governing' are at play, one also needs to examine how they play. I contend that these three 'spirits' have specific relationships with each other. In youth justice, neo-liberalism opened up space for cultural appropriateness which, in turn allowed for the circulation of the faaSamoa. These three 'spirits', however, can not be reduced to each other because of their differing understanding of governmental strategies, techniques and subjects. In particular, they differ on their understanding of the role of families, of collaboration and of cultural expertise. Consequently, for example, while these three 'spirits of governing' 'agree' on the value of cultural appropriateness, they do not 'agree' on how it should be defined and measured. Too often when politically sensitive programmes or policies, such as those involving ethnic-specific cases, do not work, the response from politicians and programme personnel alike is to couch their failures in overly simplistic terms. This work seeks to indicate the importance of developing culturally nuanced models of analysis that can engage in the complexities of governing across cultural divides, in the improvement of practice in the field and in the development of a sociology capable of enhancing cross-cultural understanding.
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Baird, Samuel William. "The transformation on an icon in the new economy : a theoretical and empirical exploration of the New Zealand reforms : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand." 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1698.
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This thesis is concerned with the impact of neo-liberal reforms, initiated in response to the exigencies of a new technologically-driven global economy, on a conservative interventionist state. It is a sociological work, which encompasses history, politics, economics, organisations, social action and societal change. Between 1984 and 1990, the Fourth Labour Government embarked upon the reform of the structure and operation of the New Zealand economy. That reform ranks amongst the most radical and far-reaching in twentieth century New Zealand. Not only were the scope and magnitude of the changes significant but they were also implemented with a rapidity that took most of the country by surprise. Consequently, New Zealanders were exposed to a new and flexible economy, where market forces provided a major contrast with the ideals of equity and consensus that had shaped social conditions since the 1950s. This new environment had significant implications for the career expectations and working environment of many people, and for the delivery and content of public services. This thesis adds to the existing body of knowledge on the New Zealand reforms by capturing and investigating the perspectives of key actors who were involved, in a number of ways, with the transformation of the economy. It explores the theoretical and empirical basis of the reform programme, the restructuring process, the nature and scale of an intense commercialisation strategy, the attitudes of a new generation of workers and the reactions of New Zealanders when their ontological security came under threat. Key aspects of the reforms are framed and analysed through the transformation of the New Zealand Post Office from an icon of the interventionist state, a major employer and key service provider - to a commercial enterprise which sought to be a competitive, flexible, profit-driven organisation typical of the new economy. The experiences of politicians and senior managers who were responsible for this transformation through to individuals who depended on the organisation for services and jobs, are represented in the thesis as indicative of the actions and responses of New Zealanders, generally, regarding much broader social and organisational changes brought about by the reforms.
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Mila-Schaaf, Karlo. "Polycultural capital and the Pasifika second generation : negotiating identities in diasporic spaces : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand." 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1713.
Full textAbstract:
This research examines the ways in which the Pasifika second generation who have grown up in Aotearoa are operating culturally and explores the conditions in which they construct identities. The study took a positive deviance approach focusing on existing strengths within the Pasifika generation and learning from success. Taking a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, the project analysed data from the Youth2000 Survey, which included over one thousand Pasifika participants (n=1114). This showed that pride in Pasifika identities, reporting that Pasifika values were still important, feeling accepted by other people within one’s own ethnic group and outside it, and continuing to speak Pasifika languages were all associated positively with advantageous health, educational or wellbeing variables. Individual interviews with fourteen high-achieving, second generation Pasifika professionals, further explored connections between identity, acceptance and belonging. Second generation participants talked about performing identities across many spaces of symbolic interaction where they were called into relation with multiple others. These were local, cross-cultural, national and transnational relational spaces made possible via migration, diaspora, and relocation resulting in complex negotiations of sameness and difference. In these spaces they encountered competing narratives about who Pasifika peoples ought to be. The diasporic second generation often had to negotiate belonging from beyond the limits of what was validated as having most symbolic authority. Symbolic struggle and the politics of cultural reproduction came to the fore, as did the contested nature of Pasifika imaginaries. Identifications were further complicated by demands for crosscultural coherence and legibility across spaces, and shifting politics of recognition. Polycultural capital was coined to describe the ability to accumulate culturally diverse symbolic resources, negotiate between them and strategically deploy different cultural resources in contextually specific and advantageous ways. Performing strategic essentialism, strategic ignorance, strategic hybridity, dialogic distance, and bridging, were just some of the patterns identified. Manulua describes an aesthetic of shifting multidimensional cultural resolutions across many spaces in-between.
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Watson, Bronwyn. "A gendered undertaking : the feminisation of after-death work in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, Massey University, Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1609.
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Long after women have successfully entered many other occupational fields once considered to be 'men's work' they have remained a small minority in after-death work in the funeral industry in Aotearoa New Zealand. Women and their contributions to the funeral industry have been excluded, marginalised and devalued. In the last decade, however, there has been a marked increase in the numbers of women funeral directors and embalmers. In the same decade, the occupational specialism of funeral celebrant, comprising a large majority of women, has been established to fulfil a growing demand for non-religious funeral ceremonies. This thesis examines the means by which men have excluded and marginalised women from the funeral industry in Aotearoa New Zealand. More importantly, it examines the ways women are successfully overcoming exclusion and marginalisation by men. To this end I analyse research material from a range of sources. These include: unstructured interviews with funeral directors, embalmers, celebrants, clerical workers and members of clergy; my observations from previous funeral industry research and fifteen years' experience as organist in the industry; plus data from the association magazines of the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand. To develop a theoretical framework with which to explain how women are surmounting exclusion and marginalisation, I draw on two strands of literature that highlight different aspects of women's involvement in paid work. The first strand includes theories of gendered occupational control, focusing on both practice-based and discursive-based strategies of gendered closure. This strand reveals women's exclusion from, and their strategies for entering, the funeral industry. The second strand of literature focuses on theories of gendered organisational structures, culture and power, uncovering women's marginalisation within the funeral industry. There are five analytical chapters. The first two are largely historical, examining the masculinisation and commercialisation of after-death work, and the ways women and their contribution to after-death work have been devalued and made invisible. The third and fourth analytical chapters investigate men's and women's closure strategies in after-death work. The fifth is a discussion of the ways women promote and position their contribution to after-death work by claiming that, as women, they bring different values from men to after-death work. In this, they adopt discourses of new professionalism; resistant discourses invert the masculinist discourses of the old model of professionalism, valorising long denigrated 'feminine' attributes. I argue that the hierarchical gendered boundaries in the funeral industry stem from the early development of funeral firms in Aotearoa New Zealand as family firms, plus their failed attempts, throughout the twentieth century, to achieve professional status. In this, they reflect the patriarchal power of the masculinist projects of modernity, the society in which funeral director leaders established their professional project. Further, I argue that the failure of their professional project has, paradoxically, facilitated the men's continuing discrimination of women by leaving access to education in the industry's control. I also argue that the recent rise of women in the funeral industry reflects the growing feminisation of the public sphere, with a subsequent increase in women funeral industry clients, who bring different expectations and needs from those of men clients. Women after-death workers claim to facilitate the needs of women and men clients: they are able to do the work equally as well as men, while also drawing on skills they have learned from their experiences as women.
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Lunt, Neil T. "Contested inheritance : the emergence of social science research in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Policy at Massey University." 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1619.
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The substantive task of the thesis is to explore a dimension of social change - the emergence of social science research within New Zealand by 1984. The thesis begins by asking questions about the status of any account - as description, understanding, or explanation. In the first instance, these questions are discussed within positivist and anti-positivist traditions. Following on from these, the work examines a series of post-positivist approaches that focus on method, general theory, and methatheorising. Many accounts of social science development emphasise the role of a rational social science idea, others stress contextual considerations. In finding these wanting, the thesis argues for the incorporation of culture, structure and agency, and discusses attempts at resolving these within the work of Anthony Giddens and Andrew Abbott. The final part of the theoretical discussion explores the potential of Critical Realism for causal analysis. Within this tradition, Margaret Archer's work is particularly useful with its commitment to robust notions of agency, culture and structure, and emphasising their interplay through time. With some modest revision to attune her position to the demands of practice, the thesis suggests 'Retroductive Narrative Realism' that incorporates ontological insights and the two practical moves of analysis and narrative. The thesis argues that these moves must be explicit, using the analytic to create hypothesis that are then tested via narratives that link emerging structural and cultural forms. The thesis uses this approach for the substantive task of writing a theoretically informed account of social science research. It works within the spheres of State, University and broader social spaces, centring interests and the role of conditioned interaction. The account is presented within four phases: the inheritance - research by the State for the purposes of the State; in search of independent means - research by the State of broader social forms; alternative benefactors - research of social issues by broader social and University interests; on the brink of bankruptcy - a questioning of the State and social forms by social and University interests. Over these four periods it is possible to trace the emergence of social research, then social science, and then specific disciplines.
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Suttisa, Choopug. "Civil society in the Chi River, Northeast Thailand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Policy and Social Work at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1550.
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The thesis 'Civil Society in the Chi River, Northeast Thailand', aims to answer the questions of what civil society means in the Northeast Thai village context, which factors make civil society proactive and how civil society is activated. Participatory action research (PAR) was carried out in two communities in the Chi River Basin to answer the inquiries. The research discusses the contexts of the Northeast Region and the two communities in the Chi River Basin. The people in this area are of the Thai-Laos ethnic group and hold particular beliefs in an amalgam of Buddhism and animism which creates cultural rituals that are different from other regions. The society is based on kinship ties. The economic situation has transformed from an agrarian society to a commercial agriculture society. Through the research process the new term of 'grounded civil society' was created. It means 'the sphere of an autonomous group of local people who actively participate in collective action to deal with their struggles and promote their common interests by mobilizing cultural and social capitals in consort with other people to productively solve their problems. Grounded civil society may include traditional forms of mutual assistance, and formal or informal social associations. It seeks to have a significant influence on public policy at any level'. The research found that grounded civil society was activated by both outside and inside factors. The outside factors included the negative effect of government development projects and the intervention of the participatory action research, which stimulated local people to engage in civil society. The inside factors activating civil society were the poor economic conditions of the villagers and the social capital existing in the communities. The social capital was built up around kinship ties and cultural capital, which generated the social values and norms of the local people. The research concluded with an analysis of the causal links between social capital and civil society claiming that social capital facilitated the creation of civil society. Further research possibilities are suggested.
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Sanders, Jacqueline Ruth. "Subject child : the everyday experiences of a group of small town Aotearoa/New Zealand children : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1624.
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This thesis presents an ethnographic account of everyday life for eighteen healthy and safe, small town, Aotearoa/New Zealand children aged between ten and eleven years. It undertakes a social constructionist analysis of five domains of the children's lives; self and identity, their relationships with each other, their relationships with adults, time and space, and safety and risk. These domains reflect the intersection between the children's own lives and their wider contexts. The approach taken is consistent with the new social studies of childhood perspective that has been articulated over the past 15-20 years. This approach, developed in response to a perceived over-determinism in the developmental accounts of childhood, brings to the foreground the need to document more fully children's standpoints. The children held a sense of themselves as good people and their thoughts about the future, relationships and themes of stability were prominent areas of self-development for them. Their friendships provided important social and emotional resources. Making and sustaining friendships involved delicate processes of positioning and while they provided emotional sustenance they could also be a source of confusion and anxiety. Intense friendships were important for both boys and girls. Relationships with adults were critical and time was an important component of good relationships. The children thought about time in a variety of ways, but the linear progression of time from the present out to the future was not a strong component of this. Home was important place to the children, home as stability, as a place for time with parents and for free time were prominent themes. It was also a place of self-care for a number of the children. School time was experienced as time to play with friends and socialise, and schoolwork time. Social time was more prominent in the children's thinking than work time. Global discourses about risk and safety played a powerful role in influencing the ways in which the children spent their time, particularly the ways in which they utilised public spaces. The children were keen to participate in the research and were insightful social commentators demonstrating a passionate interest in being able to express their views and to think about the way that different dimensions of their social worlds influenced the things they were able to do.
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King, Peter Stanton. "Land and lineage : the articulation of social and physical space in an atoll village : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University." 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1306.
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This thesis examines relationships between the social and physical environments of a village on Butaritari atoll in Kiribati. The system of ambilineal descent and land inheritance obtaining there results in complex networks of genealogical relationships which affect most aspects of social life, including land rights. While previous studies conducted in Kiribati have recognised the intimate connection between genealogy and land rights, none has investigated its ramifications for the distribution of land rights within a community. In contrast, this study engages that question as a central concern using a framework which integrates Bourdieu's concepts of social space, field and habitus with post-neo-Darwinian ideas about the relationship between organism and environment. The social space was found to be primarily structured by relationships based upon genealogy and secondarily by age and gender, each of which constituted a field within the wider social space. The genealogical field was defined by a network of positions, each representing a particular descent group. In accordance with the prevailing system of ambilineal descent, residents could belong to more than one descent group and it was upon the resulting networks of relationships between descent groups that the disposition of those groups within the genealogical field was defined. Because land-use rights were associated with genealogical connections the reconstruction of the genealogical field encompassing all of the village residents was a necessary precursor to discovering the distribution of those rights and the genealogical field was a central point of articulation between the social and physical spaces. The fields of age and gender relations provided further points of articulation between the social and physical spaces, the natures of which are examined through discussion of the material culture of the village and village and island politics. Despite a contemporary ideology of egalitarianism there were vestiges of a former hierarchy of social status groups. While the inter-group obligations, rights and responsibilities associated with this hierarchy were no longer practised, the association of contemporary residents with those social status groups bore a relationship to their position within the genealogical field and the amounts of land to which they shared rights.
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Wynyard, Matthew Adam. "Great transformations : Karl Polanyi and Nikolas Rose on the shifting fortunes of social strategies of government : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1028.
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This thesis seeks to make sense of the emergence of neoliberalism at the close of the twentieth century and the subsequent appearance of Third Way strategies of government in recent decades. In so doing it deals comparatively with the work of two very different, yet nevertheless both increasingly influential theorists of social change - Karl Polanyi and Nikolas Rose. In the middle decades of the twentieth century Karl Polanyi theorized what he held to be the inevitable shift from a market society to one in which the economy was embedded in a web of social relations. Some half century later in the 1990s, Nikolas Rose theorized the 'death of the social', the process by which the social logic that underpinned Western welfare states for much of the twentieth- century is giving way to a new formula for rule. Rose terms this new way of governing advanced liberalism. This thesis argues that an approach to neoliberalism and the third way that employs both Polanyi's analytical and critical tools as well as the insights gained from Nikolas Rose's governmentality studies can help to render neoliberalism both visible and contestable in new ways. Further such an approach might serve to illuminate potential paths forward.
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Dempster, Benjamin Paul. "Climate calculus : does realist theory explain the Howard Government's decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Policy at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/725.
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Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions has the potential to cause widespread damage to the environment. As scientific and political consensus converged on the necessity to take action, a large number of countries negotiated the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1997, with the goal of limiting these emissions. Australia under the Howard Government initially played an important part in these negotiations, but refused to ratify the Protocol. The government cited the lack of binding targets on developing countries and the potential for harm to the Australian economy as the reasons it rejected the agreement. International relations theory studies large-scale political forces and analyses their interplay in the global political system. Realism is a model of international relations that views countries as self-interested, security-driven bodies that exist in a state of international anarchy. This study examines whether realist theory offers a satisfactory explanation for the Howard Government’s decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The study focuses on six realist ideas and examines the evidence for each. Based on thematic analysis of textual data taken from official political archives and newspapers from 1998–2004, it suggests that realist theory does provide an adequate explanation of the Howard Government’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol.
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Smith, Pamela Anne. "Whatever happened to Tuatapere : are we doing very nicely thank you? : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Social Work, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1322.
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The focus of this study is on a rural South Island community and how it managed the dramatic social changes over the past fifty years. Government policies, changes in international trade and markets, environmental policies, globalisation, change in the structure of local and regional government and legislative changes impacted on all New Zealanders during this period but the rural hinterland of New Zealand was affected in particular ways. The township which is the focus of this study is Tuatapere on the south west corner of southern New Zealand. The researcher grew up in the district and witnessed the changes from a flourishing timber and farming service centre to a quaint tourist town. The residents and how these changes impacted on their lives are explored in this thesis through the eyes of eight long term residents. This is a qualitative study in which four men and four women were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire exploring their views on social change, the way the community has responded to changes in service provision, how they have managed the move from being a vibrant rural service community to a tourist town. This thesis celebrates their successes, tells of their hardships, explores their attitudes to change, records their life work choices and decision making. Five themes were identified from the literature and provide a framework for this study: historical influences and cultural expectations, impact of Government decisions on their lives, sense of community, sense of self and access to services. The population in rural communities has been slowly decreasing over the years as urbanisation has been a reality in New Zealand. Services within the area have diminished and younger families have moved away to seek employment elsewhere. The remaining residents are an ageing population. This brings with it a range of interesting issues for the community. The elderly have to travel for their health and other service needs and the unavailability of regular daily transport services makes it difficult for them to meet appointments. They have to rely on family and friends for transport and many no longer have the family available to support them locally. This older population also provides the pool of volunteers for recreational and social functions. The elderly feel burdened with this responsibility. The geographical isolation provides a sense of wellbeing and attraction for the residents but it also has its disadvantages. The remoteness is a deterrent for access for tourists that would bring financial advantages to the community. The isolation is also a deterrent for new inhabitants who would provide the much needed contribution to the social functioning of the community. In spite of the aforementioned difficulties with living in a remote rural corner of New Zealand the participants expressed a determination and stoicism that can only be admired. Their life stories are presented in this research
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Armstrong, Nicola. "Flexible work and disciplined selves : telework, gender and discourses of subjectivity : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University." 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1302.
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Home-based work employing information and communications technologies (telework) is held up in contemporary academic literatures, policy formulations and the popular media as the cure to a panoply of contemporary problems, particularly the difficulties of combining caring responsibilities and careers. This thesis takes up the question of how teleworkers talk about and practise home-based business. It pivots on the exploration of the simultaneity of parenting, partnering and paid work for home-based business people. The 'teleworking tales' of eleven home-based entrepreneurs form the heart of the thesis, as they discuss their negotiation of 'home' and 'work' where the usual temporal and spatial boundaries between these arenas are removed. While previous studies assume that telework is 'family-friendly', most do not investigate the perspectives of other family members on the effect of home-based business on their households and relationships. This thesis speaks into this silence in the literature by contextualising telework within family relations, including as participants the partners, children and child care workers of the eleven home-based businesswomen and men, interviewing thirty people in all. Three strands of analysis regarding discourses of the organisation, domesticity and entrepreneurship were pursued in relation to these 'teleworking tales'. It was found that these 'tales' were told differently by teleworking women and men, the women focusing on the untenable nature of continued organisational employment as women and mothers, while the men established home-based businesses because of declining employment security and redundancy. In the midst of these constituting relations, the discursive injunction to be a 'fit worker' and a 'good parent' had different implications for the women and men; where as the women negotiated home-based entrepreneurship through domesticity, the men navigated their way around domesticity in order to maintain a singular focus on their businesses. The effect of the cross-cutting axes of domesticity and entrepreneurship significantly curtailed the opportunity for teleworking to represent a new crafting of the relationship between 'home' and 'work' as teleworkers negotiated the simultaneous demands their families and businesses made upon them. It was also the case that home-based businesses were a source of pleasure and of productive forms of power which encouraged home-based entrepreneurs to watch over and discipline themselves. The research unfolds as both a warning and a promise with regard to the 'choice' to telework, in terms of what is 'chosen' and how that is 'controlled'. It is particularly a contribution to current debates regarding the complex patterning of gendered and familial practices which continually fragment the freedoms promised by the discourse of entrepreneurship.
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Jury, Angela Jean. "Shame on who? : experiential and theoretical accounts of the constitution of women's shame within abusive intimate relationships : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University." 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/874.
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This feminist project explores the experiential accounts of twenty-five women who have lived through abuse within their intimate relationships. Their stories, gathered through a series of semi-structured face-to-face interviews intended to elicit accounts of resilience were saturated with emotion-talk, especially shame-talk. To address questions of the relationship between these accounts and theoretical accounts of abuse, and shame the women’s texts were engaged in an analytic dialogue with feminist knowledges of abuse against women, Erving Goffman’s sociological understandings of shame, stigma and mortification of the self, Thomas Scheff’s sociological theory of shame and social bonds, and feminist poststructuralist understandings around the constitution of human subjectivity. These conversations enabled development of a conceptual representation of the special and highly specific form of social bonding experienced by victims of abuse within intimate relationships. This bonding begins with processes of mortification of the self, the gradual erosion of a sense of self through the systematic imposition of various shaming and shameful actions. These processes take place within a specific social context created through the constitutive power of dominant discourses of gender, heterosexual coupledom, matrimony and motherhood which work to shape the lives of individual women. Because of the specific ways in which these discourses currently operate within Aotearoa New Zealand they result in the constitution of a narrow range of tightly prescribed subject positions available to victims of intimate partner abuse. This analysis leads to an argument that women’s inability to ‘do’ motherhood or intimate partnership in line with dominant discourses of mothering and relationships (because these simply cannot be achieved within an abusive context), opens them to the debilitating effects of shame. Shame, both actual and threatened, promotes silence, isolation and dangerous private spaces as women seek to protect themselves from its painful experience. I argue that it is therefore crucial to promote the availability of discursive positioning for women living through abuse which offers non-shaming and realistic choices.
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Johnstone, Carlton Graeme. "The Embedded Faith Journeys of Generations X and Y within New Zealand Church Communities." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/4543.
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Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy.Generations X and Y have been described as constituting a ‘black hole’ in congregational life. The literature emphasises that generations X and Y are interested in spirituality but not institutional religion. There is now a substantial body of literature arguing that generations X and Y find churches ‘irrelevant’, ‘absent of God’, ‘too rigid’, and ‘laughably out of touch’ with their lives. This thesis argues that generational accounts of religion often fail to make an important distinction between the churched and unchurched in relation to generational distinctiveness. This is a distinction often drawn by sociologists of religion, pointing to two quite different cultures, one communally orientated towards faith communities and the other orientated towards personal freedom and a privatised spiritual quest. Generations X and Y in this thesis refer to a generational unit who share a particular type of faith: owned and embedded within a church community. Employing a methodological approach of in-depth religious life story interviews this thesis is a sociological investigation into the way Christian faith journeys of GenX and GenY are embedded within New Zealand church communities. It is argued that their faith does not make sense outside of this embeddedness. Embedded faith provides a framework for making sense of the participants’ religious biographies. Embedded faith is contrasted to a more privatised understanding of faith and religion popular within sociology of religion. The active dimension of embedded faith is demonstrated through an exploration of modes of engagement with worship and preaching. This thesis builds upon qualitative studies that continue to demonstrate the salience of the collective act of religious involvement and social belonging. One of the challenges of embedded faith however, is finding a church to embed it within. This thesis provides understanding and insight into the relationship between embedded faith and church switching. It explores the way that church switching is an intentional act of disembedding and re-embedding faith and the reasons for this practice.
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Adamson, Carole. "Complexity and context : staff support systems in mental health after critical incidents and traumatic events : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work, School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1573.
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This thesis presents an ecological exploration of the experiences of mental health workers faced with critical incidents and traumatic events in the course of their work. A qualitative study, it takes the experiences of twenty workers from a range of disciplines and environments, and examines their preparation for exposure to extreme stress, their passage through the incidents that they chose to relate, and the organisational response to the events. The central research question explores the knowledge bases currently utilised within trauma and critical incident response, and the degree to which these provide adequate explanatory, practice and evaluation models for responses to workplace incidents. It is examined through the narratives of the mental health workers, who self-define and explore the nature of their preparation for, and experience of, critical incidents and traumatic events in their workplace. The question is contextualised through a review of the knowledge bases of trauma and extreme stress, and of the mental health environment in which the workers practice. A case study of the workplace support known as debriefing illustrates the tensions between current knowledge bases in the area. Informed by this, the key issues of what did or did not work for the participants are explored. The thesis argues that the paradigm shift signalled by the latest developments within conceptualisations of trauma is not yet complete, and that the ensuing tensions have created debate and confusion in the creation of adequate responses to workplace incidents. Whilst conceptualisations that attempt to address issues of complexity and context are evolving, it is argued that an ecological framework has the potential to both explain and respond to incidents that occur within the mental health environment. The findings of the research raise issues of complexity in the design and implementation of appropriate support systems, and lend a perspective to the critique of debriefing that has been missing from existing debates. Key principles for the development of safe and sound support systems, and their evaluation, are developed.
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Hamilton, Carol Anne. ""In our house we're not terribly sexual" : exploring the barriers to supporting intellectually disabled people in the area of sexuality and intimacy : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/843.
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How support workers enable, regulate or constrain the sexual expression of intellectually disabled people who live in service agency group homes is the subject of this thesis. A general literature search of what intellectually disabled people currently experience in their lives, including their experiences in the area of sexuality and intimacy, begins this investigation. Secondly, an extensive literature review of the support role, incorporating an appraisal of past and current issues related to the support position in general and to the area of sexuality support in particular, was completed. What intellectually disabled people themselves would like in relation to sexuality and intimacy support was included in this section. Thirdly, a review of research studies focussing on the operation of the support position within service agency systems was undertaken. These explorations revealed a high degree of reluctance on the part of workers to provide assistance in the sexuality area, despite a proven necessity for support to be made available to the intellectually disabled people they worked with. Review research studies suggested a variety of causal factors in explanation of this reluctance. These suggestions link to two meta-reason positions. Failure to prove support either stemmed from individual worker’s inactions due to ignorance and/or incompetence, or from wider systemic failures on the part of agency services to positively value and support this key service role in this area. However, little if any analysis of the possible influence of the broader social, emotional and cultural contexts, in which the concepts ‘sexuality’ and ‘(intellectual) disability’ are located, could be found in the studies reviewed. Eleven in-depth interviews were conducted with front-line support workers about their sexuality support practice. Preliminary readings of the interview texts revealed a similar reluctance on the part of the workers concerned to assist those they worked with in this area. Interview texts were then subjected to a post-modernist inspired, interpretive discursive analysis. This analysis uncovered and tracked how key power/knowledge effects inherent in the terms ‘(intellectual) disability’, ‘sexuality’, ‘gender’ and ‘desire’ inhering in the concept of an ‘ideal (sexual) couple’ interweave to shape the ‘no support necessary’ practice responses held in worker’s interview talk. From this exploration it is suggested that research studies of workers’ practices as an aspect of the promotion of change in support outcomes in the sexuality support area need to go beyond the parameters of recommendations that stem from considerations of either individual or systemic limitation alone. It remains a convincing point to suggest that poorly performing workers need retraining in this area and the overall value of the support role within service organizations needs reshaping. However, future research recommendations also need to engage more directly and effectively with the effects of the wider social and emotional “ideal (sexual) couple” ambiguities that also influence worker’s lack of assistance in this complex and sensitive support area. The use of a post-modern perspective as a helpful conceptual tool in unpacking the power these ambiguities hold within the support position is offered as a productive way forward for future research and practice development.
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Blair, Tracey. "Successful social skills : designing a way of learning non-verbal communication skills : a thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Design, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/722.
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This research identifies, and respond to, the particular challenges of teaching social skills to children with autistic characteristics, specifically in this case Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). For most children the process of understanding and developing non-verbal communication begins early in childhood. For children with AS this is not the case and non-verbal communication needs to be taught to them. This project provides support for the educators of children who require assistance in the social skills area. This has been achieved with a structured interactive computer prototype. This prototype has been designed with consideration for the unique cognitive attributes and sensory issues that AS individuals encounter. A visual language has been used to identify the routine of an everyday event, and to introduce the concept of change within this routine. The result provides these individuals with the most productive environment for learning.
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Ang, Ee Kheng. "Career break or broken career? : mothers' experiences of returning to paid work : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1671.
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Servicemen returning from two World Wars were granted assistance in finding work, retraining and other benefits in recognition of the sacrifices they had made. Yet mothers' returning to work after time out bearing and raising children are reliant on a booming economy to obtain even limited entry to the labour market, and the work obtained is very often inferior to the jobs held by women before becoming mothers. Currently due to lower fertility rates and the ageing populations of the world's richer nations, a shortage of working-age people is predicted to continue into at least the middle of the twenty-first century. To overcome this shortfall, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) advises its member states to assist mothers to return to paid work sooner. Most OECD nations are complying, with varying degrees of success. Some policy frameworks make this goal more easily attainable than others. Mothers in liberal welfare states often return to paid work later than they might otherwise prefer. Many returners are overqualified for the work they are doing. While there appears to be relatively few barriers to re-entry, the choice of re-entry occupations are limited and returners are predominantly offered low status jobs with no career opportunities at the back of the job queue and gender queue. Mothers who interrupt their careers by taking a career break for childbearing and rearing generally face downward occupational mobility and loss of lifetime incomes. This thesis assesses the experiences of mothers who return to employment in one liberal nation, New Zealand. It applies Esping-Andersen's three models of welfare states and Reskin and Roos' gender queues model to the situation of returners. The study investigates the precise nature of the obstacles and processes encountered by a number of mothers attempting to resume a career. It argues that social policies matter: returners in countries where state intervention is more widespread and where there is universal, extensive and generous social provision and support for working mothers are economically better off. The research methods include in-depth interviews and a focus group with mothers, a mail questionnaire and interviews with employers, and a study of recent and current New Zealand and overseas government policies to assist working parents. The findings of this thesis are that regardless of skill levels, New Zealand returners are consigned to low status occupations where they are not fully integrated into the 'normal' full-time workforce with career opportunities. These mothers generally suffer more than one episode of returning to the back of the queue. They also earn less (weekly and annually) than mothers who do not take career breaks. The study identifies social policy frameworks and employers' policies and practices as factors contributing to the processes whereby returners are relegated to the back of the queue. Although New Zealand has recently brought in policies to assist mothers to return to paid work these initiatives have not addressed the processes that currently confine returners in low status, part-time employment. Policies similar to those created to specifically target the needs of ex-servicemen would go a long toward assisting mothers to access higher status and better-paid jobs at the head of the queue. The thesis concludes with policy recommendations to facilitate mothers' integration into such jobs.