Academic literature on the topic 'Fields of Research – 420000 Language and Culture – 420300 Cultural Studies'

This thesis is made up of three parts; the first is an outline and discussion of the various approaches taken in the description of Polynesian languages in the last 30 years. It provides background discussion of the model of description used in the rest of the thesis. The second deals with the phonology of the 'Ua Pou dialect, concentrating in particular on two areas; the phonetics of the glottal stop phoneme, and penultimate vowel extension. The latter is a feature which has received no mention in any literature to date but is the most noticeable suprasegmental phonetic difference between the Marquesan dialects and the other Eastern Polynesian languages. The last four chapters describe the structure of phrases in the 'Ua Pou dialect. The first two of these deals with the centripetal particles of the noun and verb phrase respectively, that is, the particles within phrases which modify the base of that phrase. Particles which relate phrases to other phrases, that is, the prepositions and ai, are dealt with separately in the last two chapters since their description requires some comments on the syntax of the language.
Thesis now published as a book. Margaret Mutu with Ben Teʻikitutoua (2002). Ùa Pou : aspects of a Marquesan dialect. Canberra, ACT: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. ISBN 0858835266.

The main objective of this thesis was to understand the function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes, aspects little studied in Polynesia as a whole. Methodology involved functional and manufacturing replication experiments and comparisons of these results with statistics derived from the analysis of almost 12,000 archaeological adzes. Methodology was guided by technological organization theory which states that technological strategies reflect human behaviours and that artefacts like adzes are physical manifestations of the strategies employed by people to overcome problems posed by environmental and resource conditions. Variability in adze morphology was discovered to be the outcome of ongoing technological adjustments to a range of conditions that were constrained by a set of functionally defined parameters. The nature of the raw material, both for the adzes themselves and to make them, had a major influence on adze technology and morphology within these functional parameters. Four basic functional adze types were identified fi-om distinct and consistent combinations of design attributes not previously recognized explicitly in previous adze typologies. It was found that design attributes previously considered significant like crosssection shape and butt reduction were more heavily influenced by raw material quality than functional specifications. It was also important to recognize that form and function changed over time with use, and because adzes were so valuable due to manufacturing costs, they were intensively curated. The majority of archaeological specimens studied for this thesis had seen major morphological and functional change. This dynamic was included ,in a typology based on 'adze state7 as findings suggested (1) that extending adze use-life and optimizing reworking potential was incorporated in initial design strategies, (2) that intensive curation may have played a major role in changes in adze morphology over time, and (3). that it had a major influence on distribution and discard patterns in the archaeological record. Having identified these influences on adze discard and distribution, two complex production and distribution networks were observed for the North Island based around Tahanga basalt and Nelson~Marlborough argillite. Each was complimentary to the other and involved other major and minor products and materials. Influential factors in the roles different settlements played in distribution included where people and raw materials were in relation to one another and the mode of transportation. The coastal location of early period settlements and important stone sources was an important aspect of these networks.

This study seeks to establish how cultural change is transforming Samoan perceptions of alcohol and its role in social life by comparing understandings of, attitudes to, and patterns of alcohol use in successive generations of Samoans to establish how these are changing, and how trends in alcohol use might be expected to affect Samoan health status. It examines the complex relationships between alcohol and culture, and how such relationships interact to influence health. As well, it explores how Samoan culture, fa'asamoa, has changed since contact with Europeans, how, these changes have influenced Samoan people's perceptions and use of alcohol, and the role alcohol now plays in Samoan social life. Moreover, the thesis documents the social history of alcohol in Samoa since the nineteenth century, and explores the roles of some of the Europeans in shaping Samoan people's attitudes and behaviours towards alcohol and its use. Additionally, it examines the commercial and political economic interests of early European agencies in Samoa such as beachcombers, traders, colonial administrators, and missionaries which impacted on and influenced, to a considerable extent, Samoan people's drinking patterns. The study uses a qualitative methodological approach, utilizing qualitative interviewing as the main method of gathering data and various other methods to supplement the data. The sample population included Samoan men and women, of various religious denominations, drinkers and abstainers, born and raised in Samoa and in New Zealand. Unstructured interviews with thirty-nine participants, and eight key informants were conducted in Apia, Auckland, and Christchurch. The key informants included: a bishop of the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Samoan Police Commissioner, and the Secretary of the Samoan Liquor Authority who were interviewed in Apia; a pastor/lecturer of the Congregational Christian Church of American Samoa who was interviewed in Pago Pago, American Samoa; while two Samoan-born medical health professionals, a pastor of the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa, and one New Zealand-born woman researcher were interviewed in Auckland. The study found that alcohol and the drinking of it has secured a place in the social life of Samoans in the islands and in migrant communities such as those in Auckland, and to a lesser extent, Christchurch. It also found that while older women's and men's experiences and attitudes to alcohol differ significantly, particularly those born and raised in the islands, some similarities in the attitudes and practices of younger people towards alcohol, especially those born- and raised in New Zealand have emerged.

This research conducts a feminist poststructuralist examination of the vocabularies of heterosex: it investigates those terms, modes of talking, and meanings relating to sex which are associated with discourses such as scientific and popular sexology, medicine and psychiatry, public health, philosophy, and some feminist critique. The analysis of these various representations of heterosex involves the deconstruction of binaries such as presence/absence, mind/body, inside/outside and masculine/feminine, that are endemic to Western notions of sex. It is argued that such dualisms (re)produce and perpetuate differential power relations between men and women, and jeopardize the negotiation of mutually pleasurable and safer heterosex. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which sexological discourse deploys such dualisms as normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural, and healthy/unhealthy sex, and produces specifically gendered 'experiences' of sexual corporeality. The thesis examines a variety of written texts and excerpts from film and television; it also analyzes transcript material from individual and group interviews conducted by the researcher with heterosexual women and men, as well as sexual health and mental health professionals, in order to identify cultural pressures influencing participation in risky heterosexual behaviours, and also to identify alternative and safer pleasurable practices. Some of these alternative practices are suggested to rely on a radical reformulation of sexual relations which derives from the disruption of particular dualistic ways of understanding and enacting sex. The overall objective of the thesis is to deconstruct cultural imperatives of heterosex and promote the generation and acceptance of other modes of erotic pleasure. It is hoped that this research will be of use in the future planning and implementation of sex education and safer sex campaigns in Aotearoa/New Zealand which aim to be non-phallocentric and non-heterosexist, and which might recognize a feminist poststructuralist politics of sexual difference.
Note: Thesis now published. Potts, Annie (2002). The Science/Fiction of sex: feminist deconstruction and the vocabularies of heterosex. London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 04152567312. Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy.

This thesis examines the archaeology and history of Te Puna, a Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission station in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Te Puna was first settled in 1832 following the closure of the nearby Oihi mission, which had been the first mission station and the first permanent European settlement in New Zealand. Te Puna, located alongside the imposing Rangihoua Pa, was the home of missionaries John and Hannah King and their children for some forty years. As well as being a mission station, Te Puna was also the site of the family’s subsistence farm. The research is concerned with the archaeological landscape of Te Puna, the relationship between Maori and European, the early organisation and economy of the CMS, the material culture of New Zealand’s first European settlers, and the beginnings of colonisation and the part that the missions played in this. Artefacts recovered from archaeological investigations at the site of the Te Puna mission house are connected with other items of missionary material culture held in collections in the Bay of Islands, including objects donated by the King family. The archaeological record is also integrated with documentary evidence, in particular the accounts of the CMS store, to produce a detailed picture of the daily life and economy of the Te Puna mission household. This integration of a range of sources is also extended to produce a broader view of the material culture and economy of missionary life in the Bay of Islands in the first half of the nineteenth century. The humble, austere artefacts that constitute the material culture of the Te Puna household reveal the actual processes of colonisation in daily life and everyday events, as well as the processes of the mission, such as schooling, the purchase of food and domestic labour, the purchase of land and building of houses, the stitching of fabric and ironing of garments. These practices predate, but also anticipate the grand historical dramas such as the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, glorified but also critiqued as the defining moment of the relationship between Maori and Pakeha and of colonisation.
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In acknowledging continual educational under-achievement of Maori children, this thesis investigates the relationship between education policy and Maori under-achievement. It argues that under-achievement is framed within boundaries of changing recognitions and realisations of power and difference: that conceptions of difference have influenced education policy and schooling practices for Maori. Theoretically, the thesis examines 'what counts as difference' and 'what differences count'. In recognising that unequal power relations between dominant and subordinate groups produce distinct views about difference, 'what counts as difference' encompasses the perspectives of dominant groups and 'what differences count', subordinate groups. The former view is developed to expand the basis for investigating 'Pakeha conceptions of difference', and the latter, 'Maori conceptions'. The thesis traces the interactions and relationships of 'difference' and 'power', and examines, historically, how they have contributed to and sustained Maori educational under-achievement. The contribution of these conceptions of difference to informing schooling practices is investigated through four sequential 'Classification Schemes' of Assimilation, Integration, Multiculturalism and Biculturalism. The thesis argues that Biculturalism is based on a positive view of Maori cultural differences, and examines the extent of Maori influence on four recent education policy making processes. The thesis also acknowledges a Maori focus on the importance of structural differences for addressing their needs. On the basis of those two different perspectives, the thesis develops the concepts 'Maori-friendly' and 'Maori-centred', to examine processes, and structures and the relative influence of Maori on mainstream policy forming processes. The thesis shows that Tomorrow's Schools, Education for the Twenty-First Century and the Maori Affairs Select Committee Inquiry encapsulate different degrees of both Maori-friendly and Maori-centred approaches, though arguing that ultimately, it is Pakeha conceptions of difference that inform and influence all the policy forming processes. However, the fourth policy process examined was originally a wholly Maori-centred initiative - Te Kohanga Reo. The thesis points to and traces the incorporation of Te Kohanga Reo into the mainstream education system and its consequences for Maori, and concludes that structural differences ensure continuing Pakeha control over Maori conceptions of difference and henceforth Maori educational under-achievement.

This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about the realities of women's lives in the seventeenth-century Iberian peninsula, through a socio-historical interpretation of the poetic production of five women. One is Portuguese, Violante del Cielo, and four are Spaniards: Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, Leonor de la Cueva y Silva, Marcia Belisarda and Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán. All are from the educated upper or noble classes and their lives span some one hundred and forty years, from 1566 to 1693. The thesis focuses particularly on their sonnets of love and friendship, both secular and religious. The sonnet was specifically chosen as the vehicle to study the ideas and concerns of literate, seventeenth-century women. As a difficult form of poetry requiring wit, artistry and education, sonnets enable a display of intellectual capabilities and offer opportunities for veiled criticism of contemporary systems of control. These women do not overtly rail against a system that offers them much in terms of social advancement and privilege. However, they do re-write our understanding of the Baroque by presenting their interests, pleasures and discontents from a feminine viewpoint. This detailed, contextual study of women's works, set against the philosophical, religious and moral treatises that governed their age, enables a wider interpretation of women's thought and intentions in the Iberian peninsula than may hitherto have been acknowledged, particularly in terms of relationships of affection within the family. Collectively, their individual works display a determination to demonstrate women's intelligence and moral strength. Furthermore, it becomes clear that women living within a system that utilised biological determinism as proof that they were incapable of reason, strive in their works to show that they are both capable of reason and determined to demonstrate it as undeniable fact.

The work I have presented here pulls together Maori epistemologies as evidenced in the whakapapa knowledge particularly of Ngati Maniapoto to see if and where connection lies with understandings of Maori cultural wellbeing. Whakapapa knowledge is the unbounded collection of theory, observation and experience as seen through Maori eyes. It is intricately connected by whakapapa, a tool for working with and extrapolating understanding and is the common thread that binds hapu, whanau and iwi (O’Regan, 2001). The aim is to investigate contemporary Maori realities with a strong interest in these traditions of wisdom and knowing. The rangahau presented here is of necessity both deconstructive and reconstructive. As a deconstructive project the rangahau seeks to place under the microscope of indigenous gaze the colonial theoretical, ethical, moral and political construction of Maori ways of knowing and being and the ontological orders of western paradigms and non-Maori worldview (Romero-Little, 2006). As a constructive project I am concerned with placing on the record and opening up sites for, but not defining, Maori epistemology as legitimate and ‘tika’ and at the same time putting forward ‘alternate epistemologies’ (Collins, 1991; Lopez, 1998; Smith, 1999; Marsden, 2003) that challenge certified knowledge and critically challenges dominant constructions of the truth as related to knowing. The implications of these explorations of epistemologies for Maori lives, opportunities and experience are also considered. This work argues for the maintenance of Maori cultural identities via whakapapa knowledge using connections to Maori ways of knowing. This includes examination of the effects of coming to terms with, of encountering, coming to terms with and engaging with Maori cultural practices, as well as, processes commonly referred to as ‘culture shock’ (Weaver, 1993) the psychological, emotional and physical responses to the phenomenon of identity reclamation and how these realities can be negotiated. What I found is that Maori knowledge systems are replete with elements that contribute positively to the maintenance of cultural identities and these identities are uniquely and distinctively contextually and culturally relevant. These systems have been and continue to be threatened by the impacts of colonisation and colonial ideologies. The work has found that elders and relevant contexts retain and provide a large volume of knowledge that when engaged with can provide useful insights into living within Maori paradigms that can enhance wellbeing in the present. Maori communities and whanau are under high levels of stress with the pressures of contemporary living and the dis-location from ancestral lands, and the living activities, knowledge sharing opportunities and learning practices they support. This work seeks to offer up solutions via the maintenance, enhancement and advancement of cultural identities as a way for mediating and removing some of the effects of the stresses. The implications are that the continued disconnection of Maori from unique cultural identities informed by whakapapa korero knowledge may serve to weaken important elements and connections to an individual’s and group’s cultural identity, including personal history, stories, land and people. The potential exists for further investigation of how crucial cultural connections that acknowledge contemporary realities and yet support the maintenance of cultural identities with strong and vibrant connections to whakapapa korero knowledge connections might be maintained, enhanced and advanced. Additionally, the work here opens up the space for and advocates for much deeper exploration of distinctive elements of a groups identity through contextually located knowledge in forms such as waiata, purakau, pakiwaitara, whakairo, rongoa, wairua and the many other knowledge forms of tea o Maori to further depths/heights not yet achieved to reclaim (k)new and subjugated knowledge forms. This potential is exciting but there are a range of risks involved (including appropriations of indigenous knowledge) that requires certain minimum standards of knowledge protection such as discerning which knowledge is suitable for public consumption and that which is not. This is most suitably done after receiving guidance from the knowledge holders as to what the appropriate forums for such knowledge might be and analysing risks for abuse, risks of misinterpretation and risks of unintended use that might cause whakama. The enquiry suggested above as being of benefit is of course a deeply personal exploration and ideas of what is appropriate for public consumption and what is not is something that must be explored at the time of enquiry. As in my work here I was asked to include some things and to exclude others as a result of views by the elders that the public consumption of some knowledge they contributed was inappropriate to be shared beyond our korero because it could be perceived in a number of ways, some helpful and some not, for the people concerned, or for different groups of people. The knowledge that has been shared here and that which has not has therefore been discerned.

Recognizing the continual restructuring of Pakeha-Maori relations as dominance and subordination, this thesis sets out to gain an understanding, through a critique of ideology, of the place of schooling in the securing and maintenance of those relations. Theoretically, it draws mainly upon the concept of ideology as interpreted by Jorge Larrain but also upon Gramsci's concept of hegemony, the notion of social amnesia as presented by Jacoby and the concept of resistance as developed by Giroux. It also examines the historical development of the concepts of 'race' and 'culture' which are employed ideologically to rationalize educational policies concerning the Maori. Tracing the progression of policies and practices in Maori education from the 1830s to the present day, the research shows the schooling of the Maori to have contributed significantly to the securing of Pakeha economic and political dominance in the nineteenth century and to the maintenance of that dominance through much of the twentieth century. Of particular significance has been the control of Maori access to knowledge. With Maori resistance playing a considerable part in the shaping of these policies and practices, the school is recognized as one of the sites of Maori-Pakeha struggle. Widespread underachievement of Maori within education - revealed in 1960 by the Hunn Report - is recognized as an outcome of these processes. Taking account of policies in recent years directed at improving Maori educational achievement, the thesis examines fieldwork research conducted within Auckland primary and secondary schools, in order to understand the extent to which current policies and practices of schools contribute towards overcoming the asymmetry in social relations. Focussing upon teacher perceptions of Maori children and their needs, the way schools sort and classify their pupils, provisions for a Maori dimension in schooling, including 'taha Maori', and the place of history in social studies programmes, the research finds that the struggle still continues, with tensions surrounding the efforts of the minority of teachers and other educationists working within the education system towards Maori interests. While a significant number of teachers, particularly in primary schools seem concerned to implement the 'taha Maori' policy and other aspects of 'multicultural education', these efforts are not matched by a concern to address the problem of Maori educational under-achievement, with teachers either explaining away the problem or accepting it as a quasi-natural state of affairs. Over all the research shows that schools in general continue, in a variety of ways, to control and limit Maori access to knowledge-power and thereby help to maintain the asymmetry in Maori-Pakeha relations. Maori children who do succeed within the education system are seen to do so primarily because they and their families have learned to deal with the system. The multicultural policies of education as presented by the Department of Education are recognized as ideological responses to Maori resistance and challenges, creating an appearance of change and of commitment to Maori interests while, in essence, functioning to maintain the asymmetry in social relations.
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While members of any group of men may appear to be ordinary gendered examples of humanity, behind their physical similarities lie many socio-political and familial differences; thus it is only by knowing such men as individuals that their identities are revealed. Such is the aim of this thesis: to discover the 'real man' behind the statistics about sex-roles and the predominance of male characters in children's and adolescents' literature. From within a selection of Spanish texts a variety of male characters are analysed, focusing on six major roles: father, grandfather, imaginary friend, detective, outlaw or similar marginalised man, and foreign other, with particular attention paid to the Gypsy. All the chapters are linked by the Bakhtinian theory that dialogue with the other leads to the development of a character's or potential reader's sense of identity. The first chapter, concerning fatherhood, is related to a person's sense of intrinsic identity, given with their name and genetic heritage. The grandfather represents a similar sense of family continuity, as well as enabling the young reader to understand Spain's recent historical and rural past. An imaginary friend may symbolise an aspect of identity concerned with a child's ability to achieve a goal or to occupy a special place within the family. Detective stories are analogous to the young person's developing identity as a reader able to decipher the mysteries of texts, whilst marginalised men typify children themselves: persons who have neither status nor money, but who are able to indulge in carnivalistic behaviour which adults call 'play.' The development of one's sense of national identity is fomented through interaction with texts about foreigners who have contributed to Spain's growth as a nation from pre-historic times to the present. A brief critical evaluation of the role of women in detective fiction and as marginalised figures is offered by way of contrast in the appropriate chapters. The thesis concludes that, when analysed as individuals, many male characters demonstrate traits not traditionally considered masculine, and that it is necessary to look beyond mere representations of gender in judging the value of characters in literature for children and adolescents.
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