Browsing by Author "Gibson, Lorena"
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- ItemHope, agency, and the 'side effects' of development in India and Papua New Guinea : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Manawatu campus, New Zealand(Massey University, 2011) Gibson, Lorena; Gibson, LorenaThis thesis is a comparative study of exceptional women organising for social change through grassroots-level development initiatives in education and incomegeneration in urban poor areas of Howrah and Kolkata (West Bengal, India) and Lae (Papua New Guinea). It explores the relationship between hope, agency, and development by investigating the historically specific circumstances and practices of women organising collectively as they struggle to create more meaningful lives for themselves, their families, and the larger communities in which they live. Research for this study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with four grassroots organisations: two led by Muslim women in Howrah and Kolkata, and two led by Christian women in Lae. Data was gathered using a diverse portfolio of qualitative methods and analysed with a common conceptual framework that draws on Bourdieu’s theory of practice. This study combines analyses of historical processes, habitat, and structured social space with in-depth, place-based ethnography to show that as socially embedded beings, the culturally constructed ways in which we hope and act for development are lodged in social relations. It illustrates the dialectic relationship between structure and agency by showing how these active, articulate, intelligent women living in poverty sometimes reproduce the structural inequalities they are working to transform. This thesis identifies a number of ‘side effects’ of development, including collective hope and collective agency, which serve to sustain collective action in the face of adversity, hardship, and failure to achieve social change. It increases our understanding of development by offering a critical, comparative mode of scholarship that focuses on people’s hopes and agency and allows for a reading in terms of possibilities as well as success and failure.
- ItemVersioning for the love of it : hip-hop culture in Aotearoa : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University(Massey University, 2003) Gibson, LorenaThis thesis seeks to explore the meaning of Hip-Hop for members of the Aotearoa Hip-Hop community. Based on participant-observation and interviews with members of the Hip-Hop community conducted during 2001-2003, this thesis provides an ethnographic study into what I have identified as the twelve key characteristics of Aotearoa Hip-Hop (authenticity, community, education, empowerment, history, knowledge, originality, representation, resistance, respect, skill and style). The thesis focuses on how these attributes are embodied in performance and in ongoing dialogues within the Hip-Hop community, as well as in the ways in which gender is negotiated in Aotearoa Hip-Hop, revealing the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of Hip-Hop culture in Aotearoa. It also considers the influence of the concept of whakapapa on Aotearoa Hip-Hop's distinctive historical trope, showing how ongoing dialogues within the Hip-Hop community occur at events and online, enacting Hip-Hop communities at these imagined and virtual sites.