Massey Research Online - Browsing by Author "Morgan, Mandy"

Browsing by Author "Morgan, Mandy"

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Be(com)ing men in another place : the migrant men of Gandhi Nivas and their violent stories : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, Aotearoa New Zealand
(Massey University, 2021) Mattson, Anthony
The social issue of family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand is pervasive, profoundly gendered, and complexified through intersectionalities including poverty, unemployment, and ethnic and racial marginalisation. Speaking truth to power is important for victims of violence. However, men who use violence are often isolated and ignored because of their violence, and their stories are seldom heard. This research brings men who use violence back into our responses by exploring the complexities of their accounts using the conceptual apparatus of Deleuze and Guattari to rupture dominant representations and interpretations. This study is based at Gandhi Nivas, a community-led early intervention initiative in South Auckland. It follows a year of interactions with migrant men from India, South East Asia, and the Pacific Islands. All of the men have used violence against women. Unlike essentialising societal discourses that reductively characterise men who use violence as perpetrators, offenders, or deviant Others, the men’s stories are complicated and messy, with descriptions of authoritarian and patriarchal childhood experiences, obstructed agency and exploitation, anti-productive connections, and conflicting desires. The men’s gendered understandings move and their storying is often ambivalent and contradictory. Differences that emerge are not only differences between the men, but also for each man, and reflect movements that they make in their locatedness during their storying. To write these multiplicities and subjectivities into the thesis, I introduce a novel approach––Rhizography, or ‘writing the rhizome’––to disrupt the normalities of representation, interpretation and subjectivity. I am guided in this research by an ethic of care that is gendered, performative, and immanent, through which I plug into the research as a special kind of Deleuzo-Guattarian desiring-machine: a nurturing-machine that becomes a site of production to connect with men who use violence and hear their stories. A semi-autobiographical narrative also emerges in which I examine the tensions of simultaneously becoming ethical activist and researcher. The study contributes to new understandings about violence against women, by enabling movement beyond dominant perspectives of violence against women as pathologised behaviours to refocus analysis on the encounters between men who use violence and the broader social structures in which violence occurs.
Care as a Contemporary Paradox in a Global Market
(Massey University, 2011) Rogerson, Ann; Morgan, Mandy; Coombes, Leigh
The contemporary mother faces difficult choices when deciding whether to be either a ‘stay at home’ or a ‘working mother’. Conflicting discourses of good and bad mothering revolve around a political divide under pressure, one that territorialises the public and private domains. Gilligan (1982) famously highlighted the existence of these domains by challenging Kohlberg’s findings that men were endowed with higher moral reasoning powers than women. Disappointed by what she identified as the masculinist bias of Kohlberg’s work, Gilligan conducted her own research, finding that men and women reasoned differently but equitably. Gilligan’s thesis now theoretically informs a feminist ethics of care that has reputedly transformed political spatial boundaries of the public and private domains, domains traditionally gendered as masculine and feminine. Yet the ‘care’ that Gilligan has drawn our attention to is seemingly a new phenomenon. Appearing in language around the same time as the birth of Gilligan’s feminist ethics and indeed amidst the growing dilemma of the working mother, this care shows no visible sign of its maternal origins. In this paper, I attempt to define and locate care amidst the dismantling of the spatial divide that separates the public and private, a dismantling that coincides with the commodification of care within a global market.
Contemporary Masquerade: Work-Life Balance and Modern Tragedies of (Mis)Perceived/(Mis)Placed Social Agency
(School of Psychology, Massey University, 2012) Rogerson, Ann; Morgan, Mandy; Coombes, Leigh
Within contemporary life, women struggle within discourses of stay-at-home mothering and working mother in terms of the detriment to a child’s development. Although contemporary research tends to isolate work-life balance as a separate set of conflicting discourses to study, I suggest that this isolation is misleading. Work-life balance encompasses every aspect of a woman’s speaking being or conscious home, social, caring and working experiences. Considering work-life as allencompassing allows for interesting interpretations when framing women’s work-life experiences within the confines of a language that seeks to dissect them into discrete parts. Furthermore, conflict surrounding work and life is not new and provide a cornerstone of traditional psychoanalytic theories of human development. Within this paper, I consider contemporary discourses of work-life balance, within the context of Riviere’s psychoanalytical concept of masquerade and Lacanian psychoanalysis that rereads Freud’s original works as a theory of discourse.
Life as a breastfeeding-working-mother : understanding challenges and support systems that contribute to the success of breastfeeding among working-mothers in Indonesia : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2024-12-16) Swastiningsih, Nurfitria
Breastfeeding plays a crucial role in infants and children’s health and development. The success of breastfeeding in Indonesia is still below the expectancy rate set by Government Policy. Maternal employment is one of the reasons for breastfeeding discontinuation with mothers facing lack of support from the workplace. Despite the difficulties, there are mothers who successfully find balance while breastfeeding and working but research undertaken in this area is limited. This study aimed to analyse and better understand the lived experience of breastfeeding-working-mothers who successfully maintain long-term breastfeeding. Since mothers’ lives cannot be separated from their social context, a community psychology approach and ecological model is used to understand mothers’ experiences. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is employed as a methodological and analytic approach to interpret lived experience from an emic perspective. Data was collected using the semi-structured interviewed which conducted online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Twenty-four interviews were conducted across three participant groups including nine mothers who met the criteria as active breastfeeding-working-mothers having breastfed their babies for a minimum of eighteen months or having experience as breastfeeding-working-mothers for at least two years; seven husbands whose wives met the criteria of the breastfeeding-working-mothers group; and eight co-workers/supervisors of the breastfeeding-working-mothers. Including husbands and co-workers/supervisors was crucial to understand their perspectives and experiences, providing insights into the daily dynamics between mothers and their microsystems. Using the strength-based approach, I focused on understanding mothers’ successful experience to enable and promote more positive and sustaining experiences for other mothers and their community in the future. From the research analysis, multi-layered systems from micro to macrosystems present both supports and challenges for the breastfeeding-working-mothers. Microsystem support was most important to successful breastfeeding journeys as the closest relationships provided a safe space and the sense of security that strengthen mothers against the multi layered challenges in breastfeeding. Findings from this study suggests the importance of enhancing systemic support from micro to macrosystem. Breastfeeding education should involve the husbands and the family members who closely connected with the mothers to enhance the family support. Moreover, improving the healthcare and workplace support is necessary as well as enhancing the provisions of the government policy to create environments enabling working mothers to sustain breastfeeding.
Men's work : narratives of engaging with change and becoming non-violent : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2024-07-26) Kean, Matthew Joseph
Family violence continues to be a harsh reality for many families, whānau and communities around New Zealand. The primary aim of this project is to produce new possibilities for the violence prevention sector by linking theory and community practices supporting men, and their families, with pathways of change in relation to their cultural, gendered, socio-economic, and religious experiences of the world. In partnership with Gandhi Nivas, a community-based organisation providing early intervention support services to families in the Auckland region, I collaborate with men accessing Gandhi Nivas for support to bring to the fore an ethics of care empowering non-normative processes of change towards non-violence. Informed with the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, I provide an autoethnographic analysis of fieldwork experiences, 1:1 interviews, and a weekly men’s social support group, expanding on Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic theory to privilege narratives of events, felt experiences, and embodied memories of different institutional, legal, political, and socio-cultural forces conditioning men’s every day social worlds. With narratives as a form of re-remembering men’s sticky networks of affective memories, I experiment with nomadic subjectivity as a cartographic methodology capable of tracing sensorial data with enlivening moments of bodily sensation. This is not a straightforward task. A complex project, I craft a mosaic of affective connections with selections of notes, transcripts and events reverberating flows of materiality that produce changes to specific social, political, gendered, and cultural locations, enabling me to reflexively analyse what experiences follow me, what social processes I have articulated, and what processes are left off the page. I elaborate an understanding of nomadic subjectivity as a tactic enabling me to bear witness to both men’s capacities for violence and non-violence within men’s social world, by unfolding affective memories with a series of textually connected hesitations, pauses, and irruptions of social forces conditioning how we experience the world. Informed with Deleuzian political thought, nomadic narratives help me materialise different, unpredictable arrangements of fluxes, flows, and forces with indefinite processes of individuation, providing different potentials, capacities, and limits past the limits of normative knowability. Retrospectively evoking the complexities of following the affective movement of men, which we bring out into the community and to others, this research positions non-violence not just as the absence of violence, but as an iterative process of embodying variations in arrangements and connections of thought processes, propelling alternative modes of relations empowering an ethics of care and concern for others through which violence becomes less possible, reduced, and mitigated. Engaging with an organisation that celebrates difference within ethical frameworks of care informing a diversity of professional practices and experiences, this collaborative, community-oriented research project embraces embodied understandings of change processes men experience whilst in the care of Gandhi Nivas, and puts to work DeleuzoGuattarian non-normative subjectivities of affectivity and intensity as entry points to resonate embodied materiality I cannot know—but feel. With men invoking becomings of non-violence unable to be represented with normative masculinities and hegemonic notions of violence and non-violence, writing a nomadic subject enables me to attend to how different experiences of forces act on and through us, affirming empowering productions of a self with the material and discursive possibilities of men’s daily life.
Narratives of embedded oppression and the Covid-19 pandemic response : voices from marginalised sexual violence survivors in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, Aotearoa New Zealand
(Massey University, 2023) Helme, Caitlin
The prevalence of sexual violence in Aotearoa New Zealand was of epidemic proportions even before the arrival of Covid-19, with people experiencing social marginalisation harmed more frequently, in different ways, and with less appropriate support available to them than the hegemonic population. In trying to understand these issues through a lens of intersectionality, I broadly enquired into the importance, impact, and challenges of navigating sexual violence for disabled people who experience multiple layers of oppression. Respondents told stories within both the pre- and peri-Covid-19 landscape. Seven respondents shared their stories during eight unstructured, teller-focussed interviews (Hydén, 2014). All seven respondents were service providers, with four respondents also being survivors of sexual violence themselves. Respondents had lived experience of marginalisation, with many inhabiting multiple marginalised social locations. All survivors identified as disabled, with further marginalised identities including being Indigenous, female, and/or queer, among others. A reflexive narrative analysis was conducted to make visible the expert stories as an ethical response to social justice. The narrative analysis outlines how embedded social inequities and power structures, including ableism, racism, sexism, and cisgenderism, intersect oppressively for survivors and create barriers to accessing appropriate support. Inequities are longstanding and rooted within historical oppressions such as colonisation. Respondents spoke of the compounding of existing inequities following the arrival of Covid-19, making visible an already under-resourced sector bearing the brunt of an unprecedented influx of sexual violence and the detrimental effects on survivors and providers alike. Radical change is required to address social inequities in promoting an equal response to sexual violence.
Pakiaka Tupuora Parenting From the Start : evaluating a preventative intervention to improve attachment and health outcomes for mothers and their babies : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Te Kungenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2024-12-06) Morrimire, Leith
Background: Parenting interventions can improve individual and societal outcomes but few are brief, preventative, or consistent with Indigenous knowledge. This is the first based on the latest multidisciplinary theory – the evolved developmental niche (EDN). Objective: To evaluate the one-day (8hr) preventative antenatal Parenting From the Start workshop in terms of infant attachment and other medium-term outcomes. Methods: Randomised controlled trial with two parallel arms open to pregnant residents of the Manawatū/Horowhenua regions of Aotearoa New Zealand. 57 English-speaking women aged 24 to 44 years were randomly assigned to intervention (n = 27) or wait-list control (n = 30) groups alongside standard free maternity care and parental leave. Retention rates were 81% at the home visit (n = 22 intervention; n = 24 control), and 74% at the clinic assessment (n = 20 intervention; n = 20 control). Primary analyses were based on maternal sensitive responsiveness as measured by the Ainsworth Sensitivity Scales, Mini-Maternal Behavior Q- Sort, and Observational Measure of Sensitivity and Responsiveness (11 to 24 months post birth) and infant attachment on the Strange Situation Procedure (11-22 months post birth). Secondary outcomes included a range of self-reported parenting intentions and strategies. Findings: Intervention group infants had higher rates of secure attachment (90%) than the control group (64%). This effect was significant at the level of 3-way attachment security (p = .011, Cramer’s V = 0.448), and attachment subcategory (p = .047, Cramer’s V = 0.552), but not 2-way attachment security (p = .059, Cramer’s V = 0.342). Maternal sensitive responsiveness did not differ across study conditions (p = .097, RBC = 0.288). Parenting intentions relating to breastfeeding, proximal care, room sharing, and elimination communication were significantly increased in the intervention group, as were responsive parenting beliefs, and frequency of positive care reported over the infants’ first year. Interpretation: The intervention significantly increased responsive parenting intentions and beliefs, positive care over the first year, and rates of secure attachment. Parenting From the Start warrants further study as a brief, preventative, bicultural intervention. Trial registration ACTRN12617000321347, universal trial number U111111840331. Trial information can be found at: http://www.ANZCTR.org.au/ACTRN12617000321347.aspx
The Politics of Policing Family Violence in New Zealand: An Overview
(School of Psychology, Massey University,, 2012) Benschop, Maria; Coombes, Leigh; Morgan, Mandy; Gammon, Ruth
In 2012, the New Zealand Police introduced a new Family Violence Policy to guide police response to family violence occurrences including a new tool for assessing situational risk factors. The Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) is a 13 item actuarial measure for intimate partner assault recidivism developed in Canada (Hilton, Harris, Rice, Houghton & Eke, 2008). It is crucial to understand how the changes in police policy and procedures that involve ODARA affect the safety and wellbeing of domestic violence victims. Victim safety and protection are policing priorities. The police response and understanding of family violence has changed over the last 40 years from police viewing the domestic incident as a private relationship matter with minimal police intervention, to a criminal investigation developing from the pro arrest strategy (Ford, 1986; Ford, 1993). This paper traces the history of policing policy changes in family violence that led to the introduction of ODARA in 2012. Four key turning points are identified, with the aim of gathering an understanding of how policy emerges in policing family violence.
Precarious feminine identities : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2021) Weatherley, Guenevere E. W.
This thesis explores, from a DeleuzoGuattarian perspective, the motivations that women find for, and the actions they undertake in leaving intimate partner relationships under which they have suffered emotional and physical derogation at the hands of their abusive other. It seeks to investigate and describe their "minoritarian" actions in the context of a DeleuzoGuattarian stylistic and strategic approach towards departing intimate partner violence (IPV). In this, as well as considering particular aspects of Deleuze and Guattari's conceptual apparatus, the study pursues the differences opened up by affirmative engagement with the hopefulness of virtualities, and the "lines of flight" these offer for creative possibilities, enduring connections, and novel - if precarious - identities. The extremes to which the women in this study were pushed reveal the stresses and conflicts in the bid for autonomy and equality inherent in unhappy intimate partner relationships without the frequent rhetoric that masks the difficulties of domestic life. Compounding these women's problems is the fact that there are few obvious avenues for escape for those trapped in abusive situations, limited support for independence, or programmatic advice on the broad social mandate they must negotiate. The women's stories reveal deep fissures in the structures of conventional New Zealand families by showing that the latter cannot accommodate or validate relationships that privilege outmoded gender practices over care, commitment, and opportunity for growth. Their stories articulate social and cultural uncertainties about the unstable positions of women in unequal relationships, that privilege outmoded gender practices over care, commitment, and opportunity for growth. Their stories articulate social and cultural uncertainties about the unstable positions of women in unequal relationships, the physically and emotionally draining demands to which they are subjected, and the struggle to find acceptance in their relationships, which are too often structured not by good will, affection and effort, but by traditional roles and economic hierarchies. The narratives contribute to the conversation on persecuted women's courage and determination to endure and resist, to develop lines of flight and to expand their lives despite intolerable pressures, as well as offering a DeleuzoGuattarian conceptual pragmatic underpinning of action. It shows that assertive independent action engenders empowering becoming, and it suggests that where women initiate schizonanalytic breaks, where they embrace precarity, they can discover creative and fulfilling lives.
The Problem with Death: Towards a Genealogy of Euthanasia
(Massey University, 2011) Ryan, Anne; Morgan, Mandy; Lyons, Antonia
A hugely contentious issue in society today is whether individuals have the right to choose when and how to die. The ethics, legality and morality of euthanasia have been hotly debated in many countries around the world. However, the phenomenon of euthanasia has not just emerged recently, on the contrary a wide ranging and diverse network of events have all played some part in our present day understanding. This paper presents a genealogical analysis, an overview of a Foucauldian ‘history of the present’, that addresses the issue of how euthanasia has emerged as a possible solution to terminal illness. It examines the conditions present at particular periods of time and a specific, but disorderly collection of incidents that have allowed our present constructions of euthanasia to come about. This focus recognizes the intrinsic relationship between discourse, knowledge and power as the construction of particular discourses of euthanasia that may prevail in our society today, and are accepted as ‘common sense,’ provide the potential to act in certain ways, while marginalizing alternative practices. This genealogy challenges both the origins and functions of our present day ‘knowledge’ regarding euthanasia and the assumptions of self-evidence and inevitability that accompany prevailing discourses.
Problematising Effectiveness: The Inclusion of Victim Advocacy Services in Living Without Violence Programme Provision and Evaluation
(School of Psychology, Massey University, 2012) Denne, Stephanie; Coombes, Leigh; Morgan, Mandy
Advocacy services in collaboration with living without violence programmes have the potential to increase experiences of safety and well-being for the victims of domestic violence. However, advocacy services are not always offered within programmes and the influence of advocacy is often over-looked when evaluating the ‘effectiveness’ of programme provision. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of semi-structured interviews with five (ex) partners of men who had completed a living without violence programme found that advocacy services meaningfully increased victims’ feelings of safety and well-being independent from changes, or lack of change, in the men’s violent behaviour. Therefore, victim advocacy may be a valuable addition to living without violence programmes and can potentially offer a broader, multidimensional understanding of ‘effectiveness’ in evaluations of programme success.
Rewriting therapeutic failure : ethics, aesthetics and politics in the critique of psychology’s institution : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2025-08-03) Figueira Menezes, Jerônimo Vicente
This thesis developed from an interest in questioning the boundaries of psychological understanding and its inquiry and practice frontiers. The research project initially intended to take personal accounts of failure in psychotherapy as a means of mapping psychology’s conceptual and applied boundaries. However, embracing an emergent procedure inspired by schizoanalysis — informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s contributions — and drawing on elements of institutional analysis, existential cartography, Foucauldian theory, and philological inquiry, the work shifted from a narrow focus on individual narratives to a broader critique of the institution of psychology. This shift surfaced from confronting the risk of reductionist individualisation, in which psychology’s pre-formatted modes of investigation both control and limit the scope of understanding. At a fundamental level, failure embodies a gap between expectations and outcomes, along with an acknowledgement of limitations in methods, proficiency, or feasibility. There is an extensive body of research on failure in psychotherapy, focused on a wide range of isolated and non-comparable protocols, sometimes without fully recognising their own contextual limitations. These studies produce conflicting assessments due to psychology’s diverse and situated knowledge production systems. Irreconcilable gaps between three personal accounts of failure collected in interviews and the prescriptive structures of psychological theories/protocols further articulate the silencing of complexity and subjectivity that repeatedly emerge in therapeutic encounters. Even so, failure necessarily takes on local configurations with varying degrees of objectivity and subjectivity, in assemblages with a range of disparate elements — possibly including metatheoretical principles, the commodified dissatisfaction of therapy consumers, and any further influences bridging abstract and concrete domains. Such configurations of failure are often treated as structural realities, becoming the restrictive focus of scholarly analysis and resulting in self-referential practices. This thesis offers a performative academic critique that moves beyond these analytical confines. Written as what is termed a trapizonga, it presents an adaptive ethico-aesthetic-political critique of the institution of psychology. As the embodiment of a relational and immanent ethos, attentive to the collective struggles of living together, and performing a minoritarian and parrhesiastic arrangement of the sensible, this trapizonga offers a reflexive account of the broader failures embedded in psychology’s institutional and therapeutic limitations.
Seeking the Voice of Experience: The Complexities of Researching Women’s Accounts of Their (Ex-) Partner’s Engagement with Living Free from Violence Programmes
(Massey University, 2011) Denne, Stephanie C; Coombes, Leigh; Morgan, Mandy
Previous research into the effectiveness and impact of domestic violence programmes has often focused on recidivism and re-offence data or self-report measures. Such research is constrained by a reliance on incidences of violence being officially reported and by legal definitions of intimate violence, limiting our understandings of women’s lived experiences of safety. Missing voice research is problematic because of the tensions between research processes and the prioritisation of maintaining women’s safety. To be able to engage in the process of researching women’s experiences of their (ex) partners’ engagement with men’s Living Free from Violence programmes requires an understanding of the complexities of developing relationships and processes that privilege and protect women’s safety throughout the research journey, and necessitates an understanding of the barriers to participation. This involves a collaborative and supportive working partnership to be formed and developed between the researcher and the community, one that at all times maintains the awareness that women’s safety must be the focus of research, both in outcome and process. This paper discusses the complexities involved in our attempts to understand how women experience issues of change and safety as a result of their partner’s involvement in a local Living Free from Violence programme.
Voices from the family violence landscape : gifts of experiences, understandings and insights from the heart of the sector : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2020) Everest, Adrienne Roslyn Joy
Family violence continues with a ferocious tenacity to impact on the lives of many people. This study brings voices with insight and understanding, spanning decades of experience, that highlight how much work is still to be done to eliminate family violence from Aotearoa New Zealand. Yet it also testifies to exciting developments, tells stories of success, and envisions futures that not only involve surviving but also dare to reach for thriving. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to gather understandings from nine participants, who shared a common experience of facilitating stopping violence programmes as well as a diversity of other experiences regarding family violence, and five consultants with expert knowledge in areas related to family violence such as child advocacy, integrated practice and kaupapa Māori responses. A two-stage process took place where findings from stage one were shared with others in stage two for their feedback and elaboration. Qualitative interviews were conducted in both stages and analysed through an idiographic, iterative coding process focusing on meaning and interpretation to produce understandings of the research contributors’ experiences. This process resulted in six superordinate themes with associated subordinate themes. The first three superordinate themes elaborate understandings of the conditions of abuse, in environments of marginalisation; the particular experiences of children and young people living the experience, yet too often silenced despite the valuable lessons they can teach us; and the many barriers to seeking help faced by adults experiencing abuse in the eye of the storm. The fourth theme highlights the way in which people impacted by abuse are experiencing the disconnection of help, in the shadow of empire builders. This manifests in a response system that creates barriers to comprehensive support, excluding key people, agencies, or cultural contributions; silencing voices of experience, and consequently formulating disconnected, ineffective solutions. Yet contributors also recognise significant successes and how going for gold creates many effective strategies and innovations, achieved through the hard work of dedicated people. The final superordinate theme draws together learnings, articulating a process that opens up to hermeneutics of the heart in which it becomes possible to avoid hostile reactions, victim blaming and disconnection through discovering the rhythm of families and enabling responsive work at the heart of the matter.
‘Wade in the Water …': Rethinking adoptees' stories of reunion
(Massey University, 2011) Blake, Denise; Coombes, Leigh; Morgan, Mandy
In 1955, the Aotearoa/New Zealand government legislated the closed stranger adoption period. Approximately 80,000 children were constructed as a legal fiction when deemed as if born to a legally married couple. Birth family information was permanently sealed. Yet being raised in a fictional subject position and being denied access to any family of origin has consequences for all involved. After ten years of lobbying, the Adult Adoption Information Act (1985) came into effect. The power of that legislation was to overturn the strategies that suppressed adoptees’ rights to know details of their birth. Adult adoptees over the age of 20 years could access their original birth certificates, which provided a birth mother’s name. With this identifying information, reunions became possible. Birth family reunions involve a diverse range of experiences, reflecting the ways in which adoptees are contextually and historically produced. This paper reconsiders the identity implications of reunion stories using the theoretical concept of hybrid identity. The complexities of reunions are multiple, and adoptees negotiate their identities through being both born to and born as if and yet neither identity is safe. In the production of this hybrid story, it was possible to see the political and moral trajectories that enable and constrain a sense of self through the complexities of a legal context that produces binary subject positions.
Wade in the Water: Awash in the Sense of Adoption
(School of Psychology, Massey University, 2012) Blake, Denise; Morgan, Mandy; Coombes, Leigh
A discursive approach to knowledge contends that language is the constitutive force of experience and lived reality. Meaning is created through language use within relationships, while discourses function as the statements that produce knowledge, power and truth claims. We cannot step outside of the discourses through which our knowledge of experience is produced, though their complexity always allows us to resist particular identities that are discursively available to us. Based on interviews with 12 adoptees constituted within the ‘closed’ adoption period between 1955 and 1985, this narrative analysis represents the way in which the adoptive body matters to participants’ experiences of adoption and their resistances to the discourses that produce knowledge of adoption: Embodiment needed to be incorporated into this discursive work. Knowing, accessing and beingin- the-world are achieved through our senses in everyday life. We engage and shape cultural norms that enable and constrain corporeality. The adoptive experience is lived and felt through bodies that struggle to articulate their corporeality through discourse. Without discourses fit for purpose, speaking embodiment in and through adoption is precarious and adoptees attempt to articulate subjectivities beyond those allowed. This paper discusses the strategies used to materialise body matters in researching adoption.

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