Browsing by Author "Mouat, Michael James"

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    Assembling the land of milk and money : the work of money in New Zealand’s dairy industry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023) Mouat, Michael James
    Academic and media narratives about the New Zealand dairy industry have reinforced a portrayal which emphasises its steady, almost inevitable evolution into ‘the backbone’ of New Zealand’s export economy. In these narratives rising export revenues have been taken as proof of the valuableness of the dairy industry. However, in this thesis I argue that these currently prevalent understandings of the dairy industry uncritically accept a definition of money as just being a commodity that simply facilitates exchange and measures value. Drawing on my concept of moneyness, my thesis re-investigates money as a form of work and contributes to a different understanding of the dairy industry that re-narrates it as an effect of the way this money work practically assembles and reassembles sets of relations. My moneyness analysis highlights how previously inconspicuous relations became stabilised through the work of tax, loans, and shares, by following moments of controversy to where the way money and the dairy industry worked were practically changed. The work of tax shows how solving the problem of state revenue also translated value into other relations which made the early dairy industry valuable as a sterling accumulation machine. The work of loans shows how the dairy industry became creditable because of the way relations between the state, financial system and dairy industry have been maintained. The work of shares shows how overcoming various problems has arranged and re-arranged cooperative dairy industry value, making it stably commensurable with national value. The effect is to present a historical arc of New Zealand’s dairy industry as characterised by a dynamism that is locally arranged and historically adaptable. The thesis concludes that the creative practices of moneyness have continually stabilised the dairy industry, not in spite of disruptions but because of them.
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    Discomfort food : how a market for synthetic foods is being assembled : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Geography at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2017) Mouat, Michael James
    This research follows the discursive productions of human actors in an assemblage that is creating a market for Synthetic Foods. This assemblage, which includes human actants referred to here as The Movement, is represented in two major empirical themes. First it is demonstrated how The Movement is attempting to immaterially disassemble conventional Animal Agriculture, by discursively cleaving it from the notion that it produces natural foods. Second it is shown how The Movement is constructing a new market for natural foods, where animal products are made without animals. The non-human actors of this assemblage are said to be enrolled but this belies the multiple levels of negotiation that are yet to take place. Through collecting and analysing the media productions of The Movement, the discursive performances and relational spaces that constitute this assemblage can be traced. Through tracing these material and immaterial practices the main argument developed here is that a market for Synthetic Foods is being culturally assembled in a series of discursive productions. The Movements discursive texts show an attempt to both, requalify what natural foods are said to be and then to simultaneously create a spectacle that fixes the identities of actors that supposedly produce them. This can be understood using a Cultural Economy approach which extends the argument by demonstrating that this market assemblage recombines nature with its binary other, culture, in a new way, to form a differently constituted world.