Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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    Extending sexual scripting theory through critical discursive psychology: An analytical approach to explore the performance of sexual identities.
    (SAGE Publications, 2024-09-23) Healy-Cullen S; Morison T
    Sexual scripting theory, a widely used tool in sexuality research, was originally developed by Gagnon and Simon to illuminate the social nature of sexual practices and identity construction. Later, they sought to develop the theory further to align with a social constructionist perspective. However, vestiges of individualism and cognitivism haunt sexual scripting theory largely due to the use of the symbolic interactionist concept of performance. To address this, we draw on the performance–performativity approach in critical discursive psychology that develops the notion of performance from a discursive perspective and offers a way of extending sexual scripting theory that offers a truly social explication of sexual identity construction. We provide a practical illustration of this extended theorising, drawing on data from a project about young people’s online engagement with pornography. We demonstrate how developing the notion of sexual scripts as discursive resources that enable the performance of sexual identities allows us to illuminate the social and situated nature of identity construction. This framework enhances understanding of the process of sexual identity construction and provides a valuable tool for studying how broader sexual scripts that are sociohistorically specific provide a scaffolding for the ways an individual can construct sexual identities. Overall, this paper offers a valuable contribution to discursive scholarship in psychology by presenting a nuanced analytical framework that coheres with a constructionist, performative view of identity.
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    Patient-provider power relations in counselling on long-acting reversible contraception: a discursive study of provider perspectives
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2022-05-06) Morison T
    Contraceptive providers play an essential role in shaping contraceptive decision-making and care, with the potential to constrain patients' agency. This is a particular concern given the rising hegemony of Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) and growing evidence of negative patient experiences of LARC promotion and provision. Despite this evidence, little research has considered health providers' perspectives. Drawing on interviews with 22 contraceptive health providers in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper explored their professional identity construction, focusing on meaning-making in instances of conflict between providers' and patients' priorities and agendas. Guided by feminist poststructuralist theory, the discursive analysis highlights common rhetorical strategies used by participants to (1) justify the use of coercive practices to encourage LARC uptake, and (2) in turn, negotiate positive identities. Findings show how participants grapple with the reproductive politics structuring contraceptive care, including established understandings of the purpose of (long-acting) contraception and contraceptive providers' roles vis-à-vis provision and promotion. The findings point to limitations on contraceptive agency, despite the unanimous endorsement of rights-based voluntary care. Extending the critical literature on LARC and contributing to the under-researched area of contraceptive coercion and agency, the findings of this study have important implications for the delivery of contraceptive care.
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    Reproductive justice: A radical framework for researching sexual and reproductive issues in psychology
    (John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2021-05-13) Morison T
    The reproductive justice framework holds much promise for guiding research that can contribute to social change. Its limited integration and use in social psychology therefore represents a missed opportunity for justice-oriented social researchers. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the reproductive justice framework and demonstrate its value for social psychologists studying sexual and reproductive issues. Using the example of contraceptive provision, rights-based sexual and reproductive health research is contrasted with reproductive justice-oriented research to demonstrate how a reproductive justice lens can extend the analytical focus to illuminate the complex roots of an issue. This is crucial for developing policy and interventions that contribute toward longer-term systemic change and, ultimately, social transformation.
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    What does it mean to be ‘porn literate’? Perspectives of young people, parents and teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 5/04/2023) Healy-Cullen S; Morison T; Taylor J; Taylor K
    Porn literacy education is a pedagogical strategy responding to youth engagement with pornography through digital media. The approach is intended to increase young people's knowledge and awareness regarding the portrayal of sexuality in Internet pornography. However, what being 'porn literate' entails, and what a porn literacy education curricula should therefore include, is not a settled matter. Recognising the importance of end-user perspectives, 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents, teachers and young people in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and analysed via critical, constructionist thematic analysis. Participants drew on a developmentalist discourse and a discourse of harm to construct porn literacy education as a way to inoculate young people against harmful effects, distortions of reality, and unhealthy messages. In addition to this dominant construction of porn literacy education, we identified talk that to some extent resisted these dominant discourses. Building on these instances of resistance, and asset-based constructions of youth based on their agency and capability, we point to an ethical sexual citizenship pedagogy as an alternative approach to porn literacy education.
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    Focus on ‘the family’? How South African family policy could fail us
    (HSRC Press, 1/03/2016) Morison T; Lynch I; Macleod C
    This policy brief draws on research projects conducted by Tracy Morison, Ingrid Lynch and Catriona Macleod with funding support from the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa; the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development; and the Ford Foundation.