Massey Documents by Type

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/294

Browse

Has files: YesSubject: search.filters.subject.Social action

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    "We just have to get them growing their own food" : The cultural politics of community gardens : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Webb, Virginia
    Community gardens remain a popular and persistent response to a range of social ills from food security to social isolation. Scholars often frame gardens as political movements, sites of radical opposition to a globalised, homogenised and hegemonic food system. From this perspective, gardeners are actively cultivating a more environmentally sustainable and socially just way of producing and distributing food and seeking alternative ways of feeding communities. There is no consensus on this perspective, however, and the literature offers a lively debate on the extent to which gardens reinforce or subvert socio-economic structures and inequalities. My research adds to this debate by providing an analysis that shows how community gardens work as sites of identity construction where dominant cultural values are transmitted to select gardeners by those with a sense of governmental belonging. My research is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic examination of what garden organisers or instigators think they are doing when they do community gardens. I find that garden organisers are trying to shore up a national identity that they perceive as being at risk of being lost. This identity reflects the values of self-reliance, thriftiness, and good neighbourliness that organisers consider themselves to embody and that they believe others lack. It is possible to interpret these values as being symptomatic of processes of neoliberalisation, and the gardens as evidence of the successful depoliticisation of issues of food security and hunger. However, I find that they also reflect deep concern about, and resistance to, these processes. Garden organisers draw on nostalgia for a positively evaluated past world in response to a deficient present world. By invoking the past, gardeners mobilise to overcome what they consider to be the contemporary experience of loss of identity, and absence of community. I joined three community gardens as a volunteer in Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand, to explore the motivations of garden organisers. In each site, I found complex and transversal processes of governance and resistance. I have interpreted these using a theoretical framework assembled from the work of Ghassan Hage on governmental belonging and the politics of hope; Michel Foucault’s work on governmentality and resistance; and Gilles Clément’s work on the agency of plants. I spent intensive time in the gardens, growing garden produce and taking it home to eat. The materiality of the gardens and produce revealed a set of assumptions about the availability of domestic labour and enabled me to build up a detailed picture of the limitations and potential community gardens as sites of alternate ways of doing food and community.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    "Gumboots and grassroots" : exploring leadership for social change at a grassroots level in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Business Studies in Management at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2017) Neeley, Eloise Alison
    The primary aim of this study was to explore the motivations underpinning three agri-women’s involvement in grassroots associations. The research investigated leadership processes within the groups and sought to understand the impact of three specific projects in the context of grassroots leadership for social change. Grassroots associations have been described as innovative networks of people sharing common goals and vision, that recognise and respond to local community needs, often motivated by a need to create societal and environmental change. Future climatic and sustainability challenges predicted for New Zealand’s agri-sector provide the impetus to support and increase this collective leadership capacity. Voluntary groups such as these have largely been ignored by leadership scholars, however their informal, decentralised structures and collective decision-making processes offer unique opportunities to view leadership in a different way, a way that may be essential in the complex world of the 21st century. Furthermore, the context of this research in rural and provincial New Zealand provides a fresh perspective relevant to rural and urban alike, for a country largely reliant on its primary sector for economic prosperity. A qualitative multiple case study design was chosen for its ability to achieve a holistic result, rich in content and meaning, through employing multiple data collection techniques in a naturalistic setting. Thematic analysis was used to draw out themes from the data, which combined with existing theory in an abductive approach adding new contributions to the current limited knowledge of grassroots leadership processes. Key findings were the participants’ voluntary altruistic principles and their passion, persistence and commitment to their causes. Leadership processes within the groups confirmed an outdated leader-follower influence paradigm and strong parallels with elements of Complexity Leadership Theory, especially in terms of enabling leadership to create adaptive space. However, the major contribution from this study was an adapted framework demonstrating how philosophical foundations, leadership practices and activities of grassroots associations can build community power in the creation of social capital contributing to community resilience for unknown and unknowable future events.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Social practice within a capitalist state : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1986) Shirley, Ian F.
    This thesis set aside conventional occupational distinctions between scientists, administrators and managers, in an examination of social practice within a capitalist State. It explored both the limits of State power and the capacity of State practitioners for transformative action. The central proposition being examined, suggested that State practitioners inevitably engage in forms of action which tend to perpetuate existing social and economic relationships. The epistemology of Jurgen Habermas provided the framework for this analysis in which distinctions were made between different forms of scientific enquiry and corresponding modes of social action. These distinctions equated the empirical-analytic tradition with strategic action, the historical-hermeneutic tradition with communicative action, and the critical tradition with emancipatory action. Distinctions were also made between two alternative but related levels of practice; namely, interaction, defined as the communicative and strategic actions of knowledgeable participating subjects, and societal action which emanates out of the forces and relations of production and which represents the institutionalisation of behavioural patterns established by society as a whole. In an examination of the social indicators movement it was revealed that crucial questions relating to economic and political structures interest group manoeuvrings, and social conflict in general, had been omitted. Practitioners appeared to exclude the possibility of political motivation from both the design and construction of social indicator systems. By accepting the structural limitations imposed by capitalist economic and social relations and by agreeing to operate within the selective limitations established by the dominant class, practitioners inadvertently aligned themselves with the empirical tradition and with strategic action. Although the Habermasian distinctions between different scientific traditions proved adequate in evaluating the outcome of practice, it was necessary to reappraise the theoretical logic of class so as to account for those locations within the State which could not be defined by ownership of the means of production. This reappraisal identified practitioners as members of the auxiliary class occupying contradictory locations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Whereas bourgeois and proletarian locations are occupied by classes which are diametrically opposed, the auxiliary class draws its characterictics from a simultaneous and partial location in two classes. As a consequence, the class actions of State practitioners are infused with ambiguities. These ambiguities became evident when the examination focussed on strategic and communicative action. Although the cognitive interests of the auxiliary class seemed to coincide with the values and interests of the bourgeoisie any instrumental association between the actions of State practitoners and the dominant class was rendered problematic. Whereas the cognitive interests of State practitioners exemplified the distinctive characteristics of different forms of knowledge, the class practices in which they engaged stemmed from their structural locations within the State, their contradictory class interests, and their mediating capacities. These mediating capacities were examined by analysing the practices of an N.R.A.C. Working Party which was commissioned to report on unemployment. Although the Working Party demonstrated the potential of the critical tradition for transformative practice, the expression of this theorem in action was less than conclusive. Whilst the Working Party displayed a primary interest in the emancipation of those disadvantaged by unemployment, the contradictions identified in the report were displaced by the dominant class and by State managers around the boundary of the bourgeoisie. Although the cognitive interests of the Working Party were consistent with the critical tradition, there was no evidence to suggest that the practices of the Working Party promoted either personal or political emancipation. Thus any instrumental association between the critical tradition and emancipatory action could not be sustained. As a consequence of these examinations it became apparent that the central reality for practitioners within the State was the contradictory nature of practice. Habermasian theory was then extended in an attempt to resolve the problematic relationship between theory and practice.