Massey Documents by Type

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

Browse

Filters

Settings

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

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Understanding diabetes in a rural Aboriginal community : a thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2015) Mitchell, Ashleigh
    This thesis explores the way seven Aboriginal peoples from Yidiyi, who dwell in a remote region of the Northern Territory Australia, understand and treat their diabetes. In 1935, Aboriginal clan groups who dwelled in their own totemic land, mixing only in times of ceremony, migrated into the town of Yidiyi to live as a community. These people have, for the last eighty years, been adjusting to living with and integrating certain aspects of Western culture. With diabetes statistics rising for Australian Aboriginal peoples, my participants negotiate how they deal with and treat their diabetes. For Aboriginal peoples, health and wellbeing is holistic and interconnected with all aspects of life. To maintain health is to maintain positive interactions with all human and non-human entities. This thesis contributes to the literature that argues for the following: an understanding of Australian Aboriginal culture in Western settings; an integration of local Aboriginal healing methods within Western clinical environments; and continuous efforts that work to improve bicultural relationships.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Bodies in context : a comparative study of early childhood education in New Zealand and Japan : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2013) Burke, Rachael Sarah
    Early childhood education in both New Zealand and Japan is increasingly being seen as an essential experience for children as evidenced by the growth of the early childhood sector and lively political debate. In New Zealand, the bi-cultural curriculum makes a clear commitment to supporting ethnic diversity in the classroom. While Japanese centres have been categorised as culturally homogeneous in the past, focus is now turning to accommodating children from a variety of backgrounds. In both countries less attention has been paid to the latent cultural assumptions underpinning children’s, families and teachers’ experiences of early childhood education. Using Tobin et al.’s (1989, 2009) PSC3 methodology to stimulate a multi-vocal text through the use of videotape, this thesis examines how early childhood settings in New Zealand and Japan incorporate these implicit beliefs into pedagogy and practice. This study suggests that implicit cultural practices not only shape many of the interactions of the early childhood context, but also many of these practices often go unnoticed or unrecognised as culturally informed. Using visual methods to reflect on comparative material is a powerful way to reveal hidden cultural assumptions. The video-cued method works to collapse and accelerate the traditional ethnographic fieldwork process as the videos provide a focus for discussion, and help reduce the kind of ambiguity that can occur when interviewing across cultural contexts. Through the layers of dialogue stimulated by the videos, children’s bodies emerged as the locus of the work. Although the body was once neglected as an object of scholarly study, it has now become a significant site for anthropological analysis. Inspired by Foucault (1995) scholars came to acknowledge that the body is not only socially and culturally produced, but historically situated within conceptions of society and nature. Using the theories of Foucault (1995), Douglas (1966, 1996) and Mauss (1973) as a framework, this study argues that the ways in which children’s bodies are constructed, protected, disciplined and challenged provide a useful lens through which to examine unseen cultural practices. As early childhood settings become more diverse, it is hoped this study will provide points for reflection and offer practical applications for teachers. With this aim in mind, the thesis incorporates film, qualitative interviews, vignettes and personal reflections to make the work accessible to a wider audience than traditional academic writing.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A la moda dai Salamun : tourism, experiences and identity in an Italian alpine village : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1998) Ridler, Keith
    The people of the European Alps have been the focus of considerable ethnographic research since the late nineteen fifties. During the same period, their cultures have been profoundly transformed by the influence of rapidly developing mass-tourism. Studies in Alpine ethnography have generally taken one of two theoretical approaches, either examining the histories and cultures of mountain-dwelling peoples as ecological adaptations to a marginal ecological environment, or examining their historical situation as one of political and economic "dependency". Research from both perspectives has tended to ignore tourism as a central focus of inquiry. When studies have addressed tourism and its impacts, researchers have generally neglected the existential dimensions of the experience of change, focusing more commonly on structural effects. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the major cultural impact of tourism from the perspective of the people of Salamone, a heavily touristed village in the Italian Alps, has been a pervasive process of "cultural disenchantment”. Tourism, along with other cultural forces at play in contemporary Italian society has, in the view of Salamonesi themselves, alienated them from a sense of the past and from local traditions. My study explores the means by which the members of this community act to recover historical experience and a sense of place, and adopt historical idioms of expression to both display identity and boundary it from what they perceive as the culturally homogenising effects of the tourist presence. From a perspective grounded in existential and phenomenological anthropology, I focus on three modes by which historical experience is constituted; historical inscription of the landscape and village space; ethnomimetic enactments of historical roles and behaviours; and lastly, the poetics of social interaction with tourists and other villagers. I argue that these modes provide common forms of expression within which individuals make complex and sometimes contradictory statements about who they are, how they perceive contemporary realities, and how they imagine the cultural and political future in a rapidly unifying Europe. The experience of long-term fieldwork and a prolonged personal engagement with Salamonese have also opened the possibility of a sustained reflection on the nature of ethnographic inquiry and fieldwork practice. This reflection is the second major theme of this study. Just as Salamonesi "take up" what is given to them by history and transform its meaning through practical means, I argue that practical experience and embodied knowledge lead us to recast our assumptions about the relationship between theory and experience, and the nature and intent of anthropological understanding.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Culture cross : foreign students intercultural interactions on a New Zealand university campus : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Bragg, Alaric Bernard Marshall
    This MA Thesis examines foreign students on-campus intercultural interactions at a New Zealand university – namely, the Massey University Turitea campus in Palmerston North. Prior research has shown that many foreign students in New Zealand universities have tended to spend their on-campus activities with other international students, usually from their own countries, rather than New Zealand ones, while other foreign students are largely interested in and open to intercultural interaction with New Zealanders when on campus. The purpose of my research was to examine and assess the nature, degree and reasons that foreign students engage in intercultural interactions when on-campus, and determine what my findings indicated towards the greater international student community in New Zealand. One of two methods that I used during my fieldwork consisted of interviewing seven research participants, who I contacted through personal friendships and Massey University clubs and organizations associated with foreign students, about their on-campus intercultural interactions. The second method was a level of participant observation, in which I participated in and observed my research participants during their academic and social university activities to assess their on-campus intercultural interactions. Major findings include the significant role of social and sports organizations in helping foreign students establish intercultural interactions, which are also promoted for many foreign students new to Massey via orientation programs, and the importance of campus accommodation facilitating foreign students intercultural interactions. Major conclusions include the need for more emphasis on internationalization at the Massey campus and the necessity of increased opportunities for intercultural interaction in and out of class.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Enchanting books, redeeming fetishism : theory and practice in relation to the life of books : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2003) Barnard, Henry George
    This thesis is a study of books which seeks to understand them and their place in our life world not in terms of their role as a medium of communication but as enchanted and sacred objects which are active agents in that life world. I show how they work as totemic operators or caste marks (by the way they act to distinguish groups of people), enshrined objects (by the ways in which they are literally handled) and ritual instruments (by the way they act as the focus of the new ritual practices of book reading groups). The thesis seeks, simultaneously, to advance a theory of culture which allows us to take a more generous approach to animism and fetishism and it also advances new methodologies for doing ethnographic research in our own life world. To achieve this it draws on and extends the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the work of the anthropologist Tim Ingold and the philosopher Susan Oyama. The thesis argues that anthropology, in relation to the "Western" (in New Zealand "Pakeha") life world, should practice forms of re-enchanting synthesis rather than the reductive, disenchanting forms of analysis characteristic of some anthropological work. The study is based on data collected in a large community survey, on interviews with members of book reading groups, and on ethnographic materials "given" by the world we live in. The location of the field research is a provincial city in New Zealand but materials from further afield in the "Western" world are drawn on as well.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Acts of integration, expressions of faith : madness, death and ritual in Melanau ontology : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2004) Appleton, Ann Lucille
    Longitudinal medical research studies undertaken on an international scale by the World Health Organisation continue to confirm a better prognosis for mental illness in traditional societies than in more technologically developed societies. While various associations have been drawn or hypothesised between specific cultural factors and a more favourable outcome, attention has also frequently been drawn to the methodological, analytic and diagnostic inadequacies of these studies. The work for this thesis was undertaken with these criticisms in mind and also in part as a counter to the perceived inadequacies of a solely bio-medical approach to psychopathology. The specific purpose of the research was to assess the role that culture plays in the construction and experience of both psychological well-being and psychopathology in a "traditional" society in Sarawak, Malaysia. There was an equal concern to ascertain and examine the ways in which explanations and understandings about identity, illness and wellness differ from current western models and approaches and how they are realised and lived out in the experience of individuals. The ethnographic data was collected during intensive participant-observation conducted over two years in the Mukah District of Sarawak, Malaysia, a region which has a long association with the Melanau ethnic group. Drawing on the ethnographic evidence, this thesis argues that psychopathological experiences (as psychological phenomena) embody characteristics that make it possible to identify them as culturally constructed artifacts. A theory is advanced which locates the source of psychopathology within the context of human being-in-the-world and which suggests that features of the mental illness experience such as chronicity and stigma are historically and culturally constructed within the illness concept itself. The argument draws on the theory and insights of existentialism, phenomenology. Turner's ritual theory, and Jung's concept of the shadow, extended to include a concept of the cultural shadow. It concludes that a failure to take account of the cultural dimensions of mental illness may also result in a failure to perceive not only the source of our psychopathologies but also a solution.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Recovering voices in mental health, families and anthropology : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Social Anthropology, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2009) McCormick, Rowan
    This essay discusses some experiences of families, carers and people with experience of mental ill-health and recovery in New Zealand, focussing on ‘recovering moments’ in social exchanges, families, mental health settings and in anthropological research. It draws comparisons between phenomenological approaches in anthropology and practices promoted in recent mental health recovery philosophy, with a particular focus on the production and exchange of particular local expertise, much of which resists academic appropriation or definition. The value, currency and relevance of these ‘recovering voices’ relates to their being privileged, validated and transmitted in ethical exchanges in a range of social settings that exemplify aspects of Marcel Mauss’ discussion of the act of giving, receiving and repaying (1980:34).
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Cultural perceptions of the Wellington landscape 1870 to 1900 : an anthropological interpretation : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2008) Taylor, Christopher Russell
    This thesis examines how cultural perceptions of Wellington’s environment changed from the 1870s to the early 1900s. The historical material shows how clearing the New Zealand landscape of its forest cover in the early settler years reflected a particular cultural perception of the New Zealand bush. By 1900, this cultural perception had changed indicating that not only was the New Zealand landscape different, but New Zealand society had changed. These changes can be seen in the geographic historical accounts of clearing New Zealand’s bush and the parliamentary debates of the 1875 Forest Act, 1885 State Forest Act and the 1903 Scenery Protection Act. The anthropological theories of dwelling, taskscape, phenomenology of landscape and the hybridity of nature are used as a contemporary synthesis of ideas to examine cultural perceptions of the Wellington bush. An anthropological approach is also used to bring together diverse historical material in a way that allows these ideas to be applied. Cultural perceptions of the Wellington landscape can be understood in the way the bush was cleared for pasture, how the landscape was depicted in paintings and photography and in the case study of the establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush. The thesis argues that cultural perceptions can be appreciated historically by understanding how people lived within the Wellington landscape, and how this was reflected in attitudes towards the New Zealand bush. Cultural perceptions of New Zealand’s bush were a combination of existing cultural attitudes, the practicalities of living within the New Zealand environment and a direct perception of the bush itself. It is the shifting influence of all three of these aspects that determines overall cultural perceptions of the bush in any particular period in New Zealand’s history. The establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush shows how the cultural perception of Wellington’s bush had changed from seeing it as an obstruction covering potential farmland to having a defined place and purpose within the Wellington landscape.