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    Knowing, belonging & becoming-with the Ōruawharo : an ethnography of a river : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Albany Campus, Aotearoa, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-11-17) Joensen, Clare
    This thesis is situated in the northwest of Te Ika-a-Māui, the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand along the Ōruawharo river, a salty tidal tributary of the Kaipara Harbour. For over a hundred and fifty years, the Ōruawharo and surrounding district have been storied by a dominant ‘settler’ narrative which maps onto place, as names, text, histories, monuments and civic apparatus. However, this is not the only story of the Ōruawharo. There are multiple stories, multiple ways of knowing the river; knowings which produce different belongings. As such belonging to a place is always a process of becoming, and this becoming is produced relationally, as a series of “withs”, with both humans and non-humans. These becoming-withs produce embodied ways of knowing which in turn, remake place when given the opportunity to be known by others. This thesis aims to bring to light the unknown, hidden and subordinated Ōruawharo knowledges in order to reveal multiplicities and develop new ways of thinking about place. This is Pākehā research done inbetween Māori and Pākehā worlds in a Māori-Pākehā place; a form of research which comes with its own set of troubles. As it is a Pākehā imperative to decolonise (Shaw 2021b), I stay with the trouble (Haraway 2016), and through a level of discomfort, produce small decolonising acts in written text, public speaking roles and through the curation of an exhibit. Decolonising actions, spurred on by this thesis, have then led to others as people come to know more, including that which cannot be unknown. Drawing on knowledges generated with boats (boat ethnography), people (interviews and casual conversations), texts (archives, books, texts, journals, letters and documents), the curation of an exhibit and a wide range of encounters in my community, I debunk knowing place as a singularity and demonstrate the value of knowing place differently through these methods. Ultimately, this ethnography of a river offers a multiplicity of knowings-with and in doing so, shifts human-centric and settler-centric narratives with tendencies to dominate. With dynamism, knowing, becoming and belonging are shown as relational, embodied, in amongst the withs, ever in motion, shaping lives and reshaping place, place as seen, imagined, felt, understood, experienced and remade.
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    Stories of human exceptionalism : writing through the impasse between care and domination : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology, Massey University, Albany, Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023) Ashley, Nicole
    The coalescing socio-political and environmental crises characterising the epoch of the Anthropocene raise fundamental questions about what it means to be human. Underpinning these tensions is a tendency that has become predominant within Western societies: an assumption that humans are 'above' the natural world, as if somehow 'exceptional'. This strains our relationship with the other. Human exceptionalism culminates in the impasse between care and domination. Relations of care and domination are inextricable: attempts to care for the other cannot be divorced from the forms of domination upon which those efforts are predicated. Yet as Alenka Zupančič (2017) affirms, this contradiction is not inherently problematic. What is problematic is when this contradiction is disavowed, for this is when human exceptionalism is reified. In questioning how we might care in a way that does not tacitly reinforce exceptionalist forms of dominance, I draw upon Zupančič's object-disoriented ontologies as a means of working through these interdisciplinary concerns. This involves attending to those objects that object to the discursive rationalities that we script about them. In a move that turns Zupančič's theoretical postulations into a distinct methodological orientation, I use autoethnography—specifically, an object-disoriented autoethnography—to work through experiences within my own life that elucidate the impasse between care and domination and thereby the disavowal of our exceptionalism. These experiences demonstrate three fields of social interaction that are complicit in the reproduction of human exceptionalism: the university's administration of an ethical subject; the making and unmaking of nature through conservation programmes; and the practices of death involved in the sustaining of life. Taking my place within the contradictions I seek to understand, this research thereby puts my own subjectivity on the line. In doing so, I illustrate how object-disoriented autoethnography enables a means of working with the limit points of our exceptionalism. In the process of re-scripting our stories anew, new insight can be revealed. In this instance, a generative capacity lies in the naming of the forms of violence encapsulated within care.
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    Te Wai Whau : a kaupapa Māori citizen science approach to plastics pollution : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, Te Ika-a-Maui, Aotearoa (Massey University, New Zealand)
    (Massey University, 2022) Peryman, Matt
    This ethnographic methodology-focused thesis explores the potential value of Kaupapa Māori citizen science for community-based research on plastics pollution at Te Wai Whau, Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (the Whau River, Auckland, NZ). Through the application and interpolation of both Kaupapa Māori (Māori ways of being/doing) and anthropological concepts and methodologies, this project aims to explore how citizen science may help Aotearoa address plastics pollution in a holistic, relational, integrated, and decolonial manner. Applying Kaupapa Māori to this anthropological project also serves to focus this study on collaborating with the Whau community on a culturally grounded and power-sharing basis to actively prevent further plastics pollution at the Whau. Methods used include semi-structured interviews, online engagement, and a Kaupapa Māori adaptation of Break Free From Plastic’s brand auditing methodology, each of which serve to build local knowledge and awareness of the global plastics crisis while exploring opportunities for systemic change. With many NZ brands identified as polluters at the Whau, this study emphasised how the normalisation and overproduction of plastics has resulted in plastics pollution in the Whau and Aotearoa more broadly. The study found that by actively collaborating with the Whau community to incorporate Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) into this research enhances the socio-cultural and political value of the research for our research community. This study’s local focus necessitates a critical analysis of the wider national and international contexts of plastics pollution, including how the legacies of European imperialism and capitalism have perpetuated today’s socio-ecological challenges such as plastics pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss. This study also explores the potential value of further decolonising anthropology through the critique of dominant power structures and connecting research with socio-political action in response to the systemic causes of plastics pollution.