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Subject: search.filters.subject.470208 Culture, representation and identity

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    Between two worlds : identity, belonging, and the lived experiences of intercountry adoptees in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology at Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025) Burton, Tiffany
    I entered this research with a question: Was I alone in feeling this way? As an intercountry adoptee raised in Aotearoa, New Zealand, I sought to understand whether others shared the same quiet ache—the dislocation, the longing, the feeling of in-betweenness. The life stories collected in this study highlight that such experiences were not singular or exceptional, but part of broader shared trajectories. Stories were shared across countries and generations, revealing personal pain and broader legal, systemic, and historical patterns. What started as a personal search gradually turned to a need to question, understand, and bring visibility to the structures that had long pushed adoptees' experiences to the margins. Intercountry adoption profoundly shapes an adoptee’s identity, belonging, and mental well-being throughout a lifetime. I explore the lived experience of six intercountry adoptees in New Zealand from childhood through adolescence into adulthood, focusing on how they construct and negotiate their identities while facing cultural displacement, systemic barriers, and societal expectations. I draw on qualitative semi-structured life story narrative methodologies and intersecting social constructivist and interpretative epistemologies to amplify the voices of adoptees, uncovering their significant emotional, psychological, and social challenges across the life course. The findings chapters speak to attachment, cultural dislocation, language loss, racialisation, belonging or lack thereof, and identity formation. These stories reveal the enduring impact of disrupted attachments, systemic neglect, cultural erasure and the resilience and meaning-making that emerge through narrative reclamation. Rather than aligning with functionalist or critical perspectives, I offer a third stance that offers space for contradiction. It acknowledges the intimacy of adoptive family relationships and the racialised, political, and economic systems that shape adoption globally and locally. This stance resists binary thinking, inviting more honest, inclusive, and ethically grounded conversations about adoption, identity, and belonging.
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    A mixed method investigation of historical narratives and representations within and across cultural contexts : implications for political culture and national identity : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024-12-18) Choi, Sarah
    Growing fragmentation in historical attitudes can be observed alongside increasing political polarization and conflict in many societies, with both of these trends mutually reinforcing each other. Amidst these dynamics, there is a growing urgent need to understand both the politics and psychology of collective remembering. Although there has been much theorizing about the ways that historical narratives are curated by political elites and institutions in ways that promote a positive and moral image of the nation, there has been a lack of research investigating the ways in which such narratives are actually received, internalized, appropriated, and/or resisted by the individuals that they are directed toward. To address this gap, the current thesis identifies and maps out popular historical narratives that are shared by lay individuals embedded in the national context of the United States. Importantly, how and the extent to which these narratives are connected to the present-day context of nations is a key consideration throughout this endeavour. According to theories of collective remembering (Assmann, 2013; Rigney, 2005), historical narratives that are ‘active’ in public discourse ought to incorporate elements from the nation’s distant, mythologized past in continuity with their more recent, living memories to connect the past meaningfully to the present, and to inform a meaningful and coherent sense of national identity over time. By investigating the dynamics of historical narratives, representations, and identity at the level of individuals, while still incorporating the political and social contexts that they are embedded in, the current thesis contributes to bridging the gap between psychology and politics in the domain of collective remembering. Chapter 2 investigated how communicative memories (memories of public events that have occurred within the lifetimes of people alive or personally remembered today) index the present-day climates of societies. The findings from this chapter demonstrated how recent memories of terrorism drive an extreme negative climate in Western countries, while recent memories of national independence underpinned a positive climate across majority world countries. In Chapter 3, I explored how historical narratives are articulated by individuals (embedded in the American context) to give meaning to these historical representations, and thereby orient the nation’s past to its present. This chapter identified popular historical narratives which were anchored in positive representations of national foundations, and in turn, were positively associated with national identification. However, these were identified alongside a popular counter-narrative that was critical of the mythologization of America’s past. Moreover, there was considerable plurality and fragmentation in the narrative landscape, with many American participants failing to articulate a distinct historical narrative at all. In Chapter 4, I employed an experimental approach to show how this fragmentation is reduced, while endorsement of positive narratives about the nation becomes tighter when individuals are reminded of: 1) national foundations (the past reinforcing the present) and 2) a present-day context of intergroup threat (the present reinforcing the past). In Chapter 5, I discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of the studies and their findings within a dynamic framework of historical narrative and identity. The societal relevance of these findings is discussed in relation to the declining resonance of positive national narratives in the United States, amidst increasing domestic polarization and recent failures of the state to respond to crises. This has implications for the narrative resources that are available to political leaders in their rhetoric to mobilize the national identity of their followers and audience. Nonetheless, such rhetorical work does not occur within a vacuum, and the changing social/political context (see Chapter 4) may (re)activate the narratives that are still available within the minds of ordinary Americans today (see Chapter 3)
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    Precarious citizens : a comparative analysis of the representation of Muslims and radicalisation in post-9/11 fiction : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024-09-23) Ghaffari, Somayyeh
    The initial understandings and perceptions of the 9/11 attacks were heavily influenced by media coverage of the events and by the early literary responses published in prominent newspapers and magazines. The first wave of fictional writing about 9/11 was largely penned by Anglo-American writers such as Martin Amis, John Updike and Don DeLillo, who rarely challenged the dominant media narrative of American trauma and victimisation and reconfirmed stereotypes about Muslims and extremism. I contend that the election of Barack Obama helped inaugurate a second wave of writing about 9/11 in which non-European and immigrant American characters appear. This shifted the singular focus on American trauma to wider multicultural concerns. I discuss Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Amy Waldman’s The Submission as representative. However, it was not until Muslim immigrant authors themselves began to write about their experiences after the attacks that a third wave of more nuanced portrayal of both Muslims and Muslim extremism started to occur. In close analyses of Laleh Khadivi’s A Good Country and Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire I discuss how such works offer complex depictions of cultural/ethnic “strangers/others” (including radicalised ones) who have made western nations their home. Both A Good Country and Home Fire offer insights into the difficulties faced by second-generation immigrants in everyday life in a county in which they desperately seek to belong but cannot, despite their citizenship. I argue that Shamsie’s keen (and informed) eye surveys a broader canvas than Khadivi’s. She counters stereotypes with researched psychological acuity and narratological skill. In our contemporary world, so fraught with tensions arising from misunderstandings of difference – religious, national, gendered, etc. – reading fiction about “strange others” and the ways they negotiate the difficult terrain of immigration, may have considerable social value.
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    Lolita Latina : an examination of Gothic and Lolita style in the Mexican environment : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Visual and Material Culture, College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Hardy Bernal, Kathryn Adèle
    This thesis, completed for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in Visual and Material Culture, Ph.D., examines the development of the fashion-based Mexican Gothic and Lolita movement, and its evolution from its subcultural Japanese roots. It asks, “What are the cultural conditions that encourage this movement to flourish in the Mexican environment?” In turn, “What does Mexican culture contribute to Mexican Gothic and Lolita style?” And, “What does Mexican Gothic and Lolita style say about Mexican culture, society, and beliefs?” The Gothic and Lolita movement is currently thriving in Mexico as an authentic, independent, creative, handmade fashion industry, yet to be co-opted into mainstream culture. With the do-it-yourself aspect of the movement comes its own, unique, cultural flavour. As such, it transforms and rearranges meanings of the original subcultural style in order to make new statements, which subvert the meanings, and understandings, of the Japanese Lolita identity. Analyses of Mexican Gothic and Lolita styles, in context with the Mexican environment, culture, and belief systems, as well as the operation of the Mexican Gothic and Lolita industry, are major focal points of this study. Also investigated are the ways the movement reflects, fits into, and departs from, the philosophies of the original subculture, especially regarding sociocultural and gender politics. These latter aspects are critiqued in context with “normative” gender positions, roles and hierarchies, within mainstream Japanese and Mexican societies.