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    Connected older citizens : ageing in place and digitally mediated care in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Studies at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, Massey University Manawatū, Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-05-07) Vonk, Lisa
    Amidst discussions of Aotearoa New Zealand’s ageing population, how to care for growing numbers of older people is a considered a preeminent social and political issue. Digital technologies are imagined to be a particularly desirable solution in contexts where social values of independence intersect with the neoliberal state’s desire to reduce the amount of money spent on medical and social care. There is a substantial market for gerontechnologies (technologies specifically designed for older people) aiming to capitalise on the ‘silver tsunami’. Yet, digital technologies such as smart phones, exercise watches and laptops are widely accessible in Aotearoa New Zealand. They are increasingly used by older people to maintain social connectedness, coordinate practical support, and manage health. The purpose of this research was to explore how this digitally mediated care functions for community-dwelling older people. Taking an innovative theoretical-methodological approach, I combined actor-network theory with political economy theory. This enabled me to robustly examine sociotechnical care networks, paying attention both to the role of technologies in producing care as well as analysing who benefits from older people’s engagements with technology for care. The research draws on interviews with sixteen community dwelling older people, marketing materials of technologies used by those interviewed, the interface of an exchange platform and a patient portal used by some of those interviewed, as well as government documents. This data was analysed using network mapping, thematic analysis, and interface analysis. I ultimately demonstrate that digitally mediated care practices enact a ‘connected older citizen’. Through digitally mediated care practices, older people adjust (and are adjusted) to a culture of connectivity. Digitally mediated care involves new forms of labour. Social connection is framed as a core social value. I argue that digitally mediated self-care redefines independence in terms of the ability to use digital technologies to manage connections to reduce visible dependence on others. Notably, I show the imagined benefits of digitally mediated care are often not realised in practice due to limitations of technologies used in care (such as patient portals). Significantly, the priorities and needs of older people are not often at the forefront of digitally mediated care.
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    Becoming a ‘good’ Muslim woman : comparing habitus and everyday lived religiosity : an ethnographic study of Aotearoa New Zealand Muslim women : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023-11-10) Cheema, Hina Tabassum
    For women like us Every day isn’t about a sunrise Every night isn’t about a sunset Between our sunrise and sunset There are puzzles to solve Of the pictures never seen before Missing and broken pieces And bits mixed up from other puzzles But surprisingly Sometimes we make them And other times, they break us And occasionally They are left unsolved Lingering in on our minds Becoming part of us This thesis is an ethnographic study of everyday lived experiences of Muslim women immigrants in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a focus on everyday lived religiosity, I explore the lives of Muslim women, who are extremely diverse and in the state of becoming as depicted in the poem. I extend Bourdieu’s theory of Habitus by introducing Comparing Habitus as an analytical tool which allows us to comprehend and analyse the diversity, multiplicity, complexity, intersubjectivity, heterogeneity, fluidity and unfinishedness of Muslim women’s lived experiences in Aotearoa NZ. I also use Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming and Das’s theory of everyday to understand the complex and intersubjective ways of becoming ‘good’ Muslim women and their negotiations of everyday challenges in a non-Muslim context. I use the framework of lived religion to capture my participants' experiences to understand these experiences as ordinary Muslims; e.g., what Muslims do rather than what Islam says. The use of poetry and autoethnographic commentaries throughout the thesis adds another layer to the analysis to confer insights and to help understand my participants’ experiences in more depth. The study concludes that being a Muslim woman immigrant in Aotearoa NZ is an ongoing agentive and complex process that is continuously defined and redefined, not always in a linear direction. Muslim women make sense of their lives through engagement with other Muslim women and use comparison as one of the key strategies to make everyday decisions. My research participants are on journeys to understand Islam more logically, using their agency to actively negotiate situations, and are constantly engaged in finding meaning in their lives. The study suggests the need to understand Muslim women as cultural and social beings who actively negotiate their everyday challenges.
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    An examination of the relationships between activity participation, social relations, and meaning in life among older adults in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2018) Smith, Jessie Eva
    Previous research suggests that a sense of meaning in life (MIL) contributes to physical and psychological well-being among older adults. Given the positive outcomes associated with MIL, it is important to identify sources of MIL and understand how MIL arises among older adults. The increasing proportions of older adults engaging in employment, volunteering, and informal caregiving suggests that it may be important to consider the influence of these activities on MIL. Furthermore, while there is evidence that receiving social support enhances MIL, there does not appear to be any research on the effects of providing social support on an individual’s sense of MIL. This research examines relationships between health, MIL, and volunteering, employment, and informal caregiving, and the role of social support in these relationships among a sample of older adults in Aotearoa New Zealand. In addition, this research aims to examine how different aspects of caregiving relate to MIL among older adults who are informal caregivers. This research was secondary data analysis of a large sample of community-dwelling older adults in Aotearoa New Zealand. Relationships were examined using standard quantitative statistical procedures with linear hierarchical regression being the primary technique. MIL was found to be associated with psychological but not physical health with the exception of older adult informal caregivers for whom MIL was associated with both dimensions of health. Consistent with previous research, volunteering was associated with higher MIL among older adults and this relationship was mediated by the provision of social support. Results also indicated that informal caregiving may enhance MIL indirectly through the provision of social support. However, no evidence was found that participation in paid employment is associated with either higher or lower MIL. Among informal caregivers, perceived social support was the only aspect of caregiving which remained a significant predictor of MIL after controlling for demographic and health variables. The research suggests MIL is an important resource for the psychological health of older adults, supporting the incorporation of MIL into psychological interventions for this population. Volunteering and other roles which present opportunities to provide support for others may be particularly effective for enhancing MIL. Further research is needed to investigate how different aspects of employment relate to MIL in order to better understand how employment may be structured to contribute to MIL. Considering the socio-historical context in which older adulthood is lived out, the research contributes to the growing body of literature on MIL, providing insight into how MIL might be promoted among older adults.
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    Media consumption in contemporary urban Indonesia and everyday life : Muslim women, parenting and media : research portfolio of Hanny Savitri Hartono collated for examination for PhD (posthumously) by supervisors
    (Massey University, 2017) Hartono, Hanny Savitri
    Since the fall of the New Order regime in 1998, the Indonesian media landscape has been radically transformed. The country is now a densely saturated media space in which people are exposed to numerous media from television programming to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Although Indonesia is the country with the highest Muslim populace in the world, its media do not necessarily reflect the growing resurgence of Islamism in the region. With heavy media exposure, which is mainly secular, Muslim women, consciously or not, seek to negotiate the media they are exposed to in the context of their everyday lives within the frame of their Islamic understanding. As media become increasingly contested, their engagement with media becomes more critical. This thesis explores the centrality of Muslim parenting and media in the everyday lives of Muslim mothers in Semarang and Jakarta and seeks to unravel the meanings of media and their strategies for dealing with these media. The focus is on Muslim women and mothers and their negotiations with media around them and how their parenting and Muslim-ness are not merely influenced by the media they use but also impact the media they embrace. In the process, they too are struggling to mediate the media around their children. Hence, reflexive media engagement takes centre stage. In this research, I combine ethnographic fieldwork in Semarang, Central Java and online discussions on a closed Facebook group of which participants mostly reside in Jakarta. Through in-depth interviews, diary studies, conversations, online discussions, field notes and other pertinent resources, I delve into the ways in which Muslim women and their children deal with television, especially celebrity gossip shows, and children’s programming, social media particularly Facebook, and billboards. By considering the notions of agency and piety through the lens of Islamic tenets, and the particularities of Muslim women in Semarang and Jakarta, this study takes a close look at the daily dealings with media of urban mothers. The discussion falls into four main topics: an investigation of the experiences of Muslim mothers who are exposed to television gossip shows and how they negotiate these programmes in terms of their understanding of the Islamic prohibition of gossip; an examination on how Muslim women are actively shaping piety through Facebook in the midst of the debate surrounding its use by Muslim clerics; an investigation of how Muslim women who are surrounded by street billboards cope with their possible effects on their children; and an exploration of the way Muslim mothers negotiate their children’s media consumption within the context of their religious and moral appropriateness. At the core, this is a study of Muslim mothers’ engagement with media in their everyday lives as mothers and as women. I argue that active agency and constant negotiations have led many participants to examine their piety as Muslim women and mothers since the space around media, in their consumption and media talk, provides a platform for engaging with public discourses of religion, gender, and motherhood. Media become sites in which Muslim mothers discuss Islam, voice their views and Islamic understandings, embrace their piety, as well as give judgements to others whose opinions or experiences are not similar to theirs. There are indeed multiple ways of understanding Islam in Indonesia, which have coexisted within a secular context for centuries and these women are negotiating their way through Indonesia’s opposing forces of secularism and Islamism.
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    Women’s everyday resistance to intimate partner violence : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Science in Health Psychology at Massey University, Aotearoa
    (Massey University, 2018) Black, Alice
    Aotearoa’s rate of reported intimate partner violence (IPV) is among the highest in the OECD. Surviving IPV requires considerable strength and resilience. There is a large body of work exploring women’s resistance to violence. However, this is often framed within a victim and agent dichotomy, which can obscure the variability of women’s everyday experiences. In addition to understanding the more overt forms of resistance women enact against IPV, there is a need to focus on the everyday ways in which violence manifests and the subtle, imperfect ways in which women respond as they carry out their daily routines and practices. This thesis draws on both feminist research and literature on the conduct of everyday life from social psychology to explore how women navigate their daily lives and reproduce gendered relations within the constraints of IPV. Particular attention is paid to moments of adaptation, agency and resistance. Working with the support of Te Whakakruruhau (Māori Women’s Refuge), I conducted semi-structured interviews with eight women, four staff members and four former clients, to explore their experiences of day-to-day IPV. My participants’ experiences revealed how deeply enmeshed IPV can become within everyday practices, from making breakfast to going to the toilet. While my participants' lives were characterised by chronic anxiety and constraint, they adopted novel tactics to get through dangerous everyday situations such as going to bed or doing the dishes. They drew on simple routines such as making coffee or working in the garden in order to create a sense of routine that aided them in ‘getting by’. Further, they demonstrated remarkable creativity, flexibility and agency in creating novel enclaves of care within otherwise inhospitable settings. These findings have implications for how IPV is characterised and how agencies can identify and support women within the constraints of violent relationships.
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    The role of religiosity in ethical decision-making : a study on Islam and the Malaysian workplace : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Management at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Sulaiman, Rahizah Binti
    In light of the ongoing debate on the relationship between religiosity and ethical decision-making, this thesis seeks to investigate this relationship in the Malaysian workforce environment. This investigation focuses on the Islamic religion, and considers how religiosity affects the articulation and feelings of frontline employees in ways that lead to ethical decisions. To this end, five factors were tested empirically to determine their mediation of the relationship between religiosity and ethical decision-making. These factors were: perceived importance of the ethical issue, moral judgment, ego strength, intention, and conscience. A quantitative research study was undertaken to test eleven hypotheses developed in the thesis. With 160 responses, the initial analysis was an exploratory factor analysis, which was conducted to see how the measures might group into constructs. This analysis was followed by a confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the previous analysis, and to reduce items in the scale, as well as to test validity and reliability of the scales. The final scales were subsequently used for hypotheses-testing using hierarchical regression analysis. The control variables in this study were perceived ethical environment and social desirability responding bias. The findings of this thesis indicated positive relationships between religiosity and perceived importance of ethical issues, moral judgment, intention, and conscience. However, among these, only conscience mediates the relationship between religiosity and ethical decision-making. The thesis gives insights to the perspective of the Islamic religion, especially for Muslims in Malaysia, while contributing to the ongoing discussion in the literature on the relationship between religiosity and ethical decision-making. The highlight in the conscience results inspires employers to hold educational talks to empower employees in terms of Islamic knowledge, on how to navigate the challenging working place. Additionally, there are benefits in using elements such as posters and calls to prayer to remind employees of religious values. The research serves as a good basis for new investigations to explore other personal attributes that mediate the relationship between religiosity and ethical decision-making. Analysing this relationship can assist employers in developing ethical human resources in the organisation. These efforts will not only benefit the organisations, but will contribute to the betterment of society as a whole.