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Item Intersectional perspectives of parents of transgender children in Aotearoa (New Zealand)(Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-02-27) de Bres J; Morrison-Young IIntroduction This article explores the intersectional perspectives of parents of transgender children in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The substantial body of research on parent experiences in this area has largely focused on parents who are white North American middle-class cisgender women. We seek to extend this research by taking an intersectional approach and examining the perspectives of a group of participants of different genders, sexual orientations, and cultural backgrounds. Methods We asked 20 participants in Aotearoa who self-identified as gender-affirming parents to draw their experience of parenting a transgender child and discuss this with us in interview. Results The research resulted in rich visual and verbal depictions of gender-affirming parenting, drawing from the intersectional perspectives of Māori, Pākehā, Pacific, Asian, queer, straight, female, male and non-binary parents. Using visual and verbal discourse analysis, we explore how the participants constructed their experience from their uniquely situated perspectives, both specific and multilayered. Conclusion We argue that the parents’ perspectives reveal both challenges and strengths, reflecting the burdens of intersectional oppression, while also fostering the parents’ capacity for engaging in discursive resistance to advance their children’s interests.Item Discomfort food : how a market for synthetic foods is being assembled : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Geography at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2017) Mouat, Michael JamesThis research follows the discursive productions of human actors in an assemblage that is creating a market for Synthetic Foods. This assemblage, which includes human actants referred to here as The Movement, is represented in two major empirical themes. First it is demonstrated how The Movement is attempting to immaterially disassemble conventional Animal Agriculture, by discursively cleaving it from the notion that it produces natural foods. Second it is shown how The Movement is constructing a new market for natural foods, where animal products are made without animals. The non-human actors of this assemblage are said to be enrolled but this belies the multiple levels of negotiation that are yet to take place. Through collecting and analysing the media productions of The Movement, the discursive performances and relational spaces that constitute this assemblage can be traced. Through tracing these material and immaterial practices the main argument developed here is that a market for Synthetic Foods is being culturally assembled in a series of discursive productions. The Movements discursive texts show an attempt to both, requalify what natural foods are said to be and then to simultaneously create a spectacle that fixes the identities of actors that supposedly produce them. This can be understood using a Cultural Economy approach which extends the argument by demonstrating that this market assemblage recombines nature with its binary other, culture, in a new way, to form a differently constituted world.Item Transforming evidence: A discursive evaluation of narrative therapy case studies(The Australian Psychological Society Limited, 2007) Busch, RobbieA recent shift in American Psychological Association policy for what constitutes as evidence in psychotherapy has resulted in the inclusion of qualitative methodologies. Narrative therapy is a discursive therapy that is theoretically incongruent with the prevailing gold standard of experimental methodology in psychotherapy outcome evaluation. By using a discursive evaluation methodology that is congruent with narrative therapy this study of six peer-reviewed narrative therapy case articles found shifts in client positioning in the transformation from medical pathology discourses to strength-based discourses. It is concluded that five out of six case studies coherently demonstrated the effectiveness of narrative therapy with positive outcomes for clients and that a discursive evaluation has utility in producing a thick description of therapeutic outcome.Item Metadata_photography and the construction of meaning : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts to Massey University, College of Creative Arts, School of Fine Arts, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2010) Nishioka, MizuhoPhotographic technology is increasingly respondent to a desire for the production and consumption of information. The current age of photography not only possesses the ability to capture the image, but also to capture photographic metadata as supplemental information. Engaging in the premise that the photographic image exists as an incomplete medium to the transfer of information, this research identifies the acquisition of data as a means to resolve interpretation and quantify the photographic image. Inhabiting a complex territory within this structure, the photographic image manifests multiplicity and operates as source, production, and capture of information. This work challenges the perceptions of how to engage with the dialogues created between the photographic image, and the externally appended metadata.Item History, law and land : the languages of native policy in New Zealand's general assemby, 1858-62 : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand(Massey University, 2008) Carpenter, Samuel D.This thesis explores the languages of Native policy in New Zealand’s General Assembly from 1858 to 1862. It argues, aligning with the scholarship of Peter Mandler and Duncan Bell, that a stadial discourse, which understood history as a progression from savage or barbarian states to those of civility, was the main paradigm in this period. Other discourses have received attention in New Zealand historiography, namely Locke and Vattel’s labour theory of land and Wakefield’s theory of systematic colonization; but some traditions have not been closely examined, including mid-Victorian Saxonism, the Burkean common law tradition, and the French discourse concerning national character. This thesis seeks to delineate these intellectual contexts that were both European and British, with reference to Imperial and colonial contexts. The thesis comprises a close reading of parliamentary addresses by C. W. Richmond, J. E. FitzGerald and Henry Sewell.Item Family and paid work : a critical discourse analysis of government policy and mothers' talk : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University. School of Psychology, 2006) Kahu, Eleanor RuthThis study, developed within a feminist social constructionist framework, examines the discourses which construct women's roles as mother and worker. It argues that government policy influences women's lives, not just materially through legislation, but ideologically through the promotion of certain discourses, which enable and constrain women's choices. In order to explore the interface between policy and experience, critical discourse analysis was used to examine two texts: the Action Plan for New Zealand Women (Ministry of Women's Affairs, 2004a), a government policy document, and the talk of two groups of first time mothers. This methodology focuses on the power of language to constitute reality and examines which institutions and ideologies are supported by discursive constructions.Although freedom to choose a life path is part of the policy's vision for New Zealand women, paid work is consistently privileged over caring roles. Motherhood is all but invisible and is constructed as an inevitable and undesirable demand, while paid work is constructed as essential to individual well-being and a duty of citizenship. An economic rationalist discourse positions women as workers first and foremost with a responsibility to financially provide for themselves and their children. Despite drawing on feminist discourses to warrant its vision, the policy is driven by capitalist goals of increased productivity and economic growth rather than the needs of women.The women deployed an intensive mother discourse which privileged their maternal role and positioned babies as needing parental care, and mothers as the natural providers of that care. However, they also felt the pressure of the successful woman and economic rationalist discourses in which paid work is essential and motherhood is devalued. The tension between these discourses manifested as guilt and conflict, managed in part through the emergence of newer constructions of independent mother and child. In making their decision about re-entering the paid workforce, in most instances the traditional paternal role as primary breadwinner was unchallenged, while the maternal role was expanded to incorporate not just primary caregiver, but also worker. The thesis finishes by considering the social consequences of these discursive constructions and argues that current discourses do not serve women, children, or men well. What is needed is a more complete breakdown of the public/private divide: a society which values care and work, both as responsibilities and rewards of citizenship, and which will therefore allow both women and men to construct more balanced lives and identities.Item Blood brothers & southern men : engaging with alcohol advertising in Aotearoa : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University(Massey University. Psychology, 2005) Cherrington, JaneThe aim of this project is to develop a robust methodological translation of the insights of 'culturalist' theoretical positions in communications studies as an alternative through which to approach contemporary media research. The focus is on engagements with alcohol advertising. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, as internationally, there is a significant body of publicly-funded research examining how alcohol advertising affects audiences. However, this thesis contends that important questions need to be asked about the adequacy of these (dominantly positivist) investigations. A review of local research identifies that in theoretical and methodological terms the majority of these studies are riddled with tensions and contradictions. In addition, when located within the context of wider developments in contemporary communication studies, an important epistemological gap is highlighted as requiring attention and debate. Comparison of this local review with international studies highlights similar concerns, particularly around 'effects' driven research, the adequacy of dominant positivist models, and the need to examine epistemological alternatives that can encompass meta, meso, and micro forms of enquiry. A discursive-theoretical approach is then argued as an epistemological alternative that is highly congruent with contemporary communication studies, which, if more robustly translated through methodology and method, could provide a very solid 'culturalist' alternative framework for media research. Taking a contrastive, multi-voiced, context-based approach, the present research focuses on connections, divergences, or disjunctions between different participants' interpretations of, and responses to, themes, ideas and positions they perceive as existing in the ad-texts, and themes and ideas on offer about alcohol in the wider social context. Using a methodology I describe as 'Discursive Sonar', this research highlights the socially located, interpretative complexity of advertising engagements. By unpacking that complexity, this project identifies how, and why, media engagements vary for different participants (including that of the reflexively engaged participant researcher). By locating the interactions between participants and ad-texts within the context of wider struggles over meanings around alcohol in Aotearoa/New Zealand the research shows ways in which both ad-texts and participants reflect, employ, and debate those wider struggles. I contrasted and compared individual participant interactions with the content and themes they identify in response to the ad-texts, with what producers intended those texts to communicate, and also with the views of the other participants. Through these analyses key textual 'mechanisms' become apparent as determining why and how engagements can be closely shared or variable between people and groups. Focusing on diversity and variance in engagements highlights cultural shifts around how alcohol is understood in Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as significant alterations in views between the generations involved in the project. Focusing on commonalities across engagements identifies how 'interpretative communities' can be produced through textual responses, which are in turn engendered in response to commonly held constructs such as gender and age. This project succeeds in two ways. As well succeeding in significantly developing existing 'operationalisation' of discursive theory, it also constructs a viable discursive framework through which to approach media research. It is suggested that further development of this alternative might move us beyond the barriers of abstraction and effects in media research to examine the ways in which media and other dominant discursive forms interact, and are interacted with, to shape choices in our social worlds.Item It’s neoliberalism, stupid’ New Zealand media and the NZME-Fairfax merger(Counterfutures, 2016) Phelan SPAT THE JAIPUR literary festival in January 2015, the writer Eleanor Catton described New Zealand as a country governed by ‘neoliberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture’.1 The comments generated much media controversy in her homeland. Catton was denounced for her insolence, ingratitude, and even traitory. Some right-wing pundits disparaged what they saw as her politically illiterate use of the term ‘neoliberal’. Her comments triggered a local version of a reactionary discourse that regards the concept of neoliberalism as the paranoid creation of left conspiracy theorists.
