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This thesis is concerned with the impact of neo-liberal reforms, initiated in response to the exigencies of a new technologically-driven global economy, on a conservative interventionist state. It is a sociological work, which encompasses history, politics, economics, organisations, social action and societal change. Between 1984 and 1990, the Fourth Labour Government embarked upon the reform of the structure and operation of the New Zealand economy. That reform ranks amongst the most radical and far-reaching in twentieth century New Zealand. Not only were the scope and magnitude of the changes significant but they were also implemented with a rapidity that took most of the country by surprise. Consequently, New Zealanders were exposed to a new and flexible economy, where market forces provided a major contrast with the ideals of equity and consensus that had shaped social conditions since the 1950s. This new environment had significant implications for the career expectations and working environment of many people, and for the delivery and content of public services. This thesis adds to the existing body of knowledge on the New Zealand reforms by capturing and investigating the perspectives of key actors who were involved, in a number of ways, with the transformation of the economy. It explores the theoretical and empirical basis of the reform programme, the restructuring process, the nature and scale of an intense commercialisation strategy, the attitudes of a new generation of workers and the reactions of New Zealanders when their ontological security came under threat. Key aspects of the reforms are framed and analysed through the transformation of the New Zealand Post Office from an icon of the interventionist state, a major employer and key service provider - to a commercial enterprise which sought to be a competitive, flexible, profit-driven organisation typical of the new economy. The experiences of politicians and senior managers who were responsible for this transformation through to individuals who depended on the organisation for services and jobs, are represented in the thesis as indicative of the actions and responses of New Zealanders, generally, regarding much broader social and organisational changes brought about by the reforms.

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This research examines the ways in which the Pasifika second generation who have grown up in Aotearoa are operating culturally and explores the conditions in which they construct identities. The study took a positive deviance approach focusing on existing strengths within the Pasifika generation and learning from success. Taking a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, the project analysed data from the Youth2000 Survey, which included over one thousand Pasifika participants (n=1114). This showed that pride in Pasifika identities, reporting that Pasifika values were still important, feeling accepted by other people within one’s own ethnic group and outside it, and continuing to speak Pasifika languages were all associated positively with advantageous health, educational or wellbeing variables. Individual interviews with fourteen high-achieving, second generation Pasifika professionals, further explored connections between identity, acceptance and belonging. Second generation participants talked about performing identities across many spaces of symbolic interaction where they were called into relation with multiple others. These were local, cross-cultural, national and transnational relational spaces made possible via migration, diaspora, and relocation resulting in complex negotiations of sameness and difference. In these spaces they encountered competing narratives about who Pasifika peoples ought to be. The diasporic second generation often had to negotiate belonging from beyond the limits of what was validated as having most symbolic authority. Symbolic struggle and the politics of cultural reproduction came to the fore, as did the contested nature of Pasifika imaginaries. Identifications were further complicated by demands for crosscultural coherence and legibility across spaces, and shifting politics of recognition. Polycultural capital was coined to describe the ability to accumulate culturally diverse symbolic resources, negotiate between them and strategically deploy different cultural resources in contextually specific and advantageous ways. Performing strategic essentialism, strategic ignorance, strategic hybridity, dialogic distance, and bridging, were just some of the patterns identified. Manulua describes an aesthetic of shifting multidimensional cultural resolutions across many spaces in-between.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate New Zealanders’ social attitudes towards the economic support for the aged provided by the New Zealand Superannuation Scheme. The structure and nature of those social attitudes is revealed. The study examines social attitude responses to determine if intergenerational justice plays any role in the nature of support for the aged. One thousand and eighty-three participants were selected from the electoral roll and all were sent a survey pack followed by two subsequent reminders. Five hundred and nineteen people agreed to participate. The hypothesis is that New Zealanders agree that economic support for the aged should be provided through the Superannuation Scheme, but that the nature of this support varies according to demographic characteristics and individual perceptions of intergenerational justice. The survey results found that respondents support the economic provision for the aged in the current Superannuation Scheme. However, they are less prepared to support those mechanisms that maintain the Superannuation Scheme and they consider intergenerational transferability of the Superannuation Scheme as important. A generational difference was found in the survey among younger respondents, those forty-one and below, with regard to need taking precedence for supporting the aged, concerning ideas about assessing the economic circumstances of the aged and ideas about the balance of ‘advantages and disadvantages’ distributed to different generations. Older generations, those respondents aged forty-two and above, supported the social democratic form of the Superannuation Scheme. They believed that entitlement to returns was more important than need and they opposed economic assessments for the receipt of the Superannuation Benefit. However, older generations did not believe that differences in the balance of ‘advantages and disadvantages’ between generations have occurred in New Zealand. The survey results indicate that New Zealand is unique compared with other developed countries in that there is little predictor value or correlation value for most of the demographic characteristics pertaining to welfare attitudes towards the economic support of the aged. Meanwhile, generation and household income have some predictor and correlation value in relation to welfare attitudes towards the New Zealand Superannuation Scheme. Finally, the Superannuation Scheme exists in a momentary formal state. It may be the non-transferability of this Scheme between generations that poses a threat to the economic support of the aged, given that the number of people in New Zealand reaching sixty-five is set to increase dramatically.

This thesis explores parliamentarians’ emotional labour in their workplace, and argues the enactment of passionate rationality is crucial to how parliamentarians accomplish vocational authenticity. The New Zealand parliamentary workplace is characterised by an elaborate set of feeling rules and a complex emotional culture. On entry to parliament, parliamentarians go through a period of identity transformation akin to a moral career. Parliamentarians must manage emotion to achieve their occupational identities according to local feeling rules. Based on analysis of in-depth group and individual interviews with parliamentarians, and focusing on the passage of the Civil Union Bill as an exemplar of parliamentarians’ emotion work, three interpretative repertoires were identified in their accounts of emotion in the workplace. These repertoires, The Game, The Performance and The Crusade are work-place specific meaning-making resources whose flexible deployment enabled parliamentarians to assert claims of occupational identity and vocational authenticity. These repertoires show the emotional labour involved in parliamentarians’ negotiation of shared meanings around ‘entering’ the occupational role and asserting the authenticity of their new identities. In particular, The Crusade repertoire makes available the subject position of the Knight, the subject position important for accomplishment of being a passionately rational worker. In this thesis, I introduce two new concepts for emotional labour in complex workplaces where that labour has both exchange and use value; emotional convocation and personified emotion. Together these concepts allow for a more thorough theorisation of emotion work than do existing concepts of emotional labour. Although developed in relation to the work of parliamentarians, personified emotion and emotional convocation have utility for understanding other contemporary experiences of work where emotion management within a complex emotional culture is fundamental to both occupational identity and the accomplishment of vocational authenticity.