The Maoris today occupy a unique position in the wider New Zealand society. On the one hand, following over a century of intensive contact and political integration with the people of European origin, they now form an inseparable part of the national society. But on the other hand, they also constitute a distinctive minority in the country accounting for 6.9 per cent of the total population of 2.4 million (in 1961). Their distinctiveness may be described in various ways, some qualitative and others statistical. However, in the overall socio-economic scene of the country, the position of the Maoris is far from static. Social and cultural changes are continuing processes and one can notice important trends in contemporary Maori life.

Recognizing the continual restructuring of Pakeha-Maori relations as dominance and subordination, this thesis sets out to gain an understanding, through a critique of ideology, of the place of schooling in the securing and maintenance of those relations. Theoretically, it draws mainly upon the concept of ideology as interpreted by Jorge Larrain but also upon Gramsci's concept of hegemony, the notion of social amnesia as presented by Jacoby and the concept of resistance as developed by Giroux. It also examines the historical development of the concepts of 'race' and 'culture' which are employed ideologically to rationalize educational policies concerning the Maori. Tracing the progression of policies and practices in Maori education from the 1830s to the present day, the research shows the schooling of the Maori to have contributed significantly to the securing of Pakeha economic and political dominance in the nineteenth century and to the maintenance of that dominance through much of the twentieth century. Of particular significance has been the control of Maori access to knowledge. With Maori resistance playing a considerable part in the shaping of these policies and practices, the school is recognized as one of the sites of Maori-Pakeha struggle. Widespread underachievement of Maori within education - revealed in 1960 by the Hunn Report - is recognized as an outcome of these processes. Taking account of policies in recent years directed at improving Maori educational achievement, the thesis examines fieldwork research conducted within Auckland primary and secondary schools, in order to understand the extent to which current policies and practices of schools contribute towards overcoming the asymmetry in social relations. Focussing upon teacher perceptions of Maori children and their needs, the way schools sort and classify their pupils, provisions for a Maori dimension in schooling, including 'taha Maori', and the place of history in social studies programmes, the research finds that the struggle still continues, with tensions surrounding the efforts of the minority of teachers and other educationists working within the education system towards Maori interests. While a significant number of teachers, particularly in primary schools seem concerned to implement the 'taha Maori' policy and other aspects of 'multicultural education', these efforts are not matched by a concern to address the problem of Maori educational under-achievement, with teachers either explaining away the problem or accepting it as a quasi-natural state of affairs. Over all the research shows that schools in general continue, in a variety of ways, to control and limit Maori access to knowledge-power and thereby help to maintain the asymmetry in Maori-Pakeha relations. Maori children who do succeed within the education system are seen to do so primarily because they and their families have learned to deal with the system. The multicultural policies of education as presented by the Department of Education are recognized as ideological responses to Maori resistance and challenges, creating an appearance of change and of commitment to Maori interests while, in essence, functioning to maintain the asymmetry in social relations. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

This thesis uses a discourse analytic approach to the language used by Pakeha in talk about Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The research begins with an assay of a large body of public submissions and, using the finding of common themes and patterns of ideas, images and usages running though the data, proceeds to examine texts arising from other contexts in order to comment on the generality of the original results. It is suggested that the commonalities described amount to an ideological and linguistic resource base for the construction of a powerful "standard story" of Maori/Pakeha relations, which underpins and legitimates the oppressive status quo. Further extensions of the investigation examine changes in the discourse in the contemporary setting and pursue origins of the themes in historical texts arising from the period of contact between Maori and Pakeha prior to the colonisation of the country.

The thesis will show that a distinctive New Zealand voice in the arts may be found not in an "essence", as has sometimes been suggested, but at chronologically specific intersections of discourses. Each of the six works I examine has been made in New Zealand and is a mixture of music and language. As generic hybrids, combinations of music and language make appropriate objects of study for a thesis that explores a specific local dialogue between the 'mixture' and the 'essence', the 'hybrid' and the 'authentic', the 'indigenous' and the 'exotic', the 'local' and the 'imported', the 'centre' and the 'periphery.' Like acquisitive magpies, New Zealand artists constantly collect and select their material. They sift, save, reject and synthesise, and in so doing they create new combinations out of old ingredients. One of the characteristics of New Zealand poetry is that it has often been combined with music. There have been many collaborations between poets and musicians since colonial times. These collaborative texts occupy a complex space between art forms, just as New Zealand artists negotiate between orientations, positioning themselves between different cultural traditions. In its own process of selection, the thesis selects six works for close analysis which represent not only different periods but also different forms of synthesis. Each work represents 'New Zealand', yet what this means in practice is different in each case.

The Maoris today occupy a unique position in the wider New Zealand society. On the one hand, following over a century of intensive contact and political integration with the people of European origin, they now form an inseparable part of the national society. But on the other hand, they also constitute a distinctive minority in the country accounting for 6.9 per cent of the total population of 2.4 million (in 1961). Their distinctiveness may be described in various ways, some qualitative and others statistical. However, in the overall socio-economic scene of the country, the position of the Maoris is far from static. Social and cultural changes are continuing processes and one can notice important trends in contemporary Maori life.

While members of any group of men may appear to be ordinary gendered examples of humanity, behind their physical similarities lie many socio-political and familial differences; thus it is only by knowing such men as individuals that their identities are revealed. Such is the aim of this thesis: to discover the 'real man' behind the statistics about sex-roles and the predominance of male characters in children's and adolescents' literature. From within a selection of Spanish texts a variety of male characters are analysed, focusing on six major roles: father, grandfather, imaginary friend, detective, outlaw or similar marginalised man, and foreign other, with particular attention paid to the Gypsy. All the chapters are linked by the Bakhtinian theory that dialogue with the other leads to the development of a character's or potential reader's sense of identity. The first chapter, concerning fatherhood, is related to a person's sense of intrinsic identity, given with their name and genetic heritage. The grandfather represents a similar sense of family continuity, as well as enabling the young reader to understand Spain's recent historical and rural past. An imaginary friend may symbolise an aspect of identity concerned with a child's ability to achieve a goal or to occupy a special place within the family. Detective stories are analogous to the young person's developing identity as a reader able to decipher the mysteries of texts, whilst marginalised men typify children themselves: persons who have neither status nor money, but who are able to indulge in carnivalistic behaviour which adults call 'play.' The development of one's sense of national identity is fomented through interaction with texts about foreigners who have contributed to Spain's growth as a nation from pre-historic times to the present. A brief critical evaluation of the role of women in detective fiction and as marginalised figures is offered by way of contrast in the appropriate chapters. The thesis concludes that, when analysed as individuals, many male characters demonstrate traits not traditionally considered masculine, and that it is necessary to look beyond mere representations of gender in judging the value of characters in literature for children and adolescents. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

Tokelauans initiated a contemporary migration from their relatively remote Pacific atolls to New Zealand around 1960 and this population movement was assisted by government resettlement schemes. The broad objectives of the ethnographic research contributing to this thesis were to study the historical context of this small-scale voluntary migration, the establishment and social organisation of culturally distinguished urban communities in North Island centres, and post-resettlement outcomes experienced by migrant and descent populations. Each of the two studies incorporated in the thesis is primarily concerned with tūpulaga ‘the younger generation’ in the New Zealand Tokelau population. One is community-based and focused on the social interactions of generation cohorts of tūpulaga and tupuna ‘elders’, the formal community associations and the national association of affiliated tūpulaga groups. The other is concerned with bunches of “detached” tūpulaga geographically scattered throughout the country, the people without voices when research includes only the migrants in urban enclaves. Background considerations include overviews of theoretical approaches to studying the population phenomenon of migration; relevant aspects of Tokelau history and the movement of Pacific peoples; New Zealand as the receiving country and continuously changing social context for Tokelau communities, and a conceptual framework derived from features of complex adaptive systems theories that was helpful in considering aspects of the contemporary migration and its outcomes. Tūpulaga leaders, through the association of affiliated groups known as the Mafutaga, revived the pre-eminent cultural principle maopoopo ‘gathered together and unified’, promoted a vision of ‘Tokelau ways in New Zealand’ and supported tūpulaga “becoming Tokelau in New Zealand” as residents of urban communities. Over a number of years, Mafutaga officials led the expansion of tūpulaga inter-community sports meetings into a four-day national gathering of Tokelauans now celebrated as an unequivocal expression of Tokelau culture in New Zealand, and guided the established urban communities through a transition from migrant to cultural communities without usurping the political roles of esteemed elders. The second study shows that intergenerational issues were pivotal or contributory in most tūpulaga decisions to “detach” from community networks and activities. “Detachment” is categorised as transient (a provisional, not necessarily long-term status), tacit (a restorative withdrawal, with subsequent reattachment) or diuternal (a considered choice and enduring status). / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

This thesis examines how cultural perceptions of Wellington’s environment changed from the 1870s to the early 1900s. The historical material shows how clearing the New Zealand landscape of its forest cover in the early settler years reflected a particular cultural perception of the New Zealand bush. By 1900, this cultural perception had changed indicating that not only was the New Zealand landscape different, but New Zealand society had changed. These changes can be seen in the geographic historical accounts of clearing New Zealand’s bush and the parliamentary debates of the 1875 Forest Act, 1885 State Forest Act and the 1903 Scenery Protection Act. The anthropological theories of dwelling, taskscape, phenomenology of landscape and the hybridity of nature are used as a contemporary synthesis of ideas to examine cultural perceptions of the Wellington bush. An anthropological approach is also used to bring together diverse historical material in a way that allows these ideas to be applied. Cultural perceptions of the Wellington landscape can be understood in the way the bush was cleared for pasture, how the landscape was depicted in paintings and photography and in the case study of the establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush. The thesis argues that cultural perceptions can be appreciated historically by understanding how people lived within the Wellington landscape, and how this was reflected in attitudes towards the New Zealand bush. Cultural perceptions of New Zealand’s bush were a combination of existing cultural attitudes, the practicalities of living within the New Zealand environment and a direct perception of the bush itself. It is the shifting influence of all three of these aspects that determines overall cultural perceptions of the bush in any particular period in New Zealand’s history. The establishment of Otari-Wilton’s Bush shows how the cultural perception of Wellington’s bush had changed from seeing it as an obstruction covering potential farmland to having a defined place and purpose within the Wellington landscape.

The literature on the use of public journalism suggests that it can lead to different news coverage than is traditionally provided by the news media. Specifically, these differences have been identified in story content, use of different sources and use of mobilising information. This thesis asks whether such differences can be identified in newspapers’ coverage of the 2001 Local Body Elections in New Zealand. The research involved content analysis of New Zealand’s six largest daily newspapers, three of them with experience of using public journalism and three with no such experience. Interviews were also conducted with two or three senior journalists involved in organising each paper’s election campaign in order to explore their goals for the election coverage and evaluation of it. The results mirror those of previous research by showing significant differences in the coverage of the newspapers with public journalism experience in relation to some factors, but not others. The papers with a public journalism background consistently used more non-elite sources than the traditional papers, but did not consistently use more female sources. They also included mobilising information in stories more frequently and made greater use of story features, or “elements”, associated with public journalism. However, one of the papers with no experience of public journalism also ranked highly in relation to these two factors. The interviews revealed some differences in goals among the journalists, but this was not a simple split between the journalists on papers with public journalism experience and the other journalists. For example, not all interviewees working for the papers experienced in using public journalism agreed that their goal should be to boost voter turnout. Nor was an overt commitment to supporting the democratic process expressed only by staff on the papers with public journalism experience. The interviews did, however, identify that only the three newspapers with a public journalism background used polling to identify the issues that were important to the public and proceeded to cover these issues during their election campaign

This research studies Pakeha who have engaged with Maori cultural learning contexts. Within a social constructionist theoretical framework, and with a combination of the critical and communicative approaches to cultural identity, the research explores the meaning these Pakeha bring to being Pakeha. Discourse analysis tools of interpretative repertoires and linguistic resources are used to analyse data from semi-structured interviews with six Paheha participants. Participants have experienced Maori cultural learning contexts before or during the research, through learning te reo, tikanga Maori and about nga ao o nga iwi Maori. The research found that, largely, meanings participants brought to being Pakeha were in contrast to stereotypical notions of what it means to be Pakeha. Participants demonstrated that for them being Pakeha meant being connected to nga ao o nga iwi Maori; being aware of Pakeha privilege; mediating and negotiating being Pakeha with dominant notions of Pakehaness; valuing the history of Aotearoa-New Zealand, along with valuing te reo me ona tikanga. Furthermore, the research also found that the consistently postcolonial identity participants brought to being Pakeha shifted according to context, troubling the meanings of Pakeha also.