Planning, specifically resource management, is an activity of the state which should seek to reflect the values of the people. However, in New Zealand, only the values of the dominant Pakeha culture have traditionally been considered by decision makers. As a result, resource management in New Zealand has developed as a monocultural institution. This thesis addresses the issue of monoculturalism in New Zealand�s planning regime. The aims of this thesis are twofold: (1) to examine the argument that New Zealand�s planning is monocultural, and has traditionally ignored the needs and aspirations of Maori; and (2) to examine the current resource management system in New Zealand in order to establish the basis for a bicultural approach to planning. These aims were addressed in two principal ways. First, a critical review of literature provided comprehensive background on the relationship between Western and non-Western cultures. Second, in depth interviews were held with both Maori and non-Maori involved in resource management structures. Data from these interviews illustrate Maori opinion on the current resource management system in New Zealand. The thesis concludes that biculturalism is the only legitimate structure for state policy in New Zealand. This conclusion is based primarily on the relationship established between the indigenous Maori and the Pakeha settlers through the Treaty of Waitangi. This study also found that the current resource management regime in New Zealand is incapable of supporting a bicultural resource management approach. Radical reforms are needed in order to facilitate bicultural planning. The thesis concludes by proposing changes to the current regime which will facilitate a bicultural approach to New Zealand planning.

Summary: Implemented in 2003, the TVNZ Charter is a one-page document that outlines the broadcaster�s objectives to deliver programming that represents New Zealand�s ethnically and socially diverse population. This thesis will examine issues surrounding the representation of diversity especially in the context of the state-commercial television network. Using the notion of �cultural citizenship�, or the demand from minority groups within a society to be represented and included in the institutions of the state, I will examine how TVNZ is attempting to meaningfully represent New Zealand as a bicultural society and a multicultural society, while remaining commercially focused. This thesis argues that institutions of the state, of which the media is the most visible and, possibly, the most pervasive, always function as a tool of society�s dominant culture, therefore any bicultural or multicultural inclusion represented on TVNZ will always be controlled, and be at the discretion, of that singular dominant cultural force.

Transnational Mexican-origin Families is a qualitative study of four working class, Mexican-origin families who resided in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. region and who also made return visits to Mexico at least every two years. Through critical ethnographic case studies, the researcher worked with the families for over two years in multi-sited ethnography, with locations in the U.S. and Mexico. The dissertation examines the following question: What are the ways of knowing of Mexican-origin transnational students and their families in the Washington, D.C. area, and how do these transnational families experience their ways of knowing regarding education in formal schooling contexts? Using transnational theory and Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of conocimiento, or knowing, this study shows how transnational families’ ways of knowing are situated in three mutually-constituted domains. They are: 1) chained knowing, including the ways participants are chained to the Mexican-U.S. border and to their communities in Mexico and the U.S., 2) sobrevivencia or survivalist knowing, in terms of how the families both survive and thrive, highlighting what I call their “underdog mentality” as well as the matters of life and death on both sides of the border, and 3) Nepantlera knowing, or an in-between knowing, which allows for attempts at bridge buildings and creation of Third Spaces. In regards to schooling, the transnational aspects of these families’ lives remained hidden, despite the students’ eagerness to share about their transnationalism. Schools tended to respond to their transnational families along the “continuum of the comfortable,” or a line where schools increased their outreach to these families only moderately and only along their terms. The intention of this research is to disrupt assimilationist discourses about immigrants, particularly in light of the need to be able to navigate an increasingly globalized world. Preliminary findings suggest the need to begin to reframe immigrants as transnational, value their language heritages, disrupt the comfort of educators in their outreach to transnational families, and for educators, in particular, to learn to do the work of border crossing in their outreach to transnational families. / text

Currently, in the fields of multi-ethnic literary and cultural studies in American, many critics and theoreticians concentrate on exposing forces of social and economic oppression against ethnic minorities and practices of cultural hegemony by the dominant culture. In the process, they often read characters in multi-ethnic American literatures as agents of resistance and counter-discourse. While it is valuable to recognize the subversive potential in these writings, it is equally important to expose their distinct, individual attributes. Accordingly, this dissertation explores the neglected double nature and "bi-cultural" presence of the subject in a branch of contemporary American literature that I designate as "emergent." Through its "re-accentuation" (Bakhtin) of sign systems, writers of emergent fiction strive not to simply reintonate already established cultural paradigms from either recent or ancient homelands but, instead, to engage an active and ongoing cultural exchange in the context of America as (new) homeland. Presenting the individual and social subject as hybrid, emergent writers examine its dynamic involvement in both private and public spheres. My close readings of this literature focus on the representation of self-other interrelationships. / I introduce and situate my analysis with a theoretical overview of the subject in cross-cultural or "liminal" zones (Bhabha). I also consider the significance of "dialogism" (Bakhtin) in the multi-ethnic, often female, subject's experience of "estrangement" (Felski). My choice of both established and lesser-known of new writers, born (or raised) in the United States but of diverse ethnic backgrounds, includes Cristina Garcia (Hispanic), Louise Erdrich (Native), Julia Shigekuni (Japanese), Sandra Cisneros (Chicana), Askold Melnyczuk (Ukrainian), Charlotte Sherman (African), and Amy Tan (Chinese). Situating the individual and social subject at various crossroads---both physical and psychological---emergent writers examine the changing nature of self identity and social expression. Through their "border pedagogy" (Giroux), they traverse axiologic discourses and socio-cultural boundaries and attend to ensuing dialectical tensions between inner and outer worlds, and among peoples, cultures, and social hierarchies.

A second generation South Asian can be faced with contrasting and conflicting cultures which can impact the formation of a healthy ethnic identity. The present study investigated what facilitated and hindered a South Asian's adolescent experience of becoming bicultural. Flanagan's (1954) Critical Incident Technique was used in interviewing 8 adult participants, including 5 females and 3 males, aged 20 to 26 years of age. The results identified 88 critical incidents, forming 10 helping categories and 4 hindering categories. The 10 Helping categories were: (1) Cross Cultural Friendships, (2) Speaking both Punjabi and English, (3) Personal Attributes, (4) Shared Experiences with Peers in the 'Same Boat', (5) Family Support and Influence, (6) Involvement in Recreational, Cultural and Religious Community Activities, (7) Visiting India, (8) High School Experience, (9) University Education and (10) Acceptance of Parent's and / or Grandparent's Views. The Hindering Categories were: (1) Parental and / or Familial Expectations, (2) Media Influence / Societal Expectations, (3) Personal Conflict of Cultural Values and (4) Experiencing Racism. The categories were found to be reliable and valid through procedures such as exhaustiveness, independent raters, co-researcher's cross checking, participation rate and theoretical agreement. The resulting categories provide a list of comprehensive factors that can facilitate and hinder an individual's process towards developing a bicultural identity. The findings are discussed in relation to implications for counselling theory and practice, and future research.

This thesis approaches the issue of bicultural nationhood as articulated through a Maori/Pakeha binary in Aotearoa/New Zealand by interrogating the deeply entrenched social forms that inform liberal democracy and that institutionalize capitalism in the modern nation-state. More specifically, it explores the concepts of �self-governing people�, �public sphere� and �free market� as three forms of collective agency that discursively construct �society� within the social imaginary and that interact to set the terms of democratic citizenship. Central to this discussion is the indigenous/non-indigenous binary constituting biculturalism and the manifestation of �indigeneity� as both unassimilable difference in the project of modernity and as political struggle for recognition and power. This study elaborates through the mediated texts of the mediasphere and argues that there is a constant relation between nation, culture and class wherein culture-as-difference provides a framework for masking class struggle in capitalist relations of production as well as for enabling the dominant group to discursively construct their own ethnicity as national cultural identity. What is at stake in this discussion is the contrast between cultural difference as it emerges in the performance of everyday life and as reaction to issues of economic marginalization and cultural difference as it is contrived by the nation-state in terms of a Maori/Pakeha binary. The aim of this thesis is to highlight the necessity of difference in cultural identified, labeled and marketed as a fixed concept, but is an ephemeral by-product of ongoing social struggle for survival, recognition and political power. The objective is to undercut current ideological propositions and demand a just, equitable and democratic approach to the conceptualization of nationhood in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

This thesis seeks to acknowledge and address the concerns that Maori people voice about research into their lives. The present study shows that Maori people are concerned that the power and control over research issues of initiation, benefits, representation, legitimation and accountability are addressed by the imposition of the researcher�s agenda, concerns and interests on the research process. Such dominance of a Western orientated discourse is being challenged by a pro-active, Kaupapa Maori research approach. This approach is part of the revitalisation of Maori cultural aspirations, preferences and practices as a philosophical and productive educational stance and resistance to the hegemony of the dominant discourse in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Kaupapa Maori research is collectivistic, and is orientated toward benefiting all the research participants and their collectively determined agendas. Kaupapa Maori Research is based on growing concensus that research involving Maori knowledge and people needs to be conducted in culturally appropriate ways, ways that fit Maori cultural preferences, practices and aspirations in order to develop and acknowledge existing culturally appropriate approaches in the method, practice and organisation of research. This thesis examines how a group of researchers have addressed the importance of devolving power and control in the research exercise in order to promote self-determination (tino Rangatiratanga) of Maori people. In the thesis I have talked with researchers who have accepted the challenge of positioning themselves within the discursive practice that is Kaupapa Maori. As a result, this thesis examines how such positionings challenge what constitutes a process of theory generation within the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand. This thesis further seeks to examine a way of knowing that reflects what meanings I can construct from my positioning within an experiential Kaupapa Maori research matrix. My position within this matrix resulted from critical reflections on my participation in a research group with an agreed-to agenda, my participation within the projects considered in the narratives in this thesis, my talking with other research participants in the form termed "interviews as chat" and from our constructing joint narratives about their/our attempts to address Maori concerns about research in their practice. The broad methodological framework used in the thesis is narrative inquiry for such an approach allows the research participants to select, recollect and reflect on stories within their own cultural context and language rather than in that chosen by the researcher. In other words, the story teller maintains the power to define what constitutes the story and the truth and the meaning it has for them. Further, this thesis seeks to investigate my own position as a researcher within a co-joint reflection on shared experiences and co-joint construction of meanings about these experiences, a position where the stories of the other research participants merged with my own to create new stories. Such collaborative stories go beyond an approach that simply focusses on the cooperative sharing of experiences and focusses on connectedness, engagement, and involvement with the other research participants within the cultural world view/discursive practice within which they function. This thesis seeks to identify what constitutes this engagement and what implications this has for promoting self determination/agency/voice in the research participants by examining concepts of participatory consciousness and connectedness within Maori discursive practice. Whakawhanaungatanga (establishing relationships in a Maori context), is used metaphorically to give voice to a culturally positioned means of collaboratively constructing research stories in a �culturally conscious and connected manner�. The thesis explains that there are three major overlapping implications of whakawhanaungatanga as a research strategy. The first is that establishing and maintaining relationships is a fundamental, often extensive and ongoing part of the research process. This involves the establishment of �whanau of interest� through a process of �spiral dicourse�. The second is that researchers understand themselves to be involved somatically in the research process; that is physically, ethically, morally and spiritually and not just as a �researcher� concerned with methodology. Such positionings are demonstrated in the language/metaphor used by the researchers in the stories described in this thesis. The third is that establishing relationships in a Maori context addresses the power and control issues fundamental to research, because it involves participatory research practices, in this context, termed �Participant Driven research�.

Planning, specifically resource management, is an activity of the state which should seek to reflect the values of the people. However, in New Zealand, only the values of the dominant Pakeha culture have traditionally been considered by decision makers. As a result, resource management in New Zealand has developed as a monocultural institution. This thesis addresses the issue of monoculturalism in New Zealand�s planning regime. The aims of this thesis are twofold: (1) to examine the argument that New Zealand�s planning is monocultural, and has traditionally ignored the needs and aspirations of Maori; and (2) to examine the current resource management system in New Zealand in order to establish the basis for a bicultural approach to planning. These aims were addressed in two principal ways. First, a critical review of literature provided comprehensive background on the relationship between Western and non-Western cultures. Second, in depth interviews were held with both Maori and non-Maori involved in resource management structures. Data from these interviews illustrate Maori opinion on the current resource management system in New Zealand. The thesis concludes that biculturalism is the only legitimate structure for state policy in New Zealand. This conclusion is based primarily on the relationship established between the indigenous Maori and the Pakeha settlers through the Treaty of Waitangi. This study also found that the current resource management regime in New Zealand is incapable of supporting a bicultural resource management approach. Radical reforms are needed in order to facilitate bicultural planning. The thesis concludes by proposing changes to the current regime which will facilitate a bicultural approach to New Zealand planning.

Summary: Implemented in 2003, the TVNZ Charter is a one-page document that outlines the broadcaster�s objectives to deliver programming that represents New Zealand�s ethnically and socially diverse population. This thesis will examine issues surrounding the representation of diversity especially in the context of the state-commercial television network. Using the notion of �cultural citizenship�, or the demand from minority groups within a society to be represented and included in the institutions of the state, I will examine how TVNZ is attempting to meaningfully represent New Zealand as a bicultural society and a multicultural society, while remaining commercially focused. This thesis argues that institutions of the state, of which the media is the most visible and, possibly, the most pervasive, always function as a tool of society�s dominant culture, therefore any bicultural or multicultural inclusion represented on TVNZ will always be controlled, and be at the discretion, of that singular dominant cultural force.

Thesis (MEducation)--University of South Australia, 2001.