Lack of physical activity among New Zealanders is typically regarded as a serious public health concern. Surveys indicate that a considerable proportion of the population fail to engage in even modest amounts. As well as conferring health benefits, leading an active life can help to build social capital, achieve manual tasks, enhance enjoyment, and reduce traffic congestion and pollution. The research of physical activity in New Zealand is, therefore, important. Many factors influence physical activity behaviour, but traditionally there has been a focus on individual-level behaviour-change approaches. In recent years research has started to focus more on characteristics of physical and social environments, such as provision of cycle paths and development of community social cohesion. Concerned by what I observed to be an over-emphasis by New Zealand agencies on encouraging individual behaviour change, I set out to examine the factors that contributed to the shaping of built and social environments, and their effects on population physical activity. Identifying a gap in the research, I examined these factors via a case study of the Hamilton City Council (HCC). My study employed Foucauldian 'tools' to examine selected HCC documents and interview transcripts with a view to identifying the discourses underpinning local government action with regard to built and social environments and physical activity. In this process I interviewed seven HCC staff members from six relevant departments, including Parks and Gardens, Community Development, and Roading and Transportation. Data was gathered from the staff members using semi-structured interviews, based on pre-prepared guidelines, developed following a review of relevant literature. Relevant HCC strategy and planning documents were selected only after interviews were completed and included their urban design, transportation, creativity and identity and social well-being strategies. I adopted a Foucauldian perspective to analyse the data because I wanted to examine the phenomena of increased physical inactivity by questioning particular 'ways of knowing' and 'truths'. Such an examination, at the level of local government, could help reveal why some cities are more conducive to active living than others. This theoretical approach helped reveal a number of underpinning discourses, including discourses of economic rationality; the council as nurturer; safety and surveillance; participative government; and work efficiency. Key discourses of economic rationality and participative government were pervasive in both the interviews and documents, highlighting the degree to which economic considerations and consultative practices dominate local government actions. My four main findings were that HCC is shaped by and shapes certain discourses; HCC activities are contingent upon many factors outside their control; the creation of supportive environments for active living is a complex task; and, that dominating discourses can silence or obscure other equally valid discourses. These findings gave rise to discursive effects. Firstly, local authority planning, strategizing and action can promote population behaviour control by facilitating resident self-regulation. Secondly, factors outside the control of local authorities can impact on their ability to realise active living goals. Lastly, valid but silenced 'ways of knowing' about physical activity, health, and governance can constrain population physical activity participation. I found that HCC actions were reflective of the discourses identified, illustrating wider societal concerns regarding physical inactivity, obesity, citizenship, economic success, 'democratic' practices, and efficiency. This study contributes to population physical activity research by recognising the value of environmental approaches, but underscoring the need to consider the sources, mechanisms of maintenance, and effects of discourses circulating in local government using appropriate theoretical approaches.

This study has identified the discourses surrounding water birth and analyses how these discourses are utilised by the media in New Zealand to represent water birth. The philosophical approach that underpins the study is that of philosopher Michel Foucault and his theory on discourse, power and the subject. His framework is used in a discourse analysis to reveal three main discourses: the scientific medical discourse, the natural birth discourse and the dive reflex discourse. Data used for this study consisted of 30 newspaper articles containing the word 'water birth' collected over a five-year period (2000-2005) from New Zealand's eight main broadsheet newspapers. Analysis was a two-part process: Foucauldian discourse analysis and a media discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995b).Firstly, the discourse analysis showed the subject and the power positions each discourse offered women for positioning themselves in that discourse. The literature and texts revealed Foucault's theory on power relations and resultant subjectivity within institutions and how waterbirth within institutions is disciplined, surveilled, excluded and circulated. The second part of the analysis revealed how the media chooses to deploy the three identified discourses that represent waterbirth in New Zealand. This textual analysis followed the framework of Fairclough's (1995b) media discourse analysis, showing media strategies that are used to promote the discourse deemed to be ideologically significant by the media outlet. Textual analysis identified that the scientific medical discourse contests waterbirth as an unsafe, unproven practice that puts babies' lives at risk. This discourse categorises women who choose waterbirth as unsafe, irrational, alternative, tree-hugging hippies who favour perceived benefits of waterbirth for themselves above the safety of their baby. The natural birth discourse contests that waterbirth is a safe practice that has encountered few problems since its emergence as a validated birthing practice in the late 1980s. It promotes waterbirth as having multiple benefits for both mother and baby and as a way of enhancing the physiological process of birth through non-intervention. The dive reflex discourse underpins the issue of babies drowning when born into water. This discourse details a reflex that suppresses the normal breathing mechanisms in neonates at birth. Literature debates its existence and troubles the overall trustworthiness of such a reflex to prevent a baby drowning when born into water. It is this discourse that sways people's views and positioning on the overall discourse of waterbirth.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-195)

This thesis is positioned at the intersection of two fields of research: language and gender and language development, to address the lack of linguistically informed investigation into the emergence of gendered subjectivity. Rather than treat the domain of language and gender research as a site of resolve, the research problematises the area to create a site of contestation by drawing attention to the limitations of research based on a single theoretical framework which proposes unified gender identity as gender difference. Gender will be read not as singular identity but multiple, as a Foucauldian 'nexus of subjectivities'. The study is an investigation into the construction of gendered subjectivity through a critical discourse analysis of a family playing games. The initial contention is that gender is a process which may be performed in multiple ways which are linked to the subject positions taken up in competing discourses. Focusing on children playing games, the study examines how gendered relationships are constructed in discursive practices to propose that it is possible to identify the performance of multiple femininities/masculinites through an analysis of patterns of interaction where the negotiation of power relationships is made visible in language and action. The study is a reflexive ethnographic case study based on data collected of two siblings, a boy and a girl, and their parents playing games at home. Conducted from within a framework which strategically combines poststructuralist readings with linguistic analysis, the research is an example of the viability of 'postlinguistic' approach to discourse analysis. The thesis argues that the study of a culture as it is lived in a family reveals the emergence of gendered subjectivity in the constitutive relationship which exits language, subjectivity and discourse. It is suggested that the development of a child's multiple gendered identities towards normative gender patterns may be traced in the discursive practices which s/he mobilises as a result of the subject positions in which s/he is positioned during the research period / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

I should like to have completed this process by having this project bound so that it read from right to left instead of the traditional manner in which we have learnt and been taught to read. In partaking of such an activity, it would have been my purpose and intention to share with you my sense of physical discomfort that has situated itself beside me at various stages from the on-set of my research. Because I believe in this process, I have decided to follow a traditional approach, and as you can see it reads as it should from left to right. In the introductory phase of this study, I assert quite unequivocally that this is not a thesis. Instead I promote this as a prolegomena; an interlocutory prolusion. But don't be deceived! This is very much a thesis. It has been researched according to guidelines, formatted according to specifications and ethically undertaken. I want you to believe that it is a thesis. Partially because I have pursued this research in a very serious manner and also because no matter how much we try to avoid becoming enmeshed in a system, ultimately we find that we are. Three years ago I embarked on a quest. At this time, I proposed that I would undertake a study on the Historical Understandings of passion throughout the Western World. This idea came to a sudden and dramatic halt, through the encountering of what I should like to refer to as a series of problems. In order to do justice to my subject, I decided to write about these obstacles, a decision that I hoped would lead me back to my original statement of intent, following their reconciliation. It is Michel Foucault, that I credit with the title for this thesis. After reading his book entitled "This Is Not A Pipe" (1982) I felt a certain sense of inspiration and ethical obligation that I considered worth taking the risk for. Due to no longer writing a thesis on passion, I decided that this could not be called a thesis. It could only be an introduction to my thesis that would speak about why it had become impossible for me to pursue my thesis at this stage. The other reason that this carries the title of this is not a thesis, surrounds my favouring the post-modern over any other position that I have inquired about. This prolusion involves a discussion surrounding many of the problematics associated with my research processes. These include extensively looking at existing methodologies available when undertaking research today. Adjunct to the illumination of these problems, I look at literary disruptions; my penchant for knowledge and my naive aspirations which all contributed to thwarting my journey into completing an adequate study on passion. Included in this prolegomena, are two diagrammatic representations of passion. The first seeks to re-inscribe through re-presenting passion away from its traditional juxtaposition with love or sexual gratification. It re-presents passion as a polyvalent movement that is vastly more complicated than that to which we have come to believe in through out the centuries. Accompanying this depiction, are the traditional notions of passion. This is based on the works of authors such as Aquinas, Daly, Cicero and McLellan. In the conclusion of this prolusion, I suggest that there is a need to re-write a new methodology. One that transcends our current juncture that promotes stances belonging to foundationalism, anti-foundationalism and non-foundationalism. It is my ardent belief, that this is a necessary course of action and will enable the subject of passion to be spoken to as never before.

This thesis develops a multi-faceted picture of competency based training and the impact it is having on vocational education. The thesis is a personal attempt to act agentically by deconstructing the discourse of vocational education within which I am positioned in my working life. It is an attempt to push back the boundaries of the discourse and to explore and create spaces for contestation. In order to do this I undertake three different readings of a set of texts. The texts come from two sources. The first is a set of documents identified in the Framework for the Implementation of Competency Based Training and which represent the official government position on competency based training. The second is a set of interviews I undertook with teachers at the Canberra Institute of Technology regarding their views about competency based training. Details of the texts are provided in Section 2 of the thesis. The body of the thesis is a set of three readings of these texts. The particular view of 'reading' used in the thesis is a post structuralist one. Each of the readings brings into play the understanding of the texts created within a particular discourse. I draw on the work of Michel Foucault for the understanding of discourse used in the thesis. The first reading is from within the discourse. It is a reading which seeks to understand competency based training in its own terms, and in relation to the critical debates within the literature of vocational education. I argue in this reading that competency based training emerges as a grand but flawed vision for the future of vocational education. The second reading takes the viewpoint of the work of Michel Foucault, and in particular his book Discipline and Punish. It uses the metaphor of the panopticon to explore the nature of power/knowledge within competency based training and the regime of truth which it brings into being. The final reading is from a feminist post structuralist position. I argue in this reading that the discourse of competency based training is phallocentric. I explore the liberatory claims of the discourse and conclude that the claims are limited because they do not challenge the fundamental and powerful dualisms through which competency based training is constituted. Finally in the conclusion I briefly explore whether I have achieved the aim of the thesis. I question what it means to act agentically and whether the type of thesis I have undertaken constructs the possibility of doing so.

Critical social workers seek to practice in empowering ways with marginal groups and to transform power relations in organisations and society generally. This thesis explores how Foucault's theorising has been used by Australian critical social workers to think about power and empowerment practice. However there are many authors who contest that Foucault's theorising is useful for any kind of liberatory thinking or practice. This makes the use of Foucault's insights on power to re-formulate empowerment practice contestable. In this study I aim to draw distinctions between aspects of Foucault's work that can make a contribution to empowerment practice and those aspects that do not or cannot assist critical social workers to think about empowerment. To draw these theoretical distinctions is particularly timely, as the term

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-195) / v, 195 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Depts. of Politics and Social Inquiry, 2002

This thesis is positioned at the intersection of two fields of research: language and gender and language development, to address the lack of linguistically informed investigation into the emergence of gendered subjectivity. Rather than treat the domain of language and gender research as a site of resolve, the research problematises the area to create a site of contestation by drawing attention to the limitations of research based on a single theoretical framework which proposes unified gender identity as gender difference. Gender will be read not as singular identity but multiple, as a Foucauldian 'nexus of subjectivities'. The study is an investigation into the construction of gendered subjectivity through a critical discourse analysis of a family playing games. The initial contention is that gender is a process which may be performed in multiple ways which are linked to the subject positions taken up in competing discourses. Focusing on children playing games, the study examines how gendered relationships are constructed in discursive practices to propose that it is possible to identify the performance of multiple femininities/masculinites through an analysis of patterns of interaction where the negotiation of power relationships is made visible in language and action. The study is a reflexive ethnographic case study based on data collected of two siblings, a boy and a girl, and their parents playing games at home. Conducted from within a framework which strategically combines poststructuralist readings with linguistic analysis, the research is an example of the viability of 'postlinguistic' approach to discourse analysis. The thesis argues that the study of a culture as it is lived in a family reveals the emergence of gendered subjectivity in the constitutive relationship which exits language, subjectivity and discourse. It is suggested that the development of a child's multiple gendered identities towards normative gender patterns may be traced in the discursive practices which s/he mobilises as a result of the subject positions in which s/he is positioned during the research period / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>Syftet med denna studie har varit att öka kunskaperna om några lärares uppfattningar om hur de arbetar med de individuella utvecklingsplanerna. Mina teoretiska utgångspunkter har varit Foucaults maktanalys (1998) och Permer & Permers (2002) makttekniksbegrepp. Utifrån ett maktperspektiv har jag synliggjort hur lärarna, utifrån vad de berättat, gör för att kontrollera och förmå eleverna att arbeta mot sina individuella mål. Min metod har varit kvalitativa intervjuer med fyra olika lärare för att försöka förstå deras syn på sin egen undervisning och planering runt arbetet med IUP. Resultatet av min studie tyder på att flera av lärarna la sig på en för de flesta elever låg nivå vid målformuleringen i IUP. Enligt flera av lärarna formulerades målen så att eleverna skulle kunna nå dessa genom att följa med i den gemensamma undervisningen, elevernas mål anpassas till lärarnas undervisning och inte undervisningen till elevernas mål. Tre av lärarna lät eleverna använda ”planeringsböcker” där eleverna själva fick planera hur de skulle nå sina individuella mål och även utvärdera sitt arbete. Lärarna samlade regelbundet in ”planeringsböckerna” och kunde på så sätt övervaka varje elevs individuella arbete.</p>