This thesis explores the ways community-based ecotourism development in the Bouma National Heritage Park was negotiated at the nexus of Western entrepreneurship and the vanua, an indigenous epistemology. In 1990, the Bouma tribe of Taveuni, Fiji established the Bouma National Heritage Park. A growing dependence on the market economy and a desire to find an economic alternative to commercial logging on their communally-tenured land, led to their decision to approach the New Zealand government for assistance to establish the Park. The four villages involved have since developed their own community-based ecotourism enterprises. Despite receiving first place in a British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Award category in 2002, there was a growing sense of social dysfunction in Bouma during the research period. According to my participants, this was partly due to the community-based ecotourism development process which had paid little attention to the vanua. Largely through talanoa as discussion, the people of Bouma have become increasingly conscious of references to the vanua values in their own evaluation and management of the projects. This thesis draws on Tim Ingold’s (2000) ‘taskscapes’ as, like the vanua, they relationally link humans with other elements of the environment within their landscape. This contrasts with a common Western epistemological approach of treating humans as independent of other cosmological and physical elements and as positioned against the landscape. Largely due to its communal nature, it may be argued that the vanua is incompatible with values associated with Bouma’s Western, capitalist-based ecotourism models. However, in this thesis I argue that despite numerous obstacles, the Bouma National Heritage Park is one example of a tribe’s endeavours to culturally hybridise the vanua with entrepreneurship to create a locally meaningful form of indigenous entrepreneurship for the wellbeing of its people. The Bouma people call this hybrid ‘business va’avanua’. Informal talanoa is presented in this thesis as a potential tool for political agency in negotiating issues surrounding community-based ecotourism and business va’avanua.

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This thesis represents a transdisciplinary study based on qualitative research and critical analysis of oral history interviews and the personal narratives of sixty-seven Australian-born Chinese. It uses cultural studies approaches to investigate the diverse ways Chineseness becomes inscribed into the lives of Australian-born Chinese. It investigates diverse ways Chineseness becomes inscribed into the lives of Australian-born Chinese within three social and cultural spaces Australian-born Chinese inhabit. These are the family, mainstream Australian society and Chinese diasporic spaces located in China and Australia. In examining these three social and cultural spaces, this study seeks to demonstrate that Chineseness represents an inescapable ‘reality’ Australian-born Chinese are compelled to confront in their everyday lives. This ‘reality’ exists despite rights of birth, generational longevity, and strong national and cultural identities and identifications grounded in Australia, and whether or not Australian-born Chinese willingly choose to identify as ‘Chinese’. Nevertheless, despite the limits of Chineseness Australian-born Chinese experience in their lives, this study demonstrates that Australian-born Chinese are individual agents who devise a range of strategies and tactics which empower them to negotiate Chineseness in relevant and meaningful ways of their own choosing.

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This thesis is a study of older volunteers and their feelings of being valued and of worth within that role. The perceptions of older volunteers and their managers within three participating non-government organisations, government and organisational policy documents and relevant legislation and literature in the fields of ageing and volunteering provided data for the research. Changing political, economic and social conditions together with ageing of the Australian population have resulted in human services being increasingly contracted to non-government organisations. This in turn has resulted in more services than hitherto being delivered by volunteers many of whom are older people. Population ageing implies that there will be an increasing need for human services provision in the first half of the twenty first century. Whether there will be sufficient volunteers to maintain these services will depend at least in part on the responsiveness of organisations to their volunteer base and the effectiveness of their recruitment strategies. This research indicates that a sense of mastery over their circumstances is critical to volunteer satisfaction. Volunteers discussed their perceptions of maintaining control over their circumstances through the process of initiating volunteering arrangements and negotiating role changes in response to their changing health or abilities. Managers recognised the need to be responsive to the changing abilities of older volunteers and identified strategies for maintaining the volunteer contribution. Management style and in particular communication emerged as integral to volunteer satisfaction and an awareness of and responsiveness to differing motivators was important, particularly in relation to social networking and making a worthwhile contribution as a source of feeling valued.

This thesis represents a transdisciplinary study based on qualitative research and critical analysis of oral history interviews and the personal narratives of sixty-seven Australian-born Chinese. It uses cultural studies approaches to investigate the diverse ways Chineseness becomes inscribed into the lives of Australian-born Chinese. It investigates diverse ways Chineseness becomes inscribed into the lives of Australian-born Chinese within three social and cultural spaces Australian-born Chinese inhabit. These are the family, mainstream Australian society and Chinese diasporic spaces located in China and Australia. In examining these three social and cultural spaces, this study seeks to demonstrate that Chineseness represents an inescapable ‘reality’ Australian-born Chinese are compelled to confront in their everyday lives. This ‘reality’ exists despite rights of birth, generational longevity, and strong national and cultural identities and identifications grounded in Australia, and whether or not Australian-born Chinese willingly choose to identify as ‘Chinese’. Nevertheless, despite the limits of Chineseness Australian-born Chinese experience in their lives, this study demonstrates that Australian-born Chinese are individual agents who devise a range of strategies and tactics which empower them to negotiate Chineseness in relevant and meaningful ways of their own choosing.