This thesis examines the relationship between art gallery postcards, subjectivities and domestic spaces. Feminist post-structuralist debates on memory, subjectivity and domestic spaces provide the theoretical framework for this research into taken-for-granted objects of the everyday. Empirical data came from interviewing nine women who buy, use and keep postcards and two New Zealand Art Gallery store managers. Some of the participants were interviewed more than once, while others extended their views by e-mail. Auto-ethnographic narrative is used to explore further the symbolic significance of an individual's postcard consumption. This research focuses attention on the production of gendered subjectivities and domestic spaces through an aesthetic artefact. There are three points to my analysis. Firstly, I argue paradoxically the under-noticed seemingly trivial gallery postcard becomes a memory holder and therefore a significant artefact of symbolic value. Memories are potent, elusive fragments that become attached to a sound, smell, touch or sight. Catching sight of a postcard can trigger a chain of memory associations, which in turn constructs a sense of self through the remembering. Secondly, I contend that subjectivity is understood as fluid and multiple, evolving out of experience and interpretation. Memories formed from experience and connections made with people, place and things become associated with gallery postcards and serve as a catalyst for personal narratives which in turn can operate as tools for constructing subjectivities. Finally I suggest that domestic spaces are a product of relations that can be understood as existing within and beyond the home. Stretched domestic space can be produced by the display of gallery postcards in office spaces. The exploration of the art gallery postcard adds to the knowledges of everyday objects and their role and significance in constructing gendered subjectivities and spaces.

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of gender experiences in a New Zealand surf culture. I employed the methods of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups to accumulate in-depth and descriptive qualitative data from the men and women who surf in the community of Raglan. I was especially interested in the rules surrounding the act of lining up - a systematic etiquette used to queue for waves. I inquired about surfers' struggles when lining up to deepen my understanding of the cultural behaviour of surfing and to help reveal implicit rules underpinning surf etiquette. As a female surfer, I was especially interested to understand the gender-relations between men and women in the waters in which I participated in. I discovered that subtle rules pertain to different groups of surfers and group emerged based on 'other' surfer characteristics. Although gender surfaced as a characteristic way of sorting surfers into groups, gender did not stand out more critical than others revealed throughout the research process. What was evident throughout the research was that men and women experience more commonalities in their surfing experiences than differences. Therefore, this research shows how the waves become a contested spaces for surfers and how surf culture serves as a site for resistance to gendered identities in contemporary Western society.

The 1990's saw a rapid growth in the use of Enterprise Systems by organisations to undertake quick and strategic decisions. Significant to the use of Enterprise systems, is their implementation in the organisation. The increased use of paper documents in government organisations and the augmented implementation rate of Electronic Document Management Systems within government organisations in New Zealand, is what triggered this research and subsequently the framing of the research objectives and thereby the research question. This research encompasses the factors which affect the implementation process of an Enterprise Document Management System and thereby render it a success or a failure. The study used an ethnographic approach in order to introduce rigour in the research. The data was collected by conducting eight semi-structured interviews at the client organisation. The interviews were transcribed and later coded using an open - coding methodology. A thematic analysis based schema was developed to later analyse the coded data.The research found that, factors such as change management, behaviour management / emotions, communication, implementation process approach and system functionality had profound effects on the implementation success of the Electronic Document Management System in the research organisation. The thesis has been mostly written in the first person to represent the author's interpretation of the implementation process and its related factors.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / Alongside informal networks of friends and family, formal social groupings such as voluntary associations are valued by older people as opportunities for engagement. In Australia, one such grouping is the licensed social (or ‘registered’) club. Approximately 20 per cent of all older Australians, and 80 per cent of older residents of the state of New South Wales, actively participate in such clubs. Despite this, older people’s registered club participation has received little scholarly attention. This ethnographic study of one particular registered club aimed to discover the nature, meaning and role of club participation for its older members. Social capital existing in club-based networks emerged as a further investigative focus, and its mechanisms and outcomes were examined. Participant observation and in-depth interviewing were the main data collection methods used. Data analysis procedures included thematic analysis (based loosely on grounded theory methodology), as well as the more contextsensitive narrative analysis and key-words-in-context analysis. The study found that club participation enabled older members to maintain valued social networks, self-reliance and a sense of autonomy. Social networks were characterised by social capital of the bonding type, being largely homogeneous with respect to age, gender, (working) class and cultural background. Strong cohesive bonds were characterised by intimacy and reciprocity, and possessed norms including equality and the norm of tolerance and inclusiveness. These helped to minimise conflict and build cohesiveness, while protecting older club-goers from increasing marginalisation within the club. Peer grouping within this mainstream setting may have shielded the older club-goers from stigma associated with participation in old-age specific groups. The nature and scale of registered club participation amongst older Australians points to their unique and important role. The findings of this research indicate that – for at least this group of older men and women - club use is a major contributor to maintaining social connectedness and a sense of self as self-reliant, autonomous and capable. In the context of an ageing population, Australia’s registered clubs feature in the mosaic of resources available to older people, and their communities, for the creation of social capital.

Summary: Although a good deal of information is available about the Maoris of New Zealand, concerning their origin, customs, and culture, yet statistical data regarding their actual numbers at any time before 1857 are comparatively rare. It is a fact that the Maori population in any given locality was a fluctuating one and that their distribution in general was very variable and this constitutes a formidable difficulty in making any estimate of their numbers before the first cenus. A second obstacle is the difficulty of travel which faced the early European explorers. For example, when Cook visited New Zealand, he made an estimate of the population but it was largely conjectural as Cook saw the natives at only those places he touched around the coast, and had in fact no means of estimating what proportion of the total population those communities formed. Actually the Maoris were not confined to the coastline, and therefore Cook�s estimate cannot be regarded as based on adequate data. An evaluation of his estimate will be made later--Chapter 1.

This ethnographic study provides insight and understanding, which is needed to educate and support the Triage Nursing role in Australian Emergency Departments (EDs). The triage role has emerged to address issues in providing efficient emergency care. However, Triage Nurses and educators have found the role challenging and not well understood. Method: Sampling was done first by developing a profile of 900 nurses who undertake the triage role in 50 NSW EDs through survey techniques. Purposive sampling was then done with data collected from participant observation in four metropolitan EDs (Level 4 and 6), observations and interviews with 10 Triage Nurses and the maintenance of a record of secondary data sources. Analysis used standard content and thematic analysis techniques. Findings: An ED culture is reflected in a standard geography of care and embedded beliefs and rituals that sustain a cadence of care. Triage Nurses to accomplish their role and maintain this rhythm of care used three processes: gatekeeping, timekeeping and decision-making. When patient overcrowding occurred the three processes enabled Triage Nurses to implement a range of practices to restore the cadence of care to which they were culturally oriented. Conclusion: The findings provide a framework that offers new ways of considering triage nursing practice, educational programs, policy development and future research.

<p>Between April 1997 and November 1999, I followed eight socially excluded female drug users in an attempt to describe their lives and living conditions. The study employs an ethnographic approach with the focus being directed at the specific woman and her life in relation to the social context where this life is lived.</p><p>The study’s objective has been to describe the lives and living conditions of the eight drug-using women, as well as the extent of the opportunities available to them, as being determined by mechanisms of social exclusion. Their lives are understood on the basis of a feminist and social constructionist perspective where perceptions of ‘the drug-abusing woman’ are regarded as the result of constructions of gender and deviance. The theoretical perspectives proceeds from the idea that one is not born a woman but rather becomes one. The fundamental idea is that women become women by means of processes of femininisation, in the context of which certain ways of interpreting and presenting oneself as a woman are regarded as good and others as bad. Our images of ‘the female drug addict’ are based on how we define and interpret deviance and on the cultural and social thought and behaviour patterns we ascribe to people on the basis of bodily differences. It is images of ‘the good woman’ that defines what we regard as characteristic of ‘the bad woman’ and vice versa.</p><p>The findings are organised into three main topics: femininity, living conditions and social control. The main findings are: The women described themselves as women by relating to normative messages about how women “are and should be”, and their drug use constituted a means of coping with life from their social position. Their life revolved to a large extent around money via a constant struggle to find enough to cover the rent, food and other basic necessities. And finally, how the women’s relations to societal institutions were formed by their social position as ‘female drug addicts’ and how the asymmetry of these relations produced certain fixed patterns of action for the parties involved.</p>

<p>This thesis is an ethnographic study in which seven Swedish children from different social and cultural environments were followed over three years. The study began when the children were four years old. </p><p>The main aim of this thesis is to investigate through what social and cul-tural practices seven children meet literacy events in their families. A second aim is to track informal and everyday literacy events which the children take part in or practice on their own. A further aim is to study the transition be-tween home, preschool, preschool class and primary school in order to de-termine to what extent and in what ways the children are allowed to use their previous experience with and knowledge of literacy.</p><p>The results show that the children are socialised in practices rich in liter-acy events via their culture, traditions, language and religion. The children practise reading and writing in a number of contexts. This occurs long before the pupils have been exposed to formal education. </p><p>In the work on this study, it has also become clear that the seven children, regardless of their cultural, language or socioeconomic background, share experiences and knowledge relating to popular culture and the media. The children have a common understanding of texts in the form of words, names, images and icons. The value of this knowledge and experience is often as-signed by the children themselves in their contact with other children. </p><p>The seven children, in this study, come to preschool and primary school with a wealth of experience in literacies from their family lives. Some chil-dren are allowed to bring their experience to the classroom. For them, there is continuity between literacy practices at home and at school. Others are forced to leave their experience outside the classroom. What is common to all children is that their knowledge about literacy related to popular culture and the media has a low cultural value in instructional settings. </p>

The aim of this study is to explore how young people act and the organisation of school practice, and what possibilities they have of influencing the content and the forms practiced. The study focuses on how the pedagogic practice is organised in two classes in their first year of upper secondary school, one Social Science programme class and one Vehicle programme class. This embraces questions as: How, where, when and for what cause do students act to influence, and then with what result? Are students offered influence, and in that case which students? How does the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice prepare students to act in order to be able to exert influence in the future? These questions have been studied with focus on differences between the programmes with regard to social background and gender. The thesis has its theoretical base in Bernstein’s theory of pedagogy and code (1990, 2000), feminist perspectives (Arnot, 2006; Arnot &amp; Dillabough, 2000; Connell, 1987; Gordon, 2006; Gordon, Holland &amp; Lahelma, 2000) as well as theories of structuration (Giddens, 1984). The empirical material of the thesis was ethnographically produced during one school year, through classroom observations, individual interviews with students, teachers and head teachers, and the gathering of school and teaching material. The main results in the analysis are that actions taken to gain influence were rare, that the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice was mainly focused on students as becoming, i. e. it focused students possibilities to be able to influence in the future and not the present. Furthermore, changing of pedagogic content or pedagogic forms was dependent on students’ own actions.   There was a lack of teacher organisation to promote student influence. Finally, what was evaluated in the pedagogic practice, i.e. factual learning, did not promote student influence. The thesis demonstrates how pedagogic practice was gendered and classed, which had consequences for how students could influence and how students were prepared to influence in the future. Since the Social Science programme mostly attracts students from a middle-class background and the Vehicle programme those with a working-class background, the content in the programmes contributed to reproducing hierarchical social relations. The content for the Vehicle students proved to be simplified, personal and context dependent, whereas the content of the Social Science programme was more advanced, general and context independent, knowledge which, in argumentation for influence, is usually highly valued. In previous research, working class masculinities have often been associated with opposition towards study-oriented   subjects.   However, the current  study indicates that there is an interest in studying Swedish, English and maths. The students argued that it was necessary for future employment, and that the Vehicle industry is now asking for this kind of knowledge.

The thesis should be regarded as a contribution to the development of knowledge about the interaction taking place in the educational setting for pupils with PIMD in Sweden, the training school (Sw. Träningsskola), and the contextual and interactional conditions that characterizes this educational setting. The study is expected to contribute to a deeper understanding of the pedagogical praxis in the training School and the pupils’ possibilities to be agents within the processes of interaction, participation and learning. The thesis aims to contribute to the development of knowledge about the contextual and interactional conditions that training school pedagogic practice is characterized by. The study's overall purpose is to analyze the participation and interaction in the context of five training school classes. A particular focus is placed on teaching organization and the interaction patterns appearing in the pedagogical practice and what kind of consequences the interaction has for the pupils’ participation. Participation in this study refers to how the teams and students jointly create interaction in classrooms, the patterns produced by the interaction. The study draws on a theoretical framework that is influenced by ethnometodological work and from the dramaturgical framework by Goffman, where the participant’s social actions and methodical ways of making sense in a social setting are in focus. The design of the data collection is inspired by an ethnographic approach and is constructed as a classroom study. The empirical material was collected by classroom observations and by video recordings. The data derive from video recordings that were made during spring 2009 and spring 2010 in five training school classes and all together twenty  pupils (age 8-19, eleven boys and nine girls) and 28 members from the teams (nine special teachers,  two music teachers,  one psychical education teacher and 16 assistants) participated in the study. The results are showing that the pedagogical practice in training school was defined by six different areas: Circle time, One-to-one tuition, Group joint education, Snack time/ lunch, Breaks and play-time and Transitions.  In the interaction between the pupils and the staff the pupils’ positions was constructed as: The attentive and responsive pupil, The experiencing pupil, The choice making and autonomous pupil, The exploring pupil, The pupil that shows civil inattention, The pupil as a recipient of care and The playing pupil.  A starting point for further research involves studying how students' participation is constructed in more inclusive settings i.e. in interaction with other children who do not have such extensive disabilities.