Twenty years on: Poverty and hardship in urban Fiji

Author(s):  
Jenny Bryant-Tokalau

Through ‘official statistics’, academic and donor interpretations as well as the eyes of Suva residents, this paper presents an overview and case study of twenty years of growing poverty and hardship in the contemporary Pacific. Focusing on the past two decades, the paper notes how much, and yet so little, has changed for those attempting to make a living in the rapidly developing towns and cities. Changing interpretations of poverty and hardship are presented, moving from the ‘no such thing’ view, to simplification, and finally to an understanding that Pacific island countries, especially Fiji, are no longer an ‘extension’ of Australia and New Zealand, but independent nations actively trying to find solutions to their issues of economic, social and political hardship whilst facing challenges to traditional institutions and networks. Fiji is in some respects a very particular case as almost half of the population has limited access to secure land, but the very nature of that vulnerability to hardship and poverty holds useful lessons for wider analysis.

Author(s):  
Victor Ongoma ◽  
Mohammad Atiqur Rahman ◽  
Brian Ayugi ◽  
Fhereen Nisha ◽  
Stephen Galvin ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tamara Brigid Ross

<p>This thesis examines the development of a 'race'/immigration ideology within New Zealand and attempts to explore the processes through which this ideology has expressed and reproduced itself in New Zealand's past. In order to determine this process, this thesis analyses, as a case study, the causes, patterns and consequences of the politicisation of Pacific Island immigrants in New Zealand during the 1970s. Pacific Island immigrants were negatively categorised according to traditional New Zealand beliefs about 'race' and the immigration of 'alien' peoples, and the stereotypes that arose out of this process justified racist immigration campaigns in the 1970s. The targeting of Pacific Island migrants through these immigration campaigns, and the deliberate scapegoating of Pacific Islanders in the 1975 general election, compounded and entrenched existing negative stereotypes thereby justifying the further politicisation of Islanders in the 1980s. It is argued that this historical process needs to be understood as the outcome, among other things, of the 'race'/immigration ideology. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the politicisation of Pacific Islanders during this period was but part of a cycle in a larger process of the generation and reproduction of racism. While the 'race'/immigration ideology is analysed here with Pacific Islanders The historical campaigns against Pacific Islanders are examined in detail so as to illuminate the broader process of racialisation in New Zealand's past, and to explore the possible form that the 'race'/immigration ideology may assume both in the present and in the future.</p>


Author(s):  
John C. Trinder

A summary is presented of the results of questionnaires sent to mapping agencies in Oceania, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Island countries, to investigate the status of mapping in those countries. After World War II, the Australian Federal Government funded the initial small scale mapping of the whole country leading to increased percentages of map coverage of Australia. Mapping at larger scales is undertaken by the states and territories in Australia, including cadastral mapping. In New Zealand mapping is maintained by Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) at 1:50,000 scale and smaller with regular updating. The results of the questionnaires also demonstrate the extent of map coverage in six Pacific Islands, but there is little information available on the actual percent coverage. Overall there are estimated to be an increases in the percentages of coverage of most map scales in Oceania. However, there appear to be insufficient professionals in most Pacific Island countries to maintain the mapping programs. Given that many Pacific Island countries will be impacted by rising sea level in the future, better mapping of these countries is essential. The availability of modern technology especially satellite images, digital aerial photography and airborne lidar data should enable the Pacific Island countries to provide better map products in future, but this would depend on foreign aid on many occasions.


Author(s):  
Ravnil Narayan

The teaching of vernacular languages or mother tongues in the Pacific island countries is one of the most neglected and vulnerable areas in education. This is borne out by the results of various studies that have been conducted over the past decades on literacy writings in vernacular. To an utter dismay, day by day and year by year, the numbers of Hindi vernacular students have been considerably declining, which is having a direct repercussion on scant publication of local literally writings in Hindi language. This original article will shed some light upon the vernacular teaching and learning of Hindi language, which has a long history in Fiji’s education system. What used to be one’s identity is now treated as a vehicular language, only to be used for conversational purposes. The novelty of the article will also oversee the extent of Hindi language teachings, since its early inception, and the repertoire of means that were adopted to retain her true essence in safe guarding her for the future generations. So much so, the piece is also going to look upon some of the ways in which Hindi literary writings could be brought back in Fiji’s current digitalised era, and what could be done to stop her from being near extinction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Pamela Radburnd

<p><b>It is well known that many Maori cultural traditions and cosmological beliefs are anchored in a sea of knowledge associated with seafaring, navigation and the oceanic environment. Despite the loss of deep-sea voyaging, this thesis explores how nautical reflexes were still very influential on various modes of expression in Christian Maori architecture of three distinct Maori religious movements from the colonial and post-colonial periods. During this investigation, this thesis also identifies a relationship that can be found between the appropriation of nautical symbolism in Christian and Maori architecture.</b></p> <p>This relationship is examined on two levels: One, in terms of how Christian and Maori iconography has latent nautical meaning and secondly, how nautical symbolism in Christian Maori architecture is more signal than sculptural. The latter identifies the more powerful, metaphysical symbols in Maori architecture and spirituality which make Christian Maori architecture uniquely different from European Christian architecture. This thesis links these qualities in symbolic Christian maori architecture to the psychic and symbolic territories known to the navigator. In doing so, this thesis discovers how nautical symbols occupy a middle ground, an in-between area bridging the known with the unknown and examines their role as mediators between the present and the past; the individual and the collective.</p> <p>This thesis finally presents an architectural design which explores specific aspects of research. In doing so, the use of nautical symbolism and water-based pragmatism through architecture explores how such methods and expressions can influence and transform Western notions of knowledge or conventional notions of contemporary (terrestrial) architecture in New Zealand. To achieve this, nautical concepts from case study material are applied to a contemporary design project in order to open up architecture to its metaphysical dimension rather than focussing on the object (sculptural) that is frozen in time. As a result, this design also celebrates and revives the nautical instinct of Maori in terms of how it can offer new and meaningful ways to design architecture in oceania and New Zealand.</p>


1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Poot

This article addresses economic aspects of New Zealand immigration during the 1980s. General features are overall net emigration coinciding with high levels of immigration from Asia and Pacific Island countries. Earnings by years in New Zealand profiles for immigrants with selected occupations are steeper for Pacific Island-born males than for other immigrant groups. Although there are few data, there is some evidence that profiles differ between cohorts. Since the level of controlled immigration is likely to be increased and the perceived labor market outcomes are an input in the selection criteria, further research is needed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (100) ◽  
pp. 179-197
Author(s):  
Leon Salter

Neoliberal discourse often positions itself as the antithesis of bureaucracy. However, as the hegemonic political project of the past forty years, neoliberalism has imposed various forms of bureaucracy, most notably, those that audit performance. This contradiction between antagonism towards bureaucracy and bureaucratising tendencies is particularly resonant in the contemporary neoliberalised education sector, where the perceived risk of not producing self-managing, autonomous, economically productive subjects must be minimised through audit mechanisms which, conversely, necessarily decrease those capacities in students. Through a case study of the neoliberalisation of New Zealand's school sector, using the lens of Lacan's four discourses, this article argues that the discourses of the Master and the University have worked together to sometimes obscure, but at other times highlight, this contradiction. Drawing on policy documents, political speeches and reports, I highlight that a key policy which increased the visibility of the contradiction was National Standards, introduced in 2007 to reduce the risk of the unknown through the collection of performance data. I also draw on interviews with educationalists who adopt the discourse of the hysteric as a means to publicly highlight this contradiction, contesting the symbolic mandate of the teacher-as-data-node, while avoiding the kinds of full-frontal resistance that might cost them their jobs and jeopardise the education of children.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document