Friends tell it like it is: Therapy culture, postfeminism and friendships between women

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110575
Author(s):  
Maree Martinussen ◽  
Margaret Wetherell
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Qualitative Investigation ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Creative Identity ◽  
Practice Approach ◽  
Using Data

Feminist cultural studies researchers have produced a rich body of work showing how postfeminism and therapy cultures pervade a range of media. However, receiving less attention are questions of exactly how the neoliberal technologies of self implicated in these two cultural persuasions ‘land’, and are practised in everyday life. In this article, we forward an identity practice approach to understand the interrelated cultures of therapy and postfeminism using data from a qualitative investigation of women’s friendships in Aotearoa New Zealand. We are interested in how the cultural resources concerning postfeminism and the ‘psy complex’ are used flexibly within friendship interactions in concert with other identities, such as national identities and caring identities. Overall, aligning with previous feminist analyses of media artefacts, we find that as postfeminist and therapeutic subjectivity-making entwine with the moral orders of women’s friendships, women carry out their self-surveillance and self-transformation work collaboratively. Yet, remaining attentive to how women tailor cultural resources in their creative identity work leads us to a more hopeful reading. We suggest that the confidence gained by women through their therapised friendships should also be acknowledged for its nourishing qualities.

scholarly journals Asexuals negotiate the ‘onslaught of the heteronormative’

Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072199338
Author(s):  
Tiina Vares
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Research Gap

Although theorizing and research about asexuality have increased in the past decade, there has been minimal attention given to the emotional impact that living in a hetero- and amato-normative cultural context has on those who identify as asexual. In this paper, I address this research gap through an exploration of the ‘work that emotions do’ (Sara Ahmed) in the everyday lives of asexuals. The study is based on 15 individual interviews with self-identified asexuals living in Aotearoa New Zealand. One participant in the study used the phrase, ‘the onslaught of the heteronormative’ to describe how he experienced living as an aromantic identified asexual in a hetero- and amato-normative society. In this paper I consider what it means and feels like to experience aspects of everyday life as an ‘onslaught’. In particular, I look at some participants’ talk about experiencing sadness, loss, anger and/or shame as responses to/effects of hetero- and amato-normativity. However, I suggest that these are not only ‘negative’ emotional responses but that they might also be productive in terms of rethinking and disrupting hetero- and amato-normativity.

scholarly journals "Thank you, your English is very good also": Asian Panethnicity and its Performance in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sophia Edwards
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Asian Identity ◽  
Creative Artists ◽  
Asian People ◽  
Diverse Groups

<p>Existing studies suggest that Asian panethnicity is the political mobilisation of diverse groups of people under a new name, to oppose racism and discrimination. Asian panethnicity is shaped by social forces, including those that exclude. As such, it is inherently political. However, it is limiting to think of it only as a kind of intentional, collective action bent towards achieving a predetermined group goal. This thesis expands this understanding of panethnicity, by considering how “Asiannness” is experienced on an intersubjective level and asks what “Asian” means to and for the Asian individual.  Lingering Orientalism perpetuates a sense of Asian people as not quite belonging in the West. Though by now cliché, this narrative of non-belonging continues to determine ideas of Asianness and set the parameters of appropriate Asian behaviour. But, this non-belonging is also the site in and from which Asian actors make their own meanings and seek their own kind of situated belonging. This thesis takes an autoethnographic and ethnographic approach to field sites in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to observe some of the ways Asian identity is formed. It is inevitable that transnational processes contribute to this identity work, but these global processes are also subsumed by localised structures and contexts.  Drawing from participant observation with social and community groups, and interviews with creative artists, writers, administrators, community workers and activists addressing the question of what it means to be Asian, I argue that Asian panethnicity is constituted by “doing”. It is made up of different acts, repeated over time, and in different settings. As a product of relationships between externally imposed, in group enforced, and self-made conceptions of “Asianness”, Asian panethnicity is both performative and performed. This thesis presents scenarios in which these performances and presentations of the Asian self take place. In considering some of the possible contexts and conventions that give rise to the performative act/s of being Asian, I argue that being Asian is a creative, collaborative, ongoing endeavour. It is a means by which to accomplish belonging in the world.</p>

New Views on a ‘Stuck’ Issue: Communicating about Childhood Immunisation in Aotearoa New Zealand

2014 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elspeth Tilley ◽  
Niki Murray ◽  
Bronwyn Watson ◽  
Margie Comrie
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Qualitative Investigation ◽  
Childhood Immunisation ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article explores attitudes towards immunisation and immunisation communication materials among parents and caregivers currently facing immunisation decisions in Aotearoa New Zealand. The research aimed to discover, from an open-ended qualitative investigation, new ways to conceptualise and explain immunisation decision-making, and identify participants' own views on approaches worth trialling as ways to increase immunisation rates. The research used communication artefacts as talking points, and an action research process to modify these to reflect participants' design suggestions, but was primarily exploratory. It started a broad conversation with participants about their decision-making influences rather than being designed to test any particular attributes of the immunisation communication process. From a qualitative analysis of transcripts of focus-group and in-depth interviews with 107 immunisation decision-makers, themes were drawn. Applying an emic process enabled identification of participants' own ideas that have now broadened the range of possible approaches currently being considered for immunisation communication in Aotearoa New Zealand. Given that immunisation decline is a problem internationally, these participant-driven ideas may also be worth testing in other contexts.

scholarly journals A life lived on the corner

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Bronwyn Jewell McGovern
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Street Life ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Street People ◽  
Street Corner

<p>This thesis explores the everyday life of Brother, a well-known street dweller and local identity, who lives everyday life on a busy street corner in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Brother’s way of doing ‘being ordinary’ attracts strong public curiosity, media interest, and monitoring by informal and formal social control mechanisms, including medical intervention. This research provides a comprehensive account of what can happen to those at the margins who dare, or are impelled, to do things differently. My research is inspired by the longstanding tradition of street corner sociology, and grounded within the sociology of everyday life orientation. My street ethnography involved participant observation over a three-and-a-half year period. In that time, I observed Brother and other street people, capturing the depth and nuanced complexities of a life lived in the open. Central to this thesis is an examination of the ways in which wider social structures and institutions bear upon the local micro-setting, in particular how classification processes act to ‘make, remake, and unmake’ people. Three core concepts of space, body, and social interaction are explored to examine, through the situatedness of everyday talk and social action, how social meanings are locally produced and understood. I argue that by developing spatial, bodily, and interactional methods, Brother has established organisational and social capacities, and lines of conduct, that are firmly founded in autonomous actions. Through his rejection of ascribed ‘homeless’ membership and his clear embracement of a street lifestyle, Brother’s street life is shown to subvert and trouble normative understandings, while engendering and maintaining a lived sense of home in the city he calls his whare [house]. My research contributes an Aotearoa New Zealand perspective to the international sociological street corner landscape, and provides a Wellington perspective to the emerging domestic literature on street life. More broadly, my study aims to stimulate critical sociological reflection regarding different modes of being and belonging in the world and how we, as a society, respond to this.</p>

Just being and being bad: Female friendship as a refuge in neoliberal times

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maree Martinussen ◽  
Margaret Wetherell ◽  
Virginia Braun
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Life Strategies ◽  
Female Friendship ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Close Friendships ◽  
A Site

Those investigating neoliberal and postfeminist subjectivities have argued that continuous self-improvement and self-surveillance have become everyday life strategies for many women. It has been suggested that these strategies have also re-organised women’s friendships, so that this is now a significant field of practice for women to support each other in the anxiety provoking work of self-perfection. Using talk-data from a sample of women in Aotearoa New Zealand we explore these claims, and report on how our sample of women describe their friendships, not so much as a site for developing and perfecting the neoliberal self, but as a place of reprieve from conventions of relentless productivity – a site of ease, escape and refuge. We are not suggesting that accounts of postfeminist, neoliberal subjectivities are inaccurate or that these modes of self-making are not relevant to our participants, but that the discursive environment of women’s close friendships is plural, combining neoliberal emphases with potentially subversive counter-narratives.

Honoring the Treaty: School Leaders’ Embrace of Indigenous Concepts to Practice Culturally Sustaining Leadership in Aotearoa**Aotearoa is the Indigenous name for New Zealand.

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 588-603
Author(s):  
Jessica T. Shiller
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Field School ◽  
Using Data ◽  
School Leadership Practices

As a field, school leadership has maintained a colorblind stance, marginalizing practitioners’ awareness of culturally sustaining practice, and erasing the experiences of Indigenous and other minoritized groups of students, teachers, and families. Looking to research and practice that attempts to embrace racial and cultural difference in order to make schools more culturally sustaining places to be is imperative in order for the field to respond to the growing diversity in schools. This article specifically explores culturally sustaining and Indigenous school leadership practices. Using data collected from interviews with ten school leaders in Aotearoa (New Zealand) as well as school documents, this article presents new insights into the implementation of culturally sustaining school leadership, which has implications for theory and practice in the field of educational leadership, which has been too long dominated by white ways of knowing.

Periods as powerful data: User understandings of menstrual app data and information

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110402
Author(s):  
Bryndl Hohmann-Marriott
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Data User ◽  
Menstrual Health ◽  
Using Data

Digital apps for tracking menstruation are widely used. Taking a critical menstruation and critical digital health approach, this research asks how menstrual app users perceive their data. Interviews with 25 menstrual app users across Aotearoa New Zealand, were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Some participants only track their period, while others track additional symptoms. They appreciated having a choice of data to track, entering extensive amounts of data. Most participants had not given much thought to their data, viewing it as uninteresting and unproblematic. A small group were concerned by the data risks and managed this in several ways. Participants across both groups supported using data for menstrual health research. This research demonstrates a need for digital literacy and for limits on the use of menstruation information, where menstruators themselves are controlling and benefitting from their data.

scholarly journals "Thank you, your English is very good also": Asian Panethnicity and its Performance in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sophia Edwards
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Asian Identity ◽  
Creative Artists ◽  
Asian People ◽  
Diverse Groups

<p>Existing studies suggest that Asian panethnicity is the political mobilisation of diverse groups of people under a new name, to oppose racism and discrimination. Asian panethnicity is shaped by social forces, including those that exclude. As such, it is inherently political. However, it is limiting to think of it only as a kind of intentional, collective action bent towards achieving a predetermined group goal. This thesis expands this understanding of panethnicity, by considering how “Asiannness” is experienced on an intersubjective level and asks what “Asian” means to and for the Asian individual.  Lingering Orientalism perpetuates a sense of Asian people as not quite belonging in the West. Though by now cliché, this narrative of non-belonging continues to determine ideas of Asianness and set the parameters of appropriate Asian behaviour. But, this non-belonging is also the site in and from which Asian actors make their own meanings and seek their own kind of situated belonging. This thesis takes an autoethnographic and ethnographic approach to field sites in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to observe some of the ways Asian identity is formed. It is inevitable that transnational processes contribute to this identity work, but these global processes are also subsumed by localised structures and contexts.  Drawing from participant observation with social and community groups, and interviews with creative artists, writers, administrators, community workers and activists addressing the question of what it means to be Asian, I argue that Asian panethnicity is constituted by “doing”. It is made up of different acts, repeated over time, and in different settings. As a product of relationships between externally imposed, in group enforced, and self-made conceptions of “Asianness”, Asian panethnicity is both performative and performed. This thesis presents scenarios in which these performances and presentations of the Asian self take place. In considering some of the possible contexts and conventions that give rise to the performative act/s of being Asian, I argue that being Asian is a creative, collaborative, ongoing endeavour. It is a means by which to accomplish belonging in the world.</p>

scholarly journals A life lived on the corner

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Bronwyn Jewell McGovern
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Street Life ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Street People ◽  
Street Corner

<p>This thesis explores the everyday life of Brother, a well-known street dweller and local identity, who lives everyday life on a busy street corner in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Brother’s way of doing ‘being ordinary’ attracts strong public curiosity, media interest, and monitoring by informal and formal social control mechanisms, including medical intervention. This research provides a comprehensive account of what can happen to those at the margins who dare, or are impelled, to do things differently. My research is inspired by the longstanding tradition of street corner sociology, and grounded within the sociology of everyday life orientation. My street ethnography involved participant observation over a three-and-a-half year period. In that time, I observed Brother and other street people, capturing the depth and nuanced complexities of a life lived in the open. Central to this thesis is an examination of the ways in which wider social structures and institutions bear upon the local micro-setting, in particular how classification processes act to ‘make, remake, and unmake’ people. Three core concepts of space, body, and social interaction are explored to examine, through the situatedness of everyday talk and social action, how social meanings are locally produced and understood. I argue that by developing spatial, bodily, and interactional methods, Brother has established organisational and social capacities, and lines of conduct, that are firmly founded in autonomous actions. Through his rejection of ascribed ‘homeless’ membership and his clear embracement of a street lifestyle, Brother’s street life is shown to subvert and trouble normative understandings, while engendering and maintaining a lived sense of home in the city he calls his whare [house]. My research contributes an Aotearoa New Zealand perspective to the international sociological street corner landscape, and provides a Wellington perspective to the emerging domestic literature on street life. More broadly, my study aims to stimulate critical sociological reflection regarding different modes of being and belonging in the world and how we, as a society, respond to this.</p>

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