scholarly journals Solo Motherhood and the State: Precarity, Agency, and Post-Development Discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lizzy Simpson

<p>The rise of the ‘precariat’ under neoliberalism has garnered the attention of development studies scholars. Drawing on and contributing to this literature, in this thesis I explore the lived experiences of solo mothers in Aotearoa New Zealand and their own precarity in relation to a neoliberal State. Through interviewing seven self-identified solo mothers in the Greater Wellington region, in this thesis I explore solo mothers negotiations with the State through the following areas: state welfare, child support, employment, and housing. I outline how the State often exacerbates the precarity of the research participants, but also highlight the different tactics the participants employ to enact their agency and push back against the State. Shifting the discursive focus of Development Studies from the ‘Global South’ to the ‘Global North’, the experiences of the participants highlight the very real issues of inequality manifesting in the ‘developed’ setting. Informed by the visions of the participants and the wider literature, this research contributes to scholarship in gender post-development studies, illustrating the need for a comprehensive, socialistic welfare state, and to methodologically see value in localising development research in a way that accounts for local complexities. In opposition to neoliberal discourse, this thesis calls for the valorisation of care work, to better account for the competing responsibilities of solo mothers and to lessen the precarity they experience in their everyday lives.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lizzy Simpson

<p>The rise of the ‘precariat’ under neoliberalism has garnered the attention of development studies scholars. Drawing on and contributing to this literature, in this thesis I explore the lived experiences of solo mothers in Aotearoa New Zealand and their own precarity in relation to a neoliberal State. Through interviewing seven self-identified solo mothers in the Greater Wellington region, in this thesis I explore solo mothers negotiations with the State through the following areas: state welfare, child support, employment, and housing. I outline how the State often exacerbates the precarity of the research participants, but also highlight the different tactics the participants employ to enact their agency and push back against the State. Shifting the discursive focus of Development Studies from the ‘Global South’ to the ‘Global North’, the experiences of the participants highlight the very real issues of inequality manifesting in the ‘developed’ setting. Informed by the visions of the participants and the wider literature, this research contributes to scholarship in gender post-development studies, illustrating the need for a comprehensive, socialistic welfare state, and to methodologically see value in localising development research in a way that accounts for local complexities. In opposition to neoliberal discourse, this thesis calls for the valorisation of care work, to better account for the competing responsibilities of solo mothers and to lessen the precarity they experience in their everyday lives.</p>


2020 ◽  
pp. 144078332092514
Author(s):  
Kevin Dew ◽  
Lucas Armstrong

In this article the concepts of statist medicine and subaltern therapeutics are used to provide insight into the debates over the therapeutic use of marijuana in cases of serious or terminal illness. In 2015 medical marijuana gained public attention in Aotearoa New Zealand as cases of people facing life-threatening conditions who wished to use marijuana for therapeutic purposes were given voice in the popular media. In Aotearoa New Zealand marijuana use is illegal for recreational purposes, but theoretically patients with particular conditions could gain access to medicinal forms of marijuana if health professionals, the Ministry of Health and the relevant government minister approved. This approval process is embedded within statist medicine’s regulatory regimes, where access can be provided on condition that the medication meets standards of safety and efficacy. Patients faced with the difficulty of negotiating the processes of statist medicine to access medical marijuana often reverted to illegal means of accessing the plant. Access to illegal forms of marijuana for medical purposes could be through ‘green fairies’, people who provided the plant for therapeutic purposes in a way that was distant from the criminalised recreational use of the drug obtained through ‘dealers’. The process of the state, patients and marijuana providers negotiating the regulation of therapeutic uses of marijuana provides insights into the role of statist medicine and subaltern therapeutics. The case of medical marijuana alerts us to the possibilities of other subaltern therapeutic practices that operate beyond the gaze of the state.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Boston ◽  
Ben Jeffares ◽  
Juliet Gerrard ◽  
Shane Hendy ◽  
Wendy Larner

What is the state of play for science advice to the government and Parliament? After almost ten years with a prime minister’s chief science advisor, are there lessons to be learnt? How can we continue to ensure that science advice is effective, balanced, transparent and rigorous, while at the same time balancing the need for discretion and confidentiality? In this article, we suggest that the hallmarks of good science – transparency and peer review – can be balanced against the need to provide confidential advice in an Aotearoa New Zealand context. To complement the advice to the prime minister, an expanded role for the Royal Society Te Apärangi would support public and parliamentary understanding of science and science issues relevant to policy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Keddell ◽  
Deb Stanfield ◽  
Ian Hyslop

Welcome to this special issue of Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work. The theme for this edition is Child protection, the family and the state: critical responses in neoliberal times.


Author(s):  
Helen May

The “Century of the Child” was so named in 1900 by the Swedish writer Ellen Key. In its concluding year, this chapter sketches some maps of childhood in “Aotearoa New Zealand” in terms of: changes in how our society has viewed “children before five”; the emergence of institutions outside of the family to care and educate the “before fives”; different constructions of “before five” childhood and child institutions for Maori and Pakeha; the present context of early childhood services sited amidst new economic and political discourses that are transforming the role of the state.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-98
Author(s):  
Mere Skerrett

This article challenges the global coloniality of the doctrine of domination that re-presents itself in Aotearoa/New Zealand as an uneven ‘partnership’ between Māori (the Indigenes) and the colonizer (the British). That domination is maintained through the western positivistic one-size-fits-all ‘global north’ policies and practices in a colonial education system which is hegemonic and racist. The work of Kōhanga Reo (Indigenous language nests) in the early year’s education stream means a continuous flow of productive unsettlement, in order to survive, in order to dismantle the hegemonic structures and in order to transform Indigenous children’s lives. Through the southern lens of a ‘counter-global coloniality’, some of the historical antecedents of the doctrine of ‘civilization’ and philosophical underpinnings of Kōhanga Reo are sketched in terms of their ability to transform pedagogies of oppression and neoliberal futures. It is argued that Indigenous knowledge and languages can mediate the power relations of colonial dominance and Indigenous subordination, because they provide the keys to unlock and liberate the spaces, places and minds of coloniality.


Author(s):  
Hugh Lauder

As the smoke cleared away from the battlefield during the truce of Christmas 1992, a degree of clarity began to emerge about the state of education in New Zealand. After four years of struggle it became apparent that however the outstanding issues were resolved in 1993 there would be legacy of problems, largely but not wholly, associated with those reforms that sought to turn education into a market and knowledge into a commodity. Not all reforms were tarnished by the market brush. Some, like the development of the national curriculum, appeared to be serendipitous, while others like government support for more Kura Kaupapa Schools betokened a degree of tolerance and understanding not, hitherto, associated with recent educational policymaking. Yet others, were clearly glossed by market policies but betokened the deeper trends of post-industrial society - the rise in tertiary enrolments for example. 1993 is, of course, a key year, for an election at least allows the possibility of taking stock of the current direction of educational policy. Equally importantly, it is women's suffrage year and many of the educational problems that now comfront us are ones women, in one way or another will ultimately have to cope with.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document