A Sociology of Maori Education - Beyond Mediating Structures

<p>The history of the relationship between Maori (the indigenous minority) and Pakeha (the dominant majority) is one that is encapsulated in processes of mediation. Pakeha resolve issues that favour kawanatanga solutions (article 1 of the Treaty) while Maori recommendations almost always line up with solutions that uphold questions to do with tino rangatiratanga (article 2 of the Treaty). Each takes into account forms of accommodation of the other but these compromise positions are usually the tasks for the public servants who are by definition, working for the government of the day, and therefore, on the side of kawanatanga. The point of articulation is critical in the nature of the relationship between Maori and Pakeha. The legal academic, Alex Frame (2002) describes this position as important for those New Zealanders "who have tried to walk in both worlds, thereby not only honouring and strengthening their own and each other's cultures, but also bringing to life a third and co-existing culture of interaction in Aotearoa". A study of a variety of mediating structures, explores the relationship between Maori and Pakeha and analyses the effects these have on both parties, especially as these pertain to developments in Maori education. An approach to settling the conundrum of prioritising one agenda without creating new grievances for redress is argued throughout the study. It is argued, further, that a major re-think is needed of what an education will mean in order to meet the requirements of a contemporary Polynesian/Western society that both honours the tenets of its foundation document as well as providing a rational basis for meeting commitments in the modern global society.</p>

A Sociology of Maori Education - Beyond Mediating Structures

<p>The history of the relationship between Maori (the indigenous minority) and Pakeha (the dominant majority) is one that is encapsulated in processes of mediation. Pakeha resolve issues that favour kawanatanga solutions (article 1 of the Treaty) while Maori recommendations almost always line up with solutions that uphold questions to do with tino rangatiratanga (article 2 of the Treaty). Each takes into account forms of accommodation of the other but these compromise positions are usually the tasks for the public servants who are by definition, working for the government of the day, and therefore, on the side of kawanatanga. The point of articulation is critical in the nature of the relationship between Maori and Pakeha. The legal academic, Alex Frame (2002) describes this position as important for those New Zealanders "who have tried to walk in both worlds, thereby not only honouring and strengthening their own and each other's cultures, but also bringing to life a third and co-existing culture of interaction in Aotearoa". A study of a variety of mediating structures, explores the relationship between Maori and Pakeha and analyses the effects these have on both parties, especially as these pertain to developments in Maori education. An approach to settling the conundrum of prioritising one agenda without creating new grievances for redress is argued throughout the study. It is argued, further, that a major re-think is needed of what an education will mean in order to meet the requirements of a contemporary Polynesian/Western society that both honours the tenets of its foundation document as well as providing a rational basis for meeting commitments in the modern global society.</p>

ON INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS IN THE PROCESS OF MEDIATION

This essay starts with the observation that the practice of mediation in cultural institutions can become outmoded and -detached from its institutional context -an empty gesture. The process of mediation itself -so the assumption -must be mediated if it is to have any effect. I am interested in sketching an analytical design that can be used to study the mediating structures of mediation. Mediating structures are defined as institutionalorder. Its guiding idea and criteria of rationality, together with social, cultural or political expectations, shape the conditions under which the mediation practice of cultural institutions develops. Historical Institutionalism serves as a theoretical framework. Central concepts will be explained looking at the successful establishment of libraries at Danish hospitals around 1930 and at their abrupt closure, which started around 1985. The essay refers to a methodological point of view, which says that the content of a concept is developed and specified by its use.

Hegel and the Politics of Tragedy, Comedy and Terror

Greek tragedy, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, represents the performative realization of binary political difference, for example, “private versus public,” “man versus woman” or “nation versus state.” On the other hand, Roman comedy and French Revolutionary Terror, in Hegel, can be taken as radical expressions of political in-difference, defined as a state where all mediating structures of association and governance have collapsed into a world of “bread and circuses.” In examining the dialectical interplay between binary, tragic difference and comedic, terrible in-difference, the paper arrives at hypothetical conclusions regarding how these political forms may be observed today.

Mediating Structures: Their Organization in Civil Society

This paper explores a counter-weight to anti-democratic trends suggested by civil society theory: mediating structures (also known as ‘intermediate’ or ‘intermediary’ organizations). We look briefly at the range of ways in which the concept has been used in social science and then focus on literature which employs the concept specifically in the context of debates about sustainable democracy We discern from the theoretical literature four distinct functions said to be performed in democracies by mediating structures and we offer case examples of organizations which perform those functions in the contemporary real world. We conclude by providing pointers to how mediating structures might be identified, supported and sustained in the face of anti-democratic trends today.

Manifesting Spirits: Paranormal Investigation and the Narrative Development of a Haunting

Using a paranormal investigation of a reportedly haunted hotel as a model, I propose a five-phase narrative development process that integrates media representations of ghosts, place-based tales of hauntings, and accounts that emerge through processes of interactive interpretation. By attending to both preexisting and emergent supernatural stories, the model illustrates how idiocultures function as mediating structures between established narratives and accounts that result from shared experiences. The narrative account of a haunting is thus a product of interpretive processes in which established ghost stories serve as resources for the collective co-construction of an account that both resonates with external expectations and supports idiocultural authority structures. Ultimately, idiocultural factors have greater influence upon the final narrative than folklore, media, or place-based supernatural tales.