This article analyses discussions of three levels of violence (intrapersonal, interpersonal online, mass) observed in a three-month analysis of two online forums for Incels (short for Involuntary C...
Many people in prisons in Aotearoa/New Zealand will have nowhere to go on release and few will settle into long-term accommodation. Post-release stable housing has been linked with reduced rates of...
This case study explores competing corporate and Indigenous visions for the future of Ihumatao, one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Valued for centuries by the hau kainga [home people], Ihumatao is also recognised as an exceptionally significant cultural heritage landscape. Here, transnational corporation Fletcher Building Limited acquired contested whenua [land] for a commercial housing development. Its vision of the future met sustained resistance from the Indigenous-led Save Our Unique Landscape (SOUL) campaign, now known as #ProtectIhumatao. This case study weaves the sociological insights of critical futures studies with the ethical-political challenges of decolonising research to explore conflicting future imaginaries at work in this escalating crisis. We critically examine selected campaign, corporate, government and United Nations texts. While the success of Fletcher's plan seemed inevitable, the SOUL campaign earned widespread support enabling the aspirations of the hau kainga to be heard. #ProtectIhumatao challenges our nation's commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, tino rangatiratanga [the exercise of unqualified authority or self-determination] and key international agreements on Indigenous rights. Further action is needed to secure a future for Ihumatao defined and controlled by the hau kainga. Only then will justice be assured.
This article argues that sociological analysis is needed to assess regenerative agriculture, an emerging concept in New Zealand farming and overseas. 'Regen Ag' proposes a paradigm shift in farming...
Energy systems and institutions form a foundational but largely invisible element of modern life. We depend on poles, wires and fuels now more than ever to power our social and economic activities in our post-COVID-19 world. The global climate emergency is largely driven by fossil energy CO2, with a sizeable and growing gap between an imagined clean and just energy future and current practice. Like other countries, Aotearoa/New Zealand has struggled to put in place policy to reduce domestic emissions. While its electricity profile is largely renewable, we argue that this masks the degree to which this is underpinned by a historical state-led energy governance regime, where the current regime is ill equipped to address the persistent challenges of transport electrification and poor building energy performance. In addition, we posit that the energy system has cumulative and distributive impacts that are environmentally, economically and socially significant, and that Aotearoa/New Zealand's energy transition will require new socio-cultural infrastructures in addition to physical ones. Future energy paths are contingent on struggles between established incumbents, their role in shaping narratives of the possible, and the degree to which policy actors are open to new actors and ideas; many paths are possible. Drawing on energy transitions scholarship and four years of research into grassroots energy actors in Aotearoa/New Zealand, we outline three possible energy futures: business as usual; utility-led; and inclusive. We show Aotearoa/New Zealand is likely to follow a utility-led transition and identify the drivers in terms of agency and institutional change that would be necessary to carve out a role for local and community energy within this scenario.
This article explores the attitudes of New Zealanders to the social marketing campaign 'Give nothing to racism'. Thematic analysis was applied to a series of comments posted on the New Zealand Huma...
The idea for this article came to us after the publication of Chris McDowall and Tim Denee's We are here: An atlas of Aotearoa (Massey University Press, 2019). Little did we know that, a few months later, that title would take on a whole other meaning: as we write, WE ARE HERE-due to the COVID-19 pandemic, New Zealand's borders are closed and the nation's links to the world outside are uncertain. Two periods of lockdown (for those who live in Auckland) have prompted further reflection on both who the 'we' are and what is the nature of the 'here'. Taking McDowall and Denee's (2019) atlas as our starting point, we inquire into the 'geographical imagination' that informs their work and set it in the context of other visualisations of the national space found in the work of mid-20th century geographers. We suggest that these imaginative mappings became increasingly anachronistic in the light of in the light of rapid economic, social, and cultural changes in the last quarter of the 20th century. McDowall and Denee's (2019) atlas provides a thought-provoking representation of the national space on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. But that space is both a national one and one that risks confirming the stereotype of New Zealand as being at the ends of the earth. To counter this, we suggest its national geographical imaginations need to be set within the larger frameworks of global cartography and the intellectual problem of 'the nation' itself. The final section of the article juxtaposes We are here with three attempts to provide new maps for an island planet published in the1970s. The intention is not to critique but to jar us all into deeper reflection.
Women academics in New Zealand and Indonesia have different experiences in terms of rank progression due to various structural and cultural factors. Based on in-depth interview results conducted with 30 male and female academics in New Zealand and Indonesia, this article finds differences in gendered promotion in both countries. It similarly reveals differences with regard to the impacts on family life. Male lecturers in both countries typically surpass their female lecturer counterparts in terms of academic promotion. This is especially true for women academics in New Zealand who are both mothers and women of colour. Female academics of colour are therefore confronted with double marginalisation. Despite the New Zealand government's introduction of family-friendly policies, these have failed to provide the equality that these women should unequivocally have in their profession. In contrast to New Zealand, which is often taken to be a paradigmatic example of neoliberalism, this ideology has influenced higher education in a more limited manner in Indonesia, where inequality in academia is not seen as such a concern. The Indonesian tertiary education system has long been regarded as an over-bureaucratised system. It is presently being restructured in an attempt to align more closely to the western international system. Despite these changes, Indonesian women academics in this study still perceived a lecturer position as a family-friendly career option. Comparing Indonesia and New Zealand allows the exploration of academic career advancement from a far broader perspective than is usually the case, given that the majority of academic scholarship focuses on western academic experiences.
In this article we analyse graffiti removal in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, as a practice of caring for the 'good' city in ethical terms. Drawing on ethnographic methods, we use an example from a suburb in the southern part of Auckland to contextualise graffiti removal within both ongoing neoliberal governance and community responsibilisation, and thus link this practice to current city politics. We point to the ambiguities of removing graffiti, which necessarily excludes non-conformist expressions from the urban landscape. Further, we argue that removing graffiti contributes to the reduction of urban diversity, ultimately fostering hegemonic power relations by reproducing and normalising middle-class aesthetics.
During its three terms in office, the National-led government (2008-2017) introduced a number of family income support policies which served to further embed the radical paradigm shift that had occurred under the National governments when in power from 1990 to 1999. This earlier comprehensive retrenchment programme by National transformed the welfare state from one based on the notion that the state would provide for people in need, to a residual welfare state in which people were supposed to seek support from the state only as a last resort. Family income policy was targeted to a narrower group of recipients, the conditions for benefit eligibility were tightened, benefit payments reduced and a discourse of welfare dependency that stigmatised benefit recipients was promoted. From 2008, this article argues National's measures were merely incremental adjustments to its previous policy direction and which served to further embed the paradigm shift it had introduced in the 1990s. The Labour-led government elected in 2017, despite suggesting it would make radical changes, has made little significant effort to reverse this policy direction. It would appear that National's social policy legacy from the 1990s has become so well-entrenched, that it is difficult for the Labour Party to challenge the targeted, stigmatising approach that characterises family incomes policy.
This article uses a three-part analytic framework to examine the legacy of the National-led government's social housing reforms between 2008 and 2017. Firstly, the provenance of the reforms is examined to question the extent to which the reforms constituted 'new' policy developments. Secondly, the reforms are considered in relation to contemporary debates about marketisation and housing financialisation. The article contends that the reforms are in line with international marketisation trends and have also furthered the financialisation of New Zealand's housing system. Thirdly, the article assesses the legacy of National's social housing reforms by considering how well the government met its own goals in this area and by considering how little the Labour-led government has changed since coming to power in 2017. The article concludes that the reforms were somewhat innovative but were underpinned by a continuation of ideas and interests that emerged under previous National-led governments in the 1990s.
A 'payment for outcomes' model became increasingly popular across the nine years the New Zealand National-led government (2008-2017) was in power. This article examines how this model shaped the development of the Youth Service and two social bond trials, assessing whether it improved 1) innovation amongst social service providers and 2) outcomes for citizens. It argues that the level of innovation evident in both initiatives was more limited than promised, although some improvements in outcomes resulted from the Youth Service and a social bond trial aiming to reduce youth reoffending. It questions whether the payment for outcomes model is worth the associated increase in compliance and financial costs, given difficulties determining whether good outcomes result from the funding model or other factors. Yet, the Labour-led government elected in 2017 did not abandon these initiatives or outcomes-focused contracting more generally, suggesting this funding model is part of National's social policy legacy.
Review(s) of: Biological economies: Experimentation and the politics of agri-food frontiers, by Le Heron, R., Campbell, H., Lewis, N. and Carolan, M. (Eds.) (2016), London, United Kingdom, Routledge, 274 pages, ISBN 9781138588936; The new biological economy: How New Zealanders are creating value from the land, by Pawson, P. and Biological Economies Team.1 (2018), Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland University Press, 304 pages, ISBN 9781869408886.
This article examines policy responses to the issue of pay equity and equal pay spanning the period of the National-led government in New Zealand (2008-2017). This is a period during which Prime Minister John Key stated in the media that equal pay and pay equity was not affordable and, therefore, not a priority. This article critically analyses employment policy developments in relation to women within the context of the espoused neoliberal value of non-intervention in the employment relationship. We argue that, overall, improvements in pay equity, equal pay and gender equality at work stalled under the National-led government. Further, we argue that under a neoliberal rhetoric of a flexible and free labour market, equal pay and pay equity is something to be controlled and explicitly dealt with only when either politically expedient or financially affordable.
Between 2008 and 2017, 'social investment' emerged as the National-led government's 'big idea' in social policy formation. Through a social investment approach, the government sought to harness new technologies in data collection and analytics in order to identify effective solutions to complex social issues while at the same time reducing the future fiscal liability of the state. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders engaged in the social services system in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this article first analyses how the National-led government's social investment differed from past iterations and, second, discusses how social investment has impacted community and voluntary sector organisations involved in the provision of social services. It finds that the process of operationalising social investment ideas exacerbated existing tensions between government funders and community providers of social services and had detrimental impacts on their ability to meet the needs of their clients. Since a new Labour-led government formed in 2017, the focus on social investment has diminished and a new focus on 'social wellbeing' has emerged in its place. However, this article concludes that the change in nomenclature masks the fact that many of the core elements underpinning social investment are likely to be incorporated in new wellbeing initiatives. As such, social investment thinking will remain an influential factor in relation to the social services system in Aotearoa/New Zealand for some time to come.
In 2008, a National-led government swept into power. Over the next nine years it made significant change in many areas of social policy. In particular, there were significant, cumulative reforms of education (2008-2013), welfare (2010-2013), social housing (2011-2015) and child protection (2013-2017). Policy innovations also emerged from National's supply and confidence agreements with the ACT Party (Partnership Schools from 2013) and the Maori Party (Whanau Ora strategy from 2010). At the same time, there were many social policy areas (poverty, gender equality, precarious work, crime reduction, pay equity, accident and workplace compensation) where the National-led government did little or nothing to change the status quo. This themed issue explores these areas of innovation and stagnation, asking the question: what is National's social policy legacy after almost a decade in power? This article provides a theoretical background to the issue by highlighting the key political science and welfare state literature arguments as to why policy changes - or not.
This article considers the welfare policy of New Zealand's National-led government (2008-2017) within the context of international welfare conditionality. I propose that reforms undertaken during the National-led government's nine years in office align with a recent 'conditionality turn' that has taken place in high-income Anglophone countries. The article situates National's welfare reforms within similar changes undertaken by governments in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada and Ireland. As in New Zealand, welfare reform in these countries has emphasised behavioural conditionality targeting lone mothers, the sick and young people. Considering the reforms within the context of international welfare conditionality emphasises the endurance of ideas underpinning the reforms. The article argues that welfare conditionality has become embedded in the New Zealand welfare system and is shaping the policy of the Labour-led government elected in 2007.
Whanau Ora, a social policy initiative designed to build the capacity and capability of Maori families, has been variously described as: a 'revolutionary public-sector initiative', an 'Indigenous policy success story' and as having the transformative power to improve health and social outcomes for Maori. Since its launch in April 2010, Whanau Ora has positively impacted the lives of many of our nation's most vulnerable Maori families. Through a kaupapa Maori lens, this article provides a brief overview of the initiative, the key goals of Whanau Ora and the mechanisms by which these goals were to be attained. It is argued that it reflects a 'paradigm shift' by fundamentally reorienting government thinking about how to improve Maori outcomes through policy. The article examines the success of Whanau Ora by highlighting a number of innovative aspects the National-led government introduced which contributed towards the success of the initiative through the period 2008-2017, as well as areas of tension. The article then turns to explore the likelihood of the Whanau Ora initiative continuing in the future, building on its early success embedding its innovative, empowering and sustainable social policy approach to working with Maori whanau, hapu, Iwi and communities.
