No‐man's Land: Adoption Storied Through the Aotearoa/New Zealand Adoption Act 1955

The Aotearoa/New Zealand Adoption Act 1955 legislated and governed adoption practices from 1955 to 1985. Through an exploration of the historical, cultural and social assumptions underlying the Adoption Act 1955, this article questions how the social power relations complicit with adoption legislation and policy produce and reproduce subject positions for adoptees. In‐depth narrative interviews were conducted with 12 adoptees from throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand. The researchers found the legal constitution of adoptees produces them as legitimate; however, they remain ‘other’ through dominant discourses of heteronormative blood kinship that reiterates their illegitimacy. The legal fiction of their legitimacy as if born to failed to secure them space within normative narratives of kinship and compromised adoptees' ability to take up responsibility as neoliberal citizens. Current New Zealand debate on adoption fails to take account of the experience of adoptees, focusing instead on the rights of married couples, including same‐sex couples, to continue practices of adoption. Our analysis informs the critical importance of listening to how adoptees experience repeated exclusions and enduring loss represented by the metaphor of no‐man's land. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Politics of Teaching of Indigenous Traditions in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Reflecting on two study abroad trips to New Zealand in 2005 and 2007, I suggest in this essay that it is possible to mitigate the risk of (American or European) students recapitulating imperial attitudes through development of a rigorous curriculum focusing on the legacies of colonialism, institutional racism, and the somewhat dubious phenomenon of “post‐colonialism.” Readings, I argue, should be in continual play during cultural and social activities, operating in a dialectal move toward an “ethics of respect.” Such an ethics remains aporetic, or uncertain, insofar as no code of behavior can render us immune to the political and polemical effects of past and present forms of imperialism. However, a cultivated respect for distance and difference, including regarding questions of “authenticity,” can help to actualize the transformative promise of studying (indigenous) religion abroad. This essay is published alongside of six other essays, including a response from John Barbour, comprising a special section of the journal (see Teaching Theology and Religion 18:1, January 2015).     

Social identity and the perception of history: cultural representations of Aotearoa/New Zealand

The context of intergroup relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand was investigated using perceptions of history by Maori (Polynesian‐descended) and Pakeha (European‐descended) samples from university and the general public. There was strong consensus that the Treaty of Waitangi was the most important event in New Zealand's history, but only Maori, the subordinate ethnic group, showed in‐group favouritism in their judgments regarding the Treaty. Pakeha, the dominant group, showed outgroup favouritism, and distanced themselves from past injustices using linguistic strategies. Maori students showed interest in their ethnic origins (ontogeny), rating the distant past and Polynesian history higher, and free‐recalling more events prior to European arrival than other groups; Maori in the general population shared a more similar perception of history to Pakeha. Both in‐group favouritism and ontogeny were found in sentence‐completion choices. Historical perceptions were strongly related to positions on current political issues. Results are related to social identity theory, social representations theory, and social dominance theory. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sites of excess: The spatial politics of touch for drag queens in Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper explores the role of touch for drag queens. I examine the ways in which touch – being touched, touching others, and feelings associated with touch – is an important component of sexualised subjectivities and places. The first part of the paper reviews the recent literature called ‘haptic geographies’. I highlight why sexualised touch has, for the most part, been absent from this literature before bringing together the limited references made to touch, feelings, sexuality and place. In the second part of the paper I draw on various media, my involvement as a member of the queer community group Hamilton Pride Incorporated and in-depth interviews to examine the role of touch and feelings associated with touch for drag queens in Aotearoa New Zealand. I pay attention to the complex politics and performances of drag queens in order to highlight the co-construction of haptic geographies and sexualised subjectivities. I argue that drag queens’ bodies and spaces may be understood as sites of excess where the pleasures and pains of touch may form and break bodily and spatial boundaries associated with hetero/homo and masculine/feminine subjectivities. A focus on drag queens and touch queers our understandings of embodiment and haptic geographies further.     

Accounting for Racism Against Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand: A Discourse Analytic Study of the Views of Maori Adults

Previous discursive studies on the construction, reproduction and justification of racism have focussed on the accounts of perpetrators to the exclusion of the targets of racist talk. The current study redresses this imbalance by exploring the talk of targets of racism in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. Interviews were conducted with 24 participants, 19 Māori and five Pākehā partners. Our social constructionist discourse analysis identifies four primary discourses that participants drew on to account for racism, two of which resonated strongly with the literature and two which spotlighted new areas of interest. A discourse of ignorance functioned to allow participants to account for racism by highlighting Pākehā ignorance of Māori people and culture, and of racism itself. The second discourse implicated the media for emphasising negative Māori news, avoiding positive Māori achievements and promoting negative stereotypes. A third discourse constructed Pākehā as possessing an innate sense of superiority which contributed to racism, and fourthly, institutionalised racism was used by participants to construct a colonial society which continued to marginalise Māori. Finally we consider the implications of these findings with respect to existing literature, some implications around the intersectionality and relationship between these discourses, and the importance of potential gains in understanding made possible through the study of targets' perspectives. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Good of Friendship at the End of Life

Abstract

This article attempts to explain the value that we assign to the presence of friends at the time when life is ending. It first shows that Aristotle’s treatment of friendship does not provide a clear account of such value. It then uses J. L. Austin’s notion of performativity to supplement one recent theory of friendship – given by Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett – in such a way that that theory can then account for friendship’s special value at our time of death.     

Suicidal Behavior in a Bicultural Society: A Review of Gender and Cultural Differences in Adolescents and Young Persons of Aotearoa/New Zealand

During the 1990s, Aotearoa/New Zealand has experienced an alarming increase in youth suicide in the Maori and non-Maori populations. Among 23 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries surveyed by the World Health Organization's (1995) World Health Statistics Annual, New Zealand ranks first for fatal suicidal behavior, in males 15–24 years of age, and third for fatal suicidal behavior in females. A United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF, 1996) survey of 32 countries places New Zealand males as third highest for fatal suicidal behavior, and females as eighth highest in the age group 15–24 years. New Zealand has recently undergone a number of social and economic changes that have created dramatic social and cultural shifts. Given the rapidity of these changes, the shock on such a small country has been difficult to absorb. These shifts have placed tremendous pressures on families and service support systems, such as health and mental health services, to develop programs that are relevant and acceptable for a bicultural society. This article focuses on these changes and the effect they have had on cultural narratives of gender and suicidal behavior, the different cultural etiologies that underlie these statistics, and recommendations for intervention and prevention program development.     

“长白云国度”海外传教运动视野下的对华传教——新西兰赴华传教士(1877-1952)

新西兰对华传教史至今尚被忽略,本文尝试在国际差传体系的大视野下检视新西兰赴华传教的个案,先就人数、差会、性别比例、阶段性发展等因素作通史性勾勒,再以"英属殖民地差传国"、"小型次传教国"和"对华传教对新西兰本土的反向影响"为理论进路挖掘一些易为"外史型"学者所忽略的问题。在海内外中国教会史研究日臻细化的趋势下,新西兰兼具"中心"与"边缘"、"接收"与"差派"的双重属性,加上国土之"小"、人口之"少"、教会史之"短"、宗派之"简"等特点,皆增添了这一课题所潜藏的学术价值。     

The Value of Choice and the Choice to Value: Expanding the Discussion about Fetal Life within Prochoice Advocacy

In this essay, I provide evidence that a new generation of prochoice advocates wishes to move away from defending abortion rights via the view that fetal life has little or no value (for example, as Mary Anne Warren does in her “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”) and toward a more complex view of abortion rights. This newer view simultaneously grants that fetuses are more than simply “clumps of cells,” that they are, to some extent, entities that possess some degree of value, and also that women still have the right to decide whether they wish to continue a pregnancy (for example, as can be found in the writings of Rosalind Hursthouse, Judith Jarvis Thomson, and Margaret Olivia Little). Prima facie, this may sound like an impossible task—an instance of “having your cake and eating it too”—but I will show throughout my paper that, and how, such a task can indeed be accomplished.     

Effects of the COACH APPROACH intervention on drop-out rates among adults initiating exercise programs at nine YMCAs over three years

Physical inactivity is a health problem that has not been largely affected by mass communications. An interpersonal counseling intervention, THE COACH APPROACH, was tested with 2380 adults (overall M age = 40.9 yr., SD = 10.8) initiating exercise programs in 2003, 2004, and 2005, January through March, at nine YMCA facilities in the Atlanta, GA area. Contrasts of comparison (2002) and treatment condition cohorts suggested that the protocol, based on tenets of social cognitive and self-efficacy theories, resulted in significant reductions in exercise program drop out over 6 months. Changes in dropout were not significantly correlated to participants' income, percentage of full-time exercise counselors administering the intervention, or proportion of female counselors. Although the field design did not permit randomization of participants, results of conservative statistical testing suggested that THE COACH APPROACH may be effective for settings which allow for large scale dissemination of the intervention.     

新中国伦理学六十年学术进路

新中国伦理学60年的发展可谓是"一波三折",学术之路艰难曲折.新中国伦理学既有在建国初期"左"的思想影响下被剔除出人文社会科学行列不被认可的苦痛,也有随着改革开放的进程逐步繁荣并日趋成为"显学"的辉煌.60年来,新中国伦理学经历了萌芽期、形成期和发展期.尤其是改革开放30年来,理论成就与时代发展同步.实践价值在经济社会发展进程中正全方位凸显.但是学科发展中的"瓶颈"和"软肋"依然存在,需要引起学界的关注.     

Hedonic Evaluation over Short and Long Retention Intervals: The Mechanism of the Peak–End Rule

The peak–end rule is used to explain how people make retrospective hedonic evaluations. This study advances our understanding of its mechanism by identifying the different effects of the rule on such evaluations over short and long retention intervals. The results of two experiments show that (i) respondents constructed their retrospective hedonic evaluations on the basis of the peak and end affects only over a short retention interval, not over a long one; and (ii) respondents relied on episodic information to construct their evaluations over a short retention interval, whereas they relied on both semantic and episodic information to construct their evaluations over a long retention interval. Our study also suggests that the “watershed” between short and long retention intervals is likely to lie between 3 and 7 weeks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Infirmity Debate: On the Viability of New Age Spiritualities of Life

The ‘infirmity debate’ is becoming increasingly lively. On the one hand, scholars argue that New Age spiritualities of life are in a ‘poor’ condition; on the other hand, scholars argue that they are in a good state of ‘health’. Drawing on key publications, including articles from the Journal of Contemporary Religion, the argument is couched in terms of ‘the turn to the self’—more specifically ‘the massive subjective turn of modern culture’. How do New Age spiritualities of life fare in the context of this development? Concentrating on activities found in the holistic milieu which is to be found in many countries today, the argument is that activities like yoga or spiritual aromatherapy serve as ‘intermediary institutions’, successfully negotiating a path between antinomian freedom and social conformism.     

Parent involvement in beginning primary school: Correlates and changes in involvement across the first two years of school in a New Zealand sample

This study described the relations of parents' and teachers' beliefs and attitudes to forms of parents' involvement in children's first two years of primary school. Parents of children in their first year of primary school (age 5) were recruited from 12 classrooms within four schools in New Zealand; 196 families participated in their child's first year, and 124 families continued to participate in their child's second school year. Parents completed the Family-Involvement Questionnaire, New Zealand, and we archivally collected parent-documented children's oral reading homework. Teachers' rated helpfulness of parents' involvement at school (level 2) and parents' rated teacher invitations to be involved and their perceived time and energy (level 1) contributed to school-based involvement in Year 1 in multilevel models, with parents' rated teacher invitations for involvement also found to predict Year 1 home-school communication in regression analyses. Contributors to Year 1 child-parent reading in multilevel models included level 1 predictors of two or more adults in the home and parents' perceived time and energy. Longitudinal analyses suggested both consistency and change in each form of involvement from Year 1 to Year 2, with increases in each form of involvement found to be associated with increases in parents' and/or teachers' views about involvement in Year 2 in cross-sectional time-series analyses. Implications for schools wanting to engage families are that parents' involvement in children's schooling may be influenced by parents' perceptions of their capacity, teachers' engagement efforts, and the school's climate for involvement. This is a special issue paper “Family Engagement in Education and Intervention”.     

The mixed blessings of migration: Life satisfaction and self‐esteem over the course of migration

We investigated the psychological adaptation of Ingrian–Finnish migrants from Russia to Finland between 2008 and 2013. Pre‐migration data (N = 225) were collected at the Finnish language courses that were part of the immigration training program. The three post‐migration follow‐ups were conducted half a year (N = 155), and 2 (N = 133) and 3 years (N = 85) after migration. Well‐being was assessed with measures of Life Satisfaction and Self‐Esteem. Life Satisfaction increased from pre‐migration to the first post‐migration measurement point, after which it stabilized. Self‐Esteem decreased throughout the study. Variables reflecting adjustment to the event of migration (e.g., acculturation stress, socio‐cultural adaptation) were primarily associated with well‐being at the first post‐migration measurement point. More general determinants of well‐being (e.g., social support and subjective economic situation) were more consistently associated with well‐being throughout the study. The results suggest that migration can be beneficial to some but detrimental to other types of well‐being.     

The Role of the Dominant Social Paradigm in the Quality of Life/Environmental Interface

In this examination of the relationship between quality of life and the environment, it is argued that a broad framework within which the relationship can be established is required. The framework used is that of the dominant social paradigm (Pirages & Ehrlich, 1974) that contains political, economic, and technological institutions. It is these institutions that determine both the quality of life and environmental constructs within any society. The paper integrates these three areas in a single model that hypothesizes a particular relationship between the dominant social paradigm, the environment, and quality of life.