title: Ko wai tō ingoa? The transformative potential of Māori names

authors: Seed-Pihama, Joeliee Elizabeth

subjects: Māori names

abstract: Ingoa tangata (personal names) are an expression of te reo Māori, Māori identity, and tino rangatiratanga (self-determination). Nevertheless, our names are still mispronounced, marginalised and demeaned by individuals and institutions, such as schools, the health system, politics and media. This thesis argues that the gift of a Māori name and the assertion of that name over one’s lifetime is simultaneously a political act of resistance and an act of normalisation – an act of just being Māori. In particular, the thesis reveals how whānau naming practices endure and are important for whānau identity and belonging.

A Kaupapa Māori theoretical approach is used to highlight the mana of our ingoa tangata within te ao Māori (the Māori world). I analyse the experiences of six generations of one whānau and the ways in which they have resisted, reclaimed and regenerated our ingoa tangata and associated practices. Kaupapa Māori theory provides a much-needed theoretical framework that privileges te reo Māori and mātauranga Māori throughout this research. This theory also supports Māori researchers to critique and disrupt Western power dynamics within research as well as maintaining the political imperative of decolonisation and resurgence agendas within the research of Indigenous communities.

This thesis foregrounds Pūrākau as a research method to tell the kōrero ingoa (naming stories) of six generations of one whānau, totalling twenty-six different stories. I explore the possibilities of pūrākau as a method and ako (to teach/ learn) as a powerful component in the building and sharing of stories, as writing tools for the (re)presentation of that material and in expressing the researcher’s positionality. Pūrākau as method also enables the utilisation of our cosmogonies as important sources of mātauranga Māori and therefore as crucial to an analysis of our naming motivations and notions of belonging. Furthermore, I critically analyse the disruptions and interruptions to ingoa tangata caused by institutions of colonialism such as religion, law and education. This research argues for the transformative potential of our ingoa tangata and their associated kōrero ingoa in terms of enhancing identity, embedding whakapapa kōrero and keeping Māori values alive within whānau, and beyond.

text: Ko wai tō ingoa? The transformative potential of Māori names Ingoa tangata (personal names) are an expression of te reo Māori, Māori identity, and tino rangatiratanga (self-determination). Nevertheless, our names are still mispronounced, marginalised and demeaned by individuals and institutions, such as schools, the health system, politics and media. This thesis argues that the gift of a Māori name and the assertion of that name over one’s lifetime is simultaneously a political act of resistance and an act of normalisation – an act of just being Māori. In particular, the thesis reveals how whānau naming practices endure and are important for whānau identity and belonging.

A Kaupapa Māori theoretical approach is used to highlight the mana of our ingoa tangata within te ao Māori (the Māori world). I analyse the experiences of six generations of one whānau and the ways in which they have resisted, reclaimed and regenerated our ingoa tangata and associated practices. Kaupapa Māori theory provides a much-needed theoretical framework that privileges te reo Māori and mātauranga Māori throughout this research. This theory also supports Māori researchers to critique and disrupt Western power dynamics within research as well as maintaining the political imperative of decolonisation and resurgence agendas within the research of Indigenous communities.

This thesis foregrounds Pūrākau as a research method to tell the kōrero ingoa (naming stories) of six generations of one whānau, totalling twenty-six different stories. I explore the possibilities of pūrākau as a method and ako (to teach/ learn) as a powerful component in the building and sharing of stories, as writing tools for the (re)presentation of that material and in expressing the researcher’s positionality. Pūrākau as method also enables the utilisation of our cosmogonies as important sources of mātauranga Māori and therefore as crucial to an analysis of our naming motivations and notions of belonging. Furthermore, I critically analyse the disruptions and interruptions to ingoa tangata caused by institutions of colonialism such as religion, law and education. This research argues for the transformative potential of our ingoa tangata and their associated kōrero ingoa in terms of enhancing identity, embedding whakapapa kōrero and keeping Māori values alive within whānau, and beyond.

year: 2017

title: Stigmatising gang narratives, housing, and the social policing of Māori women

authors: Lewis, Cassandra Louise Terauhina

subjects: Gang narratives

abstract: It is well established that negative stigmas are used to dehumanise and to limit, restrict, and deny assistance to poor and racially marginalised populations, especially single mothers. While scholars have examined racial social control with regard to gangs, how the stigma of gang affiliation influences access to quality housing has been scantly examined in New Zealand. Employing discourse analysis to examine parliamentary speeches regarding the Organised Crime Bill and Residential Tenancy Amendment Bill (2009–2018), this project explores how gangs are framed in housing-related political discourse. Findings reveal that language used by policymakers constructs gangs as being associated largely with Māori through three main tactics: referencing ‘ethnic’ gangs as the only entity/focus of organised crime; omitting Pākehā/White gangs and white-collar crime; and identifying areas/towns with high Māori populations as in need of targeted social control. Such framing strategies fashioned a criminalising narrative around Māori as gang members and as inherently violent that permeates housing-related political rhetoric used to frame ‘bad’ or ‘undesirable’ tenants enabling policymakers to stigmatise Māori as the ‘criminal other’. This motif carries severe implications with regard to life chances of Māori women, especially as it relates to housing screening practices and the ability to secure social housing.

text: Stigmatising gang narratives, housing, and the social policing of Māori women It is well established that negative stigmas are used to dehumanise and to limit, restrict, and deny assistance to poor and racially marginalised populations, especially single mothers. While scholars have examined racial social control with regard to gangs, how the stigma of gang affiliation influences access to quality housing has been scantly examined in New Zealand. Employing discourse analysis to examine parliamentary speeches regarding the Organised Crime Bill and Residential Tenancy Amendment Bill (2009–2018), this project explores how gangs are framed in housing-related political discourse. Findings reveal that language used by policymakers constructs gangs as being associated largely with Māori through three main tactics: referencing ‘ethnic’ gangs as the only entity/focus of organised crime; omitting Pākehā/White gangs and white-collar crime; and identifying areas/towns with high Māori populations as in need of targeted social control. Such framing strategies fashioned a criminalising narrative around Māori as gang members and as inherently violent that permeates housing-related political rhetoric used to frame ‘bad’ or ‘undesirable’ tenants enabling policymakers to stigmatise Māori as the ‘criminal other’. This motif carries severe implications with regard to life chances of Māori women, especially as it relates to housing screening practices and the ability to secure social housing.

year: 2020

title: Rethinking hegemony as an educative-formative problem: Gramsci, post-Marxism, and radical democracy revisited

authors: Hill, Debbie J.

abstract: There has been a move in recent times to utilize Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony as a central feature of a revisionist movement known as 'post-Marxism'. Post-Marxism employs hegemony in support of its thesis of the impossibility of a homogeneous social order. It does this by interpreting the concept as one that encourages society to be viewed as a horizontal space within which is constituted a 'suturing' of various groupings connected agonistically though a shared allegiance to what post-Marxists now call the 'radical' principles of democracy. By their own assessment, the Gramscian concept has thus become fundamental to the theoretical dismissal of the historical aspirations of socialism, prompted no less by their anti-democratic interpretation of Marxist theory with its alleged modernist,essentialist focus. 
This thesis has been written in opposition to this displacement of hegemony from the historical materialist foundations that underpin Gramsci's own distinctive usage of the concept. My opposition centres particularly on the post-Marxist renunciation of the philosophical assumptions upon which socialism is founded, and upon the inevitable loss of the distinctive nuances of hegemony as a concept centring on the problem of the pathological reach of a capitalist epistemology and ontology upon human identity. As I argue within this thesis, it is precisely the impress of capitalism's economic and extra-economic aspect upon humanity's own cognitive and moral capacity - upon its relational and valuational capability – which Gramsci's writings attempted to articulate. In this respect, Gramsci differentiated himself in Marxist circles by the depth of his insights into Marx's historical materialist method and the practical reasoning ('praxis') that this methodology simultaneously engendered. Explaining this method, and the problem of education that this perspective further implies, is therefore the aim of this thesis. As I argue here, his entire written legacy reflects his historical materialist allegiance: the problem of 'education' as no less than the educative-formative problem of practical reasoning. 
In defending Gramsci's own historicist, dialectical and organic worldview, I argue here that the fullest extent of capitalism's sway, and its permeation into every aspect of cultural and social practice, remains seriously under-theorized within post-Marxist discourse: that, rather ironically, the very associational preferences sanctioned by post-Marxist adherents lend further weight to the merits of Gramsci's assessment of the normative power of existing forms of thought to distort mankind's own socio-human potential. As I endeavour to illustrate within this study, Gramsci conceived the problem of 'democracy' as essentially one of overcoming the cognitive and moral submissiveness that pervades our 'normal', everyday worldview. Insofar as this worldview is embedded into the deepest recesses of our language and psychology, Gramsci's historiographical method - that of mapping these multiple aspects of capitalist dominance and social containment and modelling the value of criticality in relation to one's historical and social insights - should be viewed simultaneously as his practice of a new, democratic politics. The work presented here is therefore a study that re-examines and re-clarifies the concept of hegemony in relation to this goal.

text: Rethinking hegemony as an educative-formative problem: Gramsci, post-Marxism, and radical democracy revisited There has been a move in recent times to utilize Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony as a central feature of a revisionist movement known as 'post-Marxism'. Post-Marxism employs hegemony in support of its thesis of the impossibility of a homogeneous social order. It does this by interpreting the concept as one that encourages society to be viewed as a horizontal space within which is constituted a 'suturing' of various groupings connected agonistically though a shared allegiance to what post-Marxists now call the 'radical' principles of democracy. By their own assessment, the Gramscian concept has thus become fundamental to the theoretical dismissal of the historical aspirations of socialism, prompted no less by their anti-democratic interpretation of Marxist theory with its alleged modernist,essentialist focus. 
This thesis has been written in opposition to this displacement of hegemony from the historical materialist foundations that underpin Gramsci's own distinctive usage of the concept. My opposition centres particularly on the post-Marxist renunciation of the philosophical assumptions upon which socialism is founded, and upon the inevitable loss of the distinctive nuances of hegemony as a concept centring on the problem of the pathological reach of a capitalist epistemology and ontology upon human identity. As I argue within this thesis, it is precisely the impress of capitalism's economic and extra-economic aspect upon humanity's own cognitive and moral capacity - upon its relational and valuational capability – which Gramsci's writings attempted to articulate. In this respect, Gramsci differentiated himself in Marxist circles by the depth of his insights into Marx's historical materialist method and the practical reasoning ('praxis') that this methodology simultaneously engendered. Explaining this method, and the problem of education that this perspective further implies, is therefore the aim of this thesis. As I argue here, his entire written legacy reflects his historical materialist allegiance: the problem of 'education' as no less than the educative-formative problem of practical reasoning. 
In defending Gramsci's own historicist, dialectical and organic worldview, I argue here that the fullest extent of capitalism's sway, and its permeation into every aspect of cultural and social practice, remains seriously under-theorized within post-Marxist discourse: that, rather ironically, the very associational preferences sanctioned by post-Marxist adherents lend further weight to the merits of Gramsci's assessment of the normative power of existing forms of thought to distort mankind's own socio-human potential. As I endeavour to illustrate within this study, Gramsci conceived the problem of 'democracy' as essentially one of overcoming the cognitive and moral submissiveness that pervades our 'normal', everyday worldview. Insofar as this worldview is embedded into the deepest recesses of our language and psychology, Gramsci's historiographical method - that of mapping these multiple aspects of capitalist dominance and social containment and modelling the value of criticality in relation to one's historical and social insights - should be viewed simultaneously as his practice of a new, democratic politics. The work presented here is therefore a study that re-examines and re-clarifies the concept of hegemony in relation to this goal.

year: 2004