title: Historicising Gerd Koch's Ethnographic Films on Tuvalu

authors: Goldsmith, Michael

subjects: Gerd Koch

abstract: Gerd Koch is probably best known for his studies of Tuvalu in the early 1960s, when it was still part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. In the process of recording aspects of material and expressive culture on Niutao, one of the northernmost islands, he shot a series of black-and-white silent films. Fifteen of these films were archived at IWF Wissen und Medien in G ttingen, Germany, formerly the Institut f r den Wissenschaftlichen Film, as part of an encyclopaedic project reflecting mid-20th-century scientific and philosophical assumptions. What do these films tell us about Tuvalu and the histories of anthropology and ethnographic film-making in the Pacific? This paper proposes some answers by focusing on two films featuring styles of combat that are both called 'failima' yet are clearly different from each other.

text: Historicising Gerd Koch's Ethnographic Films on Tuvalu Gerd Koch is probably best known for his studies of Tuvalu in the early 1960s, when it was still part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. In the process of recording aspects of material and expressive culture on Niutao, one of the northernmost islands, he shot a series of black-and-white silent films. Fifteen of these films were archived at IWF Wissen und Medien in G ttingen, Germany, formerly the Institut f r den Wissenschaftlichen Film, as part of an encyclopaedic project reflecting mid-20th-century scientific and philosophical assumptions. What do these films tell us about Tuvalu and the histories of anthropology and ethnographic film-making in the Pacific? This paper proposes some answers by focusing on two films featuring styles of combat that are both called 'failima' yet are clearly different from each other.

year: 2010

title: Improving spatial data in health geographics: a practical approach for testing data to measure children's physical activity and food environments using Google Street View

authors: Whitehead, Jesse

subjects: Science & Technology

abstract: Background
Geographic information systems (GIS) are often used to examine the association between both physical activity and nutrition environments, and children’s health. It is often assumed that geospatial datasets are accurate and complete. Furthermore, GIS datasets regularly lack metadata on the temporal specificity. Data is usually provided ‘as is’, and therefore may be unsuitable for retrospective or longitudinal studies of health outcomes. In this paper we outline a practical approach to both fill gaps in geospatial datasets, and to test their temporal validity. This approach is applied to both district council and open-source datasets in the Taranaki region of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Methods
We used the ‘streetview’ python script to download historic Google Street View (GSV) images taken between 2012 and 2016 across specific locations in the Taranaki region. Images were reviewed and relevant features were incorporated into GIS datasets.

Results
A total of 5166 coordinates with environmental features missing from council datasets were identified. The temporal validity of 402 (49%) environmental features was able to be confirmed from council dataset considered to be ‘complete’. A total of 664 (55%) food outlets were identified and temporally validated.

Conclusions
Our research indicates that geospatial datasets are not always complete or temporally valid. We have outlined an approach to test the sensitivity and specificity of GIS datasets using GSV images. A substantial number of features were identified, highlighting the limitations of many GIS datasets.

text: Improving spatial data in health geographics: a practical approach for testing data to measure children's physical activity and food environments using Google Street View Background
Geographic information systems (GIS) are often used to examine the association between both physical activity and nutrition environments, and children’s health. It is often assumed that geospatial datasets are accurate and complete. Furthermore, GIS datasets regularly lack metadata on the temporal specificity. Data is usually provided ‘as is’, and therefore may be unsuitable for retrospective or longitudinal studies of health outcomes. In this paper we outline a practical approach to both fill gaps in geospatial datasets, and to test their temporal validity. This approach is applied to both district council and open-source datasets in the Taranaki region of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Methods
We used the ‘streetview’ python script to download historic Google Street View (GSV) images taken between 2012 and 2016 across specific locations in the Taranaki region. Images were reviewed and relevant features were incorporated into GIS datasets.

Results
A total of 5166 coordinates with environmental features missing from council datasets were identified. The temporal validity of 402 (49%) environmental features was able to be confirmed from council dataset considered to be ‘complete’. A total of 664 (55%) food outlets were identified and temporally validated.

Conclusions
Our research indicates that geospatial datasets are not always complete or temporally valid. We have outlined an approach to test the sensitivity and specificity of GIS datasets using GSV images. A substantial number of features were identified, highlighting the limitations of many GIS datasets.

year: 2021

title: Sweet as – the [ADJ + as] intensifier construction in Māori English/ Aotearoa English.

authors: Calude, Andreea S.

abstract: We introduce the Waikato Māori English Conversation (MEC) corpus, which consists of 43 dyadic conversations between 49 young adults who self-recorded informal conversations with close friends, in their own homes, with no topic of conversation specified (83 hours of dialogue; nearly 800,000 words). The resulting materials are colloquial and unstructured, capturing a wider range of pragmatic and stylistic modes than is possible in a standard sociolinguistic interview. Here, we report on one such feature, the [ADJ + as] construction, for example: ‘sorry some of the questions are like awkward as’ and ‘that caused a big as drama eh’. This intensifier construction has been identified as a distinctive New Zealand English (NZE) innovation, yet little has been written about this it. However, the Waikato MEC corpus presents the opportunity to analyse the construction in a more systematic manner and to fill existing gaps in analyses of Māori English grammar.

text: Sweet as – the [ADJ + as] intensifier construction in Māori English/ Aotearoa English. We introduce the Waikato Māori English Conversation (MEC) corpus, which consists of 43 dyadic conversations between 49 young adults who self-recorded informal conversations with close friends, in their own homes, with no topic of conversation specified (83 hours of dialogue; nearly 800,000 words). The resulting materials are colloquial and unstructured, capturing a wider range of pragmatic and stylistic modes than is possible in a standard sociolinguistic interview. Here, we report on one such feature, the [ADJ + as] construction, for example: ‘sorry some of the questions are like awkward as’ and ‘that caused a big as drama eh’. This intensifier construction has been identified as a distinctive New Zealand English (NZE) innovation, yet little has been written about this it. However, the Waikato MEC corpus presents the opportunity to analyse the construction in a more systematic manner and to fill existing gaps in analyses of Māori English grammar.

year: 2025