title: The right to repair

authors: Zaw, Win Thandar

abstract: The right to repair debate has been growing over the past several years around the world, focusing on both consumer protection and environmental concerns. New Zealand’s Government is considering right to repair legislation as part of the review of waste management legislation (The Ministry for the Environment “Taking responsibility for our waste: Proposals for a new waste strategy; Issues and options for new waste legislation” (October 2021)). The right to repair movement has emerged to address challenges faced by consumers regarding repair of purchased products due to lack of spare parts, tools or repair documentation. Right to repair measures enhance the property rights of the consumers over the purchased devices.

text: The right to repair The right to repair debate has been growing over the past several years around the world, focusing on both consumer protection and environmental concerns. New Zealand’s Government is considering right to repair legislation as part of the review of waste management legislation (The Ministry for the Environment “Taking responsibility for our waste: Proposals for a new waste strategy; Issues and options for new waste legislation” (October 2021)). The right to repair movement has emerged to address challenges faced by consumers regarding repair of purchased products due to lack of spare parts, tools or repair documentation. Right to repair measures enhance the property rights of the consumers over the purchased devices.

year: 2022-06-01

title: The staging of affect and the “Elsewhens” of documentary space

authors: Fleming, Daniel

subjects: documentary

abstract: A quarter of a century ago, the English critic and writer John Berger said, “The true stories of our time have to be able to reconcile a pile of clothes in a drawer with world historical upheavals.”¹ This seems like an ideal prescription for documentary but, given our times of intensified globalization and the reorganization of “world historical upheavals” around a particular global narrative, the practical challenge behind Berger’s word “reconcile” seems even more daunting than it did in 1985. In particular, the “pile of clothes in a drawer,” the lived spaces of the everyday, the intimate, the personal, the forgotten, the material things tinged with memory, seem even more at risk of consignment to the category of the inconsequential. Certain durable public exceptions, like the piled and tangled frames and cracked lenses of the Auschwich-­‐Berkenau spectacles, have achieved an iconic status as personal markers of world historical trauma (thus celebrities being invited to donate pairs of old spectacles to a 2008 exhibit in Liverpool, England, marking National Holocaust Day²) but, if anything, this has raised the bar on just whose “pile of clothes in a drawer” might connect with the “true stories of our time” that Berger envisaged. The recent opening of so many old drawers to the burgeoning “family history” genre (e.g. television’s Who Do You Think You Are?) tends not to facilitate this connection so much as to shift the “pile of clothes in a drawer” into another, tidier space; one equally privatized and disconnected from larger contexts and frames of meaning, except where those get represented as a kind of generalized dramatic backdrop.³

text: The staging of affect and the “Elsewhens” of documentary space A quarter of a century ago, the English critic and writer John Berger said, “The true stories of our time have to be able to reconcile a pile of clothes in a drawer with world historical upheavals.”¹ This seems like an ideal prescription for documentary but, given our times of intensified globalization and the reorganization of “world historical upheavals” around a particular global narrative, the practical challenge behind Berger’s word “reconcile” seems even more daunting than it did in 1985. In particular, the “pile of clothes in a drawer,” the lived spaces of the everyday, the intimate, the personal, the forgotten, the material things tinged with memory, seem even more at risk of consignment to the category of the inconsequential. Certain durable public exceptions, like the piled and tangled frames and cracked lenses of the Auschwich-­‐Berkenau spectacles, have achieved an iconic status as personal markers of world historical trauma (thus celebrities being invited to donate pairs of old spectacles to a 2008 exhibit in Liverpool, England, marking National Holocaust Day²) but, if anything, this has raised the bar on just whose “pile of clothes in a drawer” might connect with the “true stories of our time” that Berger envisaged. The recent opening of so many old drawers to the burgeoning “family history” genre (e.g. television’s Who Do You Think You Are?) tends not to facilitate this connection so much as to shift the “pile of clothes in a drawer” into another, tidier space; one equally privatized and disconnected from larger contexts and frames of meaning, except where those get represented as a kind of generalized dramatic backdrop.³

year: 2011

title: How Māori precariate families navigate social services

authors: King, Delta

abstract: We are living in a period in which the increasingly precarious nature of employment and welfare support systems has dramatically amplified the hardships faced by many people.¹ Correspondingly, much still needs to be written about the rise of the precariat. ² International literature asserts that post World War II paid employment was commonly full-time and secure up until the 1970s, when the rise of more insecure work increased as neoliberal policies and globalisation began dominating public deliberations regarding work and social life. ³ Subsequent recessions across many OECD countries contributed to labour market transformations back towards increased 'flexibility' and- the casualisation of employment. These labour market shifts have resulted in insecure work and income situations for many households, which for some means frequent cycles of paid employment and welfare dependency. People experiencing such insecure employment face insecure and unliveable incomes while grappling with inadequate state support - these are the people increasingly known as 'the precariat'.

text: How Māori precariate families navigate social services We are living in a period in which the increasingly precarious nature of employment and welfare support systems has dramatically amplified the hardships faced by many people.¹ Correspondingly, much still needs to be written about the rise of the precariat. ² International literature asserts that post World War II paid employment was commonly full-time and secure up until the 1970s, when the rise of more insecure work increased as neoliberal policies and globalisation began dominating public deliberations regarding work and social life. ³ Subsequent recessions across many OECD countries contributed to labour market transformations back towards increased 'flexibility' and- the casualisation of employment. These labour market shifts have resulted in insecure work and income situations for many households, which for some means frequent cycles of paid employment and welfare dependency. People experiencing such insecure employment face insecure and unliveable incomes while grappling with inadequate state support - these are the people increasingly known as 'the precariat'.

year: 2017