title: Creative practices as research:  Exploring the sensory world of visually impaired artists in China

authors: Ma, Yuan

abstract: This research focuses on non-visual artistic collaborative practice between artists with visual impairment in China and a sighted researcher, encompassing multi-sensory creative practices, including non-visual photography, improvised music, dance, and installation art. A mixed-methods approach integrating qualitative methods (collaborative art practices, semi-structured interviews) and quantitative analysis of audience survey data was employed to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the research phenomena. The resulting data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA), and Descriptive Statistical Analysis (DSA) to systematically examine the role of embodied perception and spatial awareness in artistic expression. Further attention was given to how artists constructed meaning and created a sense of place through sensory interaction. The researcher engaged in the collaborative process through multiple roles – academic, practitioner, and curator – undertaking sustained reflexive inquiry to analyse the mechanisms of multi-sensory creation and cognitive transformation.
Through collaborative art practices and exhibitions carried out in both China and New Zealand, the study illuminated the dynamic function of embodied difference in multi-sensory collaborative practice, critically challenging visual-centric aesthetic norms and dominant assumptions about creative practices. Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and Crip theory provide robust theoretical foundations for understanding disability experiences. CDS focuses on critiques of social structures, while Crip theory emphasises the deconstruction of marginalised bodies. Despite their complementary insights, these two frameworks are frequently used separately in existing research. Dialogue and intertextual engagement between CDS and Crip theory show certain limitations and remain somewhat underdeveloped. Meanwhile, most current studies concentrate on theoretical development. In contrast, their practical application, especially in artistic creation, embodied creative practices, and cross-cultural collaborative art, remains underexplored. This research integrates both CDS and Crip theory to examine how multi-sensory artistic practices can challenge normative assumptions about perception, disability, and authorship. These frameworks are applied to analyse collaborative processes, audience responses, and curatorial strategies, highlighting how disability is both culturally constructed and generatively embodied.
At the theoretical level, the study employed a phenomenological perspective to emphasise how individuals construct unique perceptual pathways through sustained embodied interaction with their environment. This orientation resonated strongly with traditional Chinese Daoist philosophy, particularly the principles of natural spontaneity and Wu-Wei (Hansen, 2024), which emphasise harmony between body and world. Daoist thought values the fluidity of bodily interaction with nature, immediate perception, and holistic awareness, paralleling phenomenology’s concern with embodied experience and the lifeworld. A convergence of these two philosophical traditions was articulated in the research, offering an intercultural theoretical foundation for understanding how artists with visual impairment create art through non-visual sensory modes. This fusion of Eastern and Western thought expanded phenomenology’s applicability in sensory studies and opened a critically grounded, locally situated space for disability arts research.
The findings revealed a diversity of perceptual strategies and creative capacities among the Chinese artists with visual impairment. Across the four art forms, distinct sensory pathways were activated through non-visual means. In non-visual photography, artists constructed spatial understanding by combining auditory cues, tactile exploration, and imaginative perception. Improvised dance revealed how bodily movement attuned to environmental affordances could open alternative channels of sensation. In musical improvisation, layered sound and embodied rhythm emerged through muscle memory and somatic responsiveness. Installation art, meanwhile, engaged audiences through the tactile qualities of materials, inviting sensory exploration beyond sight. These practices underscored the centrality of non-visual senses in creative work and redefined the boundaries of artistic expression, contributing to a theoretically grounded and socially relevant framework for non-visual art research.

text: Creative practices as research:  Exploring the sensory world of visually impaired artists in China This research focuses on non-visual artistic collaborative practice between artists with visual impairment in China and a sighted researcher, encompassing multi-sensory creative practices, including non-visual photography, improvised music, dance, and installation art. A mixed-methods approach integrating qualitative methods (collaborative art practices, semi-structured interviews) and quantitative analysis of audience survey data was employed to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the research phenomena. The resulting data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA), and Descriptive Statistical Analysis (DSA) to systematically examine the role of embodied perception and spatial awareness in artistic expression. Further attention was given to how artists constructed meaning and created a sense of place through sensory interaction. The researcher engaged in the collaborative process through multiple roles – academic, practitioner, and curator – undertaking sustained reflexive inquiry to analyse the mechanisms of multi-sensory creation and cognitive transformation.
Through collaborative art practices and exhibitions carried out in both China and New Zealand, the study illuminated the dynamic function of embodied difference in multi-sensory collaborative practice, critically challenging visual-centric aesthetic norms and dominant assumptions about creative practices. Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and Crip theory provide robust theoretical foundations for understanding disability experiences. CDS focuses on critiques of social structures, while Crip theory emphasises the deconstruction of marginalised bodies. Despite their complementary insights, these two frameworks are frequently used separately in existing research. Dialogue and intertextual engagement between CDS and Crip theory show certain limitations and remain somewhat underdeveloped. Meanwhile, most current studies concentrate on theoretical development. In contrast, their practical application, especially in artistic creation, embodied creative practices, and cross-cultural collaborative art, remains underexplored. This research integrates both CDS and Crip theory to examine how multi-sensory artistic practices can challenge normative assumptions about perception, disability, and authorship. These frameworks are applied to analyse collaborative processes, audience responses, and curatorial strategies, highlighting how disability is both culturally constructed and generatively embodied.
At the theoretical level, the study employed a phenomenological perspective to emphasise how individuals construct unique perceptual pathways through sustained embodied interaction with their environment. This orientation resonated strongly with traditional Chinese Daoist philosophy, particularly the principles of natural spontaneity and Wu-Wei (Hansen, 2024), which emphasise harmony between body and world. Daoist thought values the fluidity of bodily interaction with nature, immediate perception, and holistic awareness, paralleling phenomenology’s concern with embodied experience and the lifeworld. A convergence of these two philosophical traditions was articulated in the research, offering an intercultural theoretical foundation for understanding how artists with visual impairment create art through non-visual sensory modes. This fusion of Eastern and Western thought expanded phenomenology’s applicability in sensory studies and opened a critically grounded, locally situated space for disability arts research.
The findings revealed a diversity of perceptual strategies and creative capacities among the Chinese artists with visual impairment. Across the four art forms, distinct sensory pathways were activated through non-visual means. In non-visual photography, artists constructed spatial understanding by combining auditory cues, tactile exploration, and imaginative perception. Improvised dance revealed how bodily movement attuned to environmental affordances could open alternative channels of sensation. In musical improvisation, layered sound and embodied rhythm emerged through muscle memory and somatic responsiveness. Installation art, meanwhile, engaged audiences through the tactile qualities of materials, inviting sensory exploration beyond sight. These practices underscored the centrality of non-visual senses in creative work and redefined the boundaries of artistic expression, contributing to a theoretically grounded and socially relevant framework for non-visual art research.

year: 2026

title: Feminizing world power: A new constellation of women in politics?

authors: Peters, Michael A.

abstract: This article charts the emergence of women leaders currently in power, the highest it has ever been with 22 female heads of state and political leaders in 2015. It canvases Fukuyama's (1988) sociobiology arguments and those of feminists on questions of women's political representation. It briefly investigates the "critical mass" argument of Kanter (1977) and others to ask whether there is a new constellation of women in politics, especially with Hillary Clinton's possible ascendancy to the US presidency, leading to the possibility of feminizing world power.

text: Feminizing world power: A new constellation of women in politics? This article charts the emergence of women leaders currently in power, the highest it has ever been with 22 female heads of state and political leaders in 2015. It canvases Fukuyama's (1988) sociobiology arguments and those of feminists on questions of women's political representation. It briefly investigates the "critical mass" argument of Kanter (1977) and others to ask whether there is a new constellation of women in politics, especially with Hillary Clinton's possible ascendancy to the US presidency, leading to the possibility of feminizing world power.

year: 2016

title: Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae Management and Administration at the End of the Twentieth Century: Negotiating Bureaucratisation

authors: Collins, Adelaide

subjects: informal organising

abstract: Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae is a Māori community settlement located in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Its hapu (sub-tribe) community was one of 33 hapu that formed the Tainui confederation claiming compensation from the Crown for land confiscated in the nineteenth century.  The claim was settled in 1995 and it was within this context that research for this study was conducted at the marae from August 1997 to December 1999.  

This ethnographic study examines the way that the community at Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae managed its affairs through its two management bodies, the Marae Committee and the Trustees.  It is argued in this thesis that the marae's mode of management is in transition from an informal to formal mode, and from an inward to outward looking focus.  Bureaucratic administration, it is argued, has been the major catalyst for the transition and has been introduced into marae operations through an accumulation of state legislation affecting Māori land and communities. Furthermore, some aspects of bureaucratic administration have been legitimated and appropriated by the iwi authority, which has passed this on to the Marae Committee.  The community have been complicit in the adoption of bureaucratic administration by accommodating the requirements of both the state and the iwi authority.  However, a persistent question was whether the marae could maintain its own rangatiratanga (authority, self-determination, control) and separate identity in the face of increasing pressure to conform to a bureaucratic management style.

The community managed the marae communally by way of hui (gatherings) and meetings, which were observed using a combined methodological approach of Kaupapa Māori research and ethnography, as described in Chapter 2.  The philosophy of kotahitanga (solidarity) underpinned the social organisation of the Tainui tribal confederation, so understanding the place of the marae in its wider socio-political environment has helped in comprehending the nature of the pressure on the community to increase its scale of operations and is explained in Chapter 3. 

Chapter 4 introduces the accumulation of influences that have brought about a change of managerial style from informal to formal organising.  The practical effect of these influences are demonstrated in the management structure and administrative systems that the community used. These are described phenomenologically in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively.  The management plan, compiled since 1995, had a strong emphasis on management structural review and participation in tribal development initiatives and is discussed in Chapter 7. The implementation of a collaborative development project between the iwi authority and Marae Committee is described in Chapter 8.  The final chapter reflects on the impact of bureaucratic administration on marae management as well as the dynamism of the community and how the rangatiratanga of the marae has thus far been maintained.

text: Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae Management and Administration at the End of the Twentieth Century: Negotiating Bureaucratisation Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae is a Māori community settlement located in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Its hapu (sub-tribe) community was one of 33 hapu that formed the Tainui confederation claiming compensation from the Crown for land confiscated in the nineteenth century.  The claim was settled in 1995 and it was within this context that research for this study was conducted at the marae from August 1997 to December 1999.  

This ethnographic study examines the way that the community at Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae managed its affairs through its two management bodies, the Marae Committee and the Trustees.  It is argued in this thesis that the marae's mode of management is in transition from an informal to formal mode, and from an inward to outward looking focus.  Bureaucratic administration, it is argued, has been the major catalyst for the transition and has been introduced into marae operations through an accumulation of state legislation affecting Māori land and communities. Furthermore, some aspects of bureaucratic administration have been legitimated and appropriated by the iwi authority, which has passed this on to the Marae Committee.  The community have been complicit in the adoption of bureaucratic administration by accommodating the requirements of both the state and the iwi authority.  However, a persistent question was whether the marae could maintain its own rangatiratanga (authority, self-determination, control) and separate identity in the face of increasing pressure to conform to a bureaucratic management style.

The community managed the marae communally by way of hui (gatherings) and meetings, which were observed using a combined methodological approach of Kaupapa Māori research and ethnography, as described in Chapter 2.  The philosophy of kotahitanga (solidarity) underpinned the social organisation of the Tainui tribal confederation, so understanding the place of the marae in its wider socio-political environment has helped in comprehending the nature of the pressure on the community to increase its scale of operations and is explained in Chapter 3. 

Chapter 4 introduces the accumulation of influences that have brought about a change of managerial style from informal to formal organising.  The practical effect of these influences are demonstrated in the management structure and administrative systems that the community used. These are described phenomenologically in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively.  The management plan, compiled since 1995, had a strong emphasis on management structural review and participation in tribal development initiatives and is discussed in Chapter 7. The implementation of a collaborative development project between the iwi authority and Marae Committee is described in Chapter 8.  The final chapter reflects on the impact of bureaucratic administration on marae management as well as the dynamism of the community and how the rangatiratanga of the marae has thus far been maintained.

year: 2005