title: Making the jump: Examining the glocalisation of parkour in Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: Puddle, Damien

subjects: parkour

abstract: Once a niche physical pastime of a small group of men in the urban suburbs of France, parkour is now a global phenomenon. Parkour provides an ideal context to investigate contemporary youth, and adoptees of this primarily youthful culture, and their increasingly connected experiences. Using a social constructionist approach, this research explores the global and local influences that affect the experiences of parkour practitioners in New Zealand and contribute to the establishment of parkour in New Zealand. I draw on multiple qualitative methods of inquiry, including 30 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of New Zealand practitioners, participant observations, a digital ethnography on social media, as well as my personal reflections as a parkour practitioner and community insider. I implement three different theoretical perspectives to understanding the glocalisation (Robertson, 1995, 2012) of parkour in New Zealand, with each one helping to unpack specific elements of the parkour experience. In my first empirical chapter I draw on Appadurai’s (1990, 1996) model of global cultural flows which provides a framework to introduce and understand the various macro movements of people, media, technology, ideas, as well as the physical landscape that underpins the broad experiences of New Zealand practitioners. In the second I adopt a mobilities approach (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007) to ask questions about how parkour participation is experienced differently by core and marginalised members of its community, informing experiences of gender and ethnicity. In the third and final empirical chapter I draw upon Ritzer’s (2003a, 2007) concept of ‘globalisation of nothing’ to facilitate an exploration of the development of Parkour NZ and how the New Zealand community involves itself in the politics of parkour’s global institutionalisation. These accounts demonstrate that there are concurrent examples of universality and particularity as New Zealand practitioners negotiate between their global and local parkour experiences. This research suggests that an appreciation of glocalised experiences is essential for understanding the ways in which adherents of contemporary youth cultures like parkour make sense of their lives in an increasingly connected and globalised world.

text: Making the jump: Examining the glocalisation of parkour in Aotearoa New Zealand Once a niche physical pastime of a small group of men in the urban suburbs of France, parkour is now a global phenomenon. Parkour provides an ideal context to investigate contemporary youth, and adoptees of this primarily youthful culture, and their increasingly connected experiences. Using a social constructionist approach, this research explores the global and local influences that affect the experiences of parkour practitioners in New Zealand and contribute to the establishment of parkour in New Zealand. I draw on multiple qualitative methods of inquiry, including 30 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of New Zealand practitioners, participant observations, a digital ethnography on social media, as well as my personal reflections as a parkour practitioner and community insider. I implement three different theoretical perspectives to understanding the glocalisation (Robertson, 1995, 2012) of parkour in New Zealand, with each one helping to unpack specific elements of the parkour experience. In my first empirical chapter I draw on Appadurai’s (1990, 1996) model of global cultural flows which provides a framework to introduce and understand the various macro movements of people, media, technology, ideas, as well as the physical landscape that underpins the broad experiences of New Zealand practitioners. In the second I adopt a mobilities approach (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007) to ask questions about how parkour participation is experienced differently by core and marginalised members of its community, informing experiences of gender and ethnicity. In the third and final empirical chapter I draw upon Ritzer’s (2003a, 2007) concept of ‘globalisation of nothing’ to facilitate an exploration of the development of Parkour NZ and how the New Zealand community involves itself in the politics of parkour’s global institutionalisation. These accounts demonstrate that there are concurrent examples of universality and particularity as New Zealand practitioners negotiate between their global and local parkour experiences. This research suggests that an appreciation of glocalised experiences is essential for understanding the ways in which adherents of contemporary youth cultures like parkour make sense of their lives in an increasingly connected and globalised world.

year: 2019

title: Assembling and enriching digital library collections

authors: Bainbridge, David

subjects: computer science

abstract: People who create digital libraries need to gather together the raw material, add metadata as necessary, and design and build new collections. This paper sets out the requirements for these tasks and describes a new tool that supports them interactively, making it easy for users to create their own collections from electronic files of all types. The process involves selecting documents for inclusion, coming up with a suitable metadata set, assigning metadata to each document or group of documents, designing the form of the collection in terms of document formats, searchable indexes, and browsing facilities, building the necessary indexes and data structures, and putting the collection in place for others to use. Moreover, different situations require different workflows, and the system must be flexible enough to cope with these demands. Although the tool is specific to the Greenstone digital library software, the underlying ideas should prove useful in more general contexts.

text: Assembling and enriching digital library collections People who create digital libraries need to gather together the raw material, add metadata as necessary, and design and build new collections. This paper sets out the requirements for these tasks and describes a new tool that supports them interactively, making it easy for users to create their own collections from electronic files of all types. The process involves selecting documents for inclusion, coming up with a suitable metadata set, assigning metadata to each document or group of documents, designing the form of the collection in terms of document formats, searchable indexes, and browsing facilities, building the necessary indexes and data structures, and putting the collection in place for others to use. Moreover, different situations require different workflows, and the system must be flexible enough to cope with these demands. Although the tool is specific to the Greenstone digital library software, the underlying ideas should prove useful in more general contexts.

year: 2003

title: A discursive analysis of Maori in sexual and reproductive health policy

authors: Green, Jane Alison

subjects: Maori

abstract: No abstract provided

text: A discursive analysis of Maori in sexual and reproductive health policy No abstract provided

year: 2011