title: ‘Troubling’ gender in virtual gaming spaces

authors: Todd, Cherie J.

subjects: Avatar

abstract: This article considers the relationship between gaming and gender, and explores how eight mature women gamers (30 years of age and older), living in the Waikato region of New Zealand negotiate their ‘real-life’ identities with their ‘virtual’ gaming identities. In particular, performances of ‘gender-bending’ in gaming are examined and Butler's notion of ‘gender trouble’ is drawn upon to look at the ways in which ‘gender-bending’ disrupts and/or reinforces hegemonic binary distinctions of gender – masculinity/femininity and man/woman. This article concludes by arguing that gender-switching within gaming spaces is a normative practice within gaming culture, and as such, acts of ‘gender-bending’ do very little to challenge or ‘bend’ dominant notions of gender within the spaces of mainstream gaming.

text: ‘Troubling’ gender in virtual gaming spaces This article considers the relationship between gaming and gender, and explores how eight mature women gamers (30 years of age and older), living in the Waikato region of New Zealand negotiate their ‘real-life’ identities with their ‘virtual’ gaming identities. In particular, performances of ‘gender-bending’ in gaming are examined and Butler's notion of ‘gender trouble’ is drawn upon to look at the ways in which ‘gender-bending’ disrupts and/or reinforces hegemonic binary distinctions of gender – masculinity/femininity and man/woman. This article concludes by arguing that gender-switching within gaming spaces is a normative practice within gaming culture, and as such, acts of ‘gender-bending’ do very little to challenge or ‘bend’ dominant notions of gender within the spaces of mainstream gaming.

year: 2012

title: Realising Our Best Intentions: Vision, Values and Voice in Community Non-government Organisations of the Aotearoa \New Zealand Mental Health Sector

authors: Barber, Kirsty Frances Mary

subjects: organising

abstract: This thesis examines the effectiveness of establishing a recovery orientation in community, non-government, mental health organisations in Aotearoa\New Zealand.  It addresses the discursive constructions of key concepts such as madness, recovery and community care.  In addition, it examines the wider, societal and institutional pressures that influence how important features of a recovery discourse, such as empowerment and an ordinary life in community, are articulated and enacted within organisational environments.  It also investigates how institutional hegemonies are contested, and opportunities identified for institutional change and organisational transformation.  
Critical and postmodern perspectives in healthcare provided a rationale for utilising the framework for organisational communication research, developed by Dennis Mumby and Cynthia Stohl (1996, 2007).  The framework addressed the problematics of (1) voice, (2) rationality, (3) the relationship between organisations and the state, as well as (4) the problematic of organising itself.  
Critical Appreciative Inquiry (Grant & Humphries, 2006) was the methodology used for this project.  Focus groups and interviews facilitated dialogue among support workers, team leaders and senior managers from a range of community mental health organisations throughout Aotearoa\New Zealand.  These encounters encouraged conversations about what worked well in organisations, and how to enhance a recovery-orientation, without shying away from a critical analysis of what was impeding best practice.  The dialogues also enabled examination of how these organisations were situated within the larger socio-political and cultural environment.  
The findings of the study showed that organisational stakeholders constructed and translated the discourses of madness, illness and recovery very differently.  Translations reflected the relative power of particular discourse communities, with powerful groups able to control meaning systems through their greater social legitimacy.  Institutionalised discourses of biomedicine and managerialism proved difficult to “deinstitutionalise”, and institutional agents “translated” recovery discourses in ways that ensured little disruption to powerful and privileged interests.  In addition, it was apparent that institutions undertook defensive institutional work when challenged.  Defensive strategies were primarily discursive, e.g. translation, but were important mechanisms through which institutional interests subsumed alternative discourses, and maintained power over an organisational field.
This thesis contributes to the field of organisational communication by demonstrating that perceptions of organisational, and institutional change, are frequently discursive, rather than substantive.  Effective organisational change, therefore, needs to challenge institutional structures and systemic relationships of power.  Sustained, and sustainable, change requires fundamental shifts in the rational bases of institutional logics.  This has important implications for how less powerful actors and organisations can establish alternative discourses in institutionalised fields, such as mental healthcare.

text: Realising Our Best Intentions: Vision, Values and Voice in Community Non-government Organisations of the Aotearoa \New Zealand Mental Health Sector This thesis examines the effectiveness of establishing a recovery orientation in community, non-government, mental health organisations in Aotearoa\New Zealand.  It addresses the discursive constructions of key concepts such as madness, recovery and community care.  In addition, it examines the wider, societal and institutional pressures that influence how important features of a recovery discourse, such as empowerment and an ordinary life in community, are articulated and enacted within organisational environments.  It also investigates how institutional hegemonies are contested, and opportunities identified for institutional change and organisational transformation.  
Critical and postmodern perspectives in healthcare provided a rationale for utilising the framework for organisational communication research, developed by Dennis Mumby and Cynthia Stohl (1996, 2007).  The framework addressed the problematics of (1) voice, (2) rationality, (3) the relationship between organisations and the state, as well as (4) the problematic of organising itself.  
Critical Appreciative Inquiry (Grant & Humphries, 2006) was the methodology used for this project.  Focus groups and interviews facilitated dialogue among support workers, team leaders and senior managers from a range of community mental health organisations throughout Aotearoa\New Zealand.  These encounters encouraged conversations about what worked well in organisations, and how to enhance a recovery-orientation, without shying away from a critical analysis of what was impeding best practice.  The dialogues also enabled examination of how these organisations were situated within the larger socio-political and cultural environment.  
The findings of the study showed that organisational stakeholders constructed and translated the discourses of madness, illness and recovery very differently.  Translations reflected the relative power of particular discourse communities, with powerful groups able to control meaning systems through their greater social legitimacy.  Institutionalised discourses of biomedicine and managerialism proved difficult to “deinstitutionalise”, and institutional agents “translated” recovery discourses in ways that ensured little disruption to powerful and privileged interests.  In addition, it was apparent that institutions undertook defensive institutional work when challenged.  Defensive strategies were primarily discursive, e.g. translation, but were important mechanisms through which institutional interests subsumed alternative discourses, and maintained power over an organisational field.
This thesis contributes to the field of organisational communication by demonstrating that perceptions of organisational, and institutional change, are frequently discursive, rather than substantive.  Effective organisational change, therefore, needs to challenge institutional structures and systemic relationships of power.  Sustained, and sustainable, change requires fundamental shifts in the rational bases of institutional logics.  This has important implications for how less powerful actors and organisations can establish alternative discourses in institutionalised fields, such as mental healthcare.

year: 2015

title: Te karanga tūturu o maieke:  Ngāti Kuri women’s taiao geographies

authors: Ringham, Sandra Lee

subjects: Māori and Indigenous geographies

abstract: This research examines the relationships, identities and sense of belonging of Māori women of within the Ngāti Kuri iwi (tribe) and te taiao (the natural world, environment, nature, country) in Te Hiku o te Ika, Far North, Aotearoa New Zealand. It shows how Ngāti Kuri women and te taiao are embedded in - yet also resist - colonial and patriarchal discourses. 
The Kaupapa Māori and Mana Wahine theoretical framework decolonises and transforms the ways in which Māori women have been represented and marginalised. Pūrākau (storywork) as a theory and methodology ensures Ngāti Kuri women’s stories are told by them and for them. Indigenous relational geography is woven into the theoretical framework to further understand Indigenous relationships to place and diverse feelings of belonging and responsibility.
Whakawhiti kōrero (research conversations), wānanga (workshops) and tipi haere (mobile wānanga) were carried out with 19 Ngāti Kuri women. Approximately 40 people from the iwi and / or scientific communities contribute to the thesis through the initiatives of the Ngāti Kuri Relationship Working Group (NKRWG), the Auckland War Memorial Museum and other research partners and as conservationists. 
Findings are organised around three themes: identities; relationships; and a sense of belonging. The first theme introduces Ngāti Kuri women’s identities as leaders and drivers of change, disrupting and dismantling the intersection of patriarchal and colonial discourse. The pūrākau of Maieke, a founding ancestress of Ngāti Kuri, brings to light the reclamation and transformation of Māori women’s identities and geographies, as defined by participants. Pre-colonisation Ngāti Kuri women had the capacity and authority to become a governing force in the daily lives of the iwi. The second theme highlights colonial and patriarchal naming of our world. Ngāti Kuri women are reconfiguring relationships and representation through the scientific naming of taonga (culturally valuable objects and species). Values and principles of kaitiakitanga (inherited guardianship) and whakawhanaugatanga (relating well to others) guide the naming process. The third theme focuses on participants’ reflections and understandings of the ways in which they sense place and feelings of belonging. Participants’ engagement with te taiao - through singing, storying and sensing place – highlights the way te taiao re-centres and transforms Ngāti Kuri women’s relationships and experiences of belonging to iwi homelands.
Importantly, the thesis concludes with a discussion of the challenges, successes and actions of Ngāti Kuri women as they continue to strive for tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), social and environmental well-being. I conceptualise new geographies that account for, and celebrate, uniquely Ngāti Kuri understandings of identities, relationships and feelings of belonging. Finally, a short creative story ends the thesis in order to show the transformative power of Ngāti Kuri women’s te taiao experiences.

text: Te karanga tūturu o maieke:  Ngāti Kuri women’s taiao geographies This research examines the relationships, identities and sense of belonging of Māori women of within the Ngāti Kuri iwi (tribe) and te taiao (the natural world, environment, nature, country) in Te Hiku o te Ika, Far North, Aotearoa New Zealand. It shows how Ngāti Kuri women and te taiao are embedded in - yet also resist - colonial and patriarchal discourses. 
The Kaupapa Māori and Mana Wahine theoretical framework decolonises and transforms the ways in which Māori women have been represented and marginalised. Pūrākau (storywork) as a theory and methodology ensures Ngāti Kuri women’s stories are told by them and for them. Indigenous relational geography is woven into the theoretical framework to further understand Indigenous relationships to place and diverse feelings of belonging and responsibility.
Whakawhiti kōrero (research conversations), wānanga (workshops) and tipi haere (mobile wānanga) were carried out with 19 Ngāti Kuri women. Approximately 40 people from the iwi and / or scientific communities contribute to the thesis through the initiatives of the Ngāti Kuri Relationship Working Group (NKRWG), the Auckland War Memorial Museum and other research partners and as conservationists. 
Findings are organised around three themes: identities; relationships; and a sense of belonging. The first theme introduces Ngāti Kuri women’s identities as leaders and drivers of change, disrupting and dismantling the intersection of patriarchal and colonial discourse. The pūrākau of Maieke, a founding ancestress of Ngāti Kuri, brings to light the reclamation and transformation of Māori women’s identities and geographies, as defined by participants. Pre-colonisation Ngāti Kuri women had the capacity and authority to become a governing force in the daily lives of the iwi. The second theme highlights colonial and patriarchal naming of our world. Ngāti Kuri women are reconfiguring relationships and representation through the scientific naming of taonga (culturally valuable objects and species). Values and principles of kaitiakitanga (inherited guardianship) and whakawhanaugatanga (relating well to others) guide the naming process. The third theme focuses on participants’ reflections and understandings of the ways in which they sense place and feelings of belonging. Participants’ engagement with te taiao - through singing, storying and sensing place – highlights the way te taiao re-centres and transforms Ngāti Kuri women’s relationships and experiences of belonging to iwi homelands.
Importantly, the thesis concludes with a discussion of the challenges, successes and actions of Ngāti Kuri women as they continue to strive for tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), social and environmental well-being. I conceptualise new geographies that account for, and celebrate, uniquely Ngāti Kuri understandings of identities, relationships and feelings of belonging. Finally, a short creative story ends the thesis in order to show the transformative power of Ngāti Kuri women’s te taiao experiences.

year: 2022