title: Commentary on 'Family obligations in Micronesian cultures: implications for educators'

authors: Bishop, Russell

subjects: education

abstract: The paper makes some interesting observations about the need for educators to understand the cultural positionings of Micronesian students and by implication challenges readers to extend these understandings to other migrant and minoritised student groups. I would like to take up this challenge and illustrate how useful it is to theorise from a relational discourse when seeking solutions to what many educators are suggesting as the greatest problem we face in contemporary education, i.e. the seemingly immutable and growing educational disparities that accompany the increasing diversity of our student bodies in association with the continuing dominance of monocultural and deficit explanations by teachers about the causes of the disparities. This problem negatively affects indigenous students and students of colour along with migrant students and the paper rightly points to the need for solutions.

text: Commentary on 'Family obligations in Micronesian cultures: implications for educators' The paper makes some interesting observations about the need for educators to understand the cultural positionings of Micronesian students and by implication challenges readers to extend these understandings to other migrant and minoritised student groups. I would like to take up this challenge and illustrate how useful it is to theorise from a relational discourse when seeking solutions to what many educators are suggesting as the greatest problem we face in contemporary education, i.e. the seemingly immutable and growing educational disparities that accompany the increasing diversity of our student bodies in association with the continuing dominance of monocultural and deficit explanations by teachers about the causes of the disparities. This problem negatively affects indigenous students and students of colour along with migrant students and the paper rightly points to the need for solutions.

year: 2010

title: The gown and the korowai: Maori doctoral students and the spatial organization of academic knowledge

authors: Middleton, Sue

subjects: culture

abstract: This paper draws on 38 student interviews carried out in the course of the team research project Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Māori Doctoral Students. Māori doctoral thesis work takes place in the intersections between the Māori (tribal) world of identifications and obligations, the organisational and epistemological configurations of academia, and the bureaucratic requirements of funding or employing bureaucracies. To explore how students accommodate cultural, academic and bureaucratic demands, we develop analytical tools combining three intellectual traditions: Māori educational theory, Bernstein’s sociology of the academy, and Lefebvre’s conceptual trilogy of perceived, conceived, and lived space.

text: The gown and the korowai: Maori doctoral students and the spatial organization of academic knowledge This paper draws on 38 student interviews carried out in the course of the team research project Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Māori Doctoral Students. Māori doctoral thesis work takes place in the intersections between the Māori (tribal) world of identifications and obligations, the organisational and epistemological configurations of academia, and the bureaucratic requirements of funding or employing bureaucracies. To explore how students accommodate cultural, academic and bureaucratic demands, we develop analytical tools combining three intellectual traditions: Māori educational theory, Bernstein’s sociology of the academy, and Lefebvre’s conceptual trilogy of perceived, conceived, and lived space.

year: 2009

title: Funkin' Cultural Boundaries: Popular Music and Socio-Spatial Change

authors: Timbs, Darnelle

subjects: Music

abstract: In recent decades retheorised perspectives have transformed geographical studies of music. Human geographers have examined issues of music, place and identity in a range of empirical settings, theoretical frameworks and policy contexts. As a cultural sphere in which identities are created and challenged, music is a medium through which boundaries are established and transgressed, and in which difference is marked out and challenged. For marginalised or oppressed groups music provides a medium through which to create spaces to represent themselves and their aspirations. With contemporary cultural and economic processes having eroded senses of spatial distance, spaces of identity express complex fusions between the global and the local. Music is no longer integrally tied to specific ethnic groups; music results from numerous stylistic practices and transnational human musical interactions.

The music of the hip hop group the Black Eyed Peas exemplifies the boundary-challenging aesthetic of hybrid music. Evidence collected through face-to-face interviews and participant observation highlights the ways in which the Black Eyed Peas employ their music to unsettle existing economic and social conditions. Discussion of how the Black Eyed Peas transgress economic barriers, challenge musical expectations, and expose the experiences of 'others' reveals the power relations that manifest in boundary creation and maintenance. Comments from members of the Black Eyed Peas and their associates expose the contradictions and compromises implicit in efforts to relocate social boundaries. Conflict between transgressive intentions is exhibited in the fundraising activities of the Peapod Foundation, a charitable organisation managed by the Black Eyed Peas.

text: Funkin' Cultural Boundaries: Popular Music and Socio-Spatial Change In recent decades retheorised perspectives have transformed geographical studies of music. Human geographers have examined issues of music, place and identity in a range of empirical settings, theoretical frameworks and policy contexts. As a cultural sphere in which identities are created and challenged, music is a medium through which boundaries are established and transgressed, and in which difference is marked out and challenged. For marginalised or oppressed groups music provides a medium through which to create spaces to represent themselves and their aspirations. With contemporary cultural and economic processes having eroded senses of spatial distance, spaces of identity express complex fusions between the global and the local. Music is no longer integrally tied to specific ethnic groups; music results from numerous stylistic practices and transnational human musical interactions.

The music of the hip hop group the Black Eyed Peas exemplifies the boundary-challenging aesthetic of hybrid music. Evidence collected through face-to-face interviews and participant observation highlights the ways in which the Black Eyed Peas employ their music to unsettle existing economic and social conditions. Discussion of how the Black Eyed Peas transgress economic barriers, challenge musical expectations, and expose the experiences of 'others' reveals the power relations that manifest in boundary creation and maintenance. Comments from members of the Black Eyed Peas and their associates expose the contradictions and compromises implicit in efforts to relocate social boundaries. Conflict between transgressive intentions is exhibited in the fundraising activities of the Peapod Foundation, a charitable organisation managed by the Black Eyed Peas.

year: 2007