title: Understanding ‘higher’ Māori fertility in a ‘low’ fertility context: Does cultural identity make a difference?

authors: Rarere, Moana

subjects: Maori fertility

abstract: The Māori fertility transition brought an end to decades of very high fertility rates, and a convergence towards long-term fertility levels similar to Pākehā/New Zealand European women. However, important differences endure. The Māori total fertility rate (TFR) remains above replacement level, and Māori women have children earlier and over a longer period. All of this has and still is occurring in a society that facilitates and favours low fertility and small family sizes. Using births data and cultural identity markers in the New Zealand Census, this paper explores the influence of culture as a contributing factor to higher fertility outcomes amongst Māori women in a low-fertility society.

text: Understanding ‘higher’ Māori fertility in a ‘low’ fertility context: Does cultural identity make a difference? The Māori fertility transition brought an end to decades of very high fertility rates, and a convergence towards long-term fertility levels similar to Pākehā/New Zealand European women. However, important differences endure. The Māori total fertility rate (TFR) remains above replacement level, and Māori women have children earlier and over a longer period. All of this has and still is occurring in a society that facilitates and favours low fertility and small family sizes. Using births data and cultural identity markers in the New Zealand Census, this paper explores the influence of culture as a contributing factor to higher fertility outcomes amongst Māori women in a low-fertility society.

year: 2018

title: Countering gentrification in Tāmaki Makarau: Towards a framework for urban environmental justice

authors: Terruhn, Jessica

abstract: This policy brief argues for urban policies that actively aim to end gentrification.

Gentrification is intimately tied to state-led processes of urban renewal. Though historically understood as the displacement of low-income households as an unfortunate byproduct of socioeconomic and demographic neighbourhood change, contemporary gentrification is constituted by profit-driven investment decisions that erase undervalued neighbourhoods and their communities in the name of urban renewal (variously referred to as redevelopment, regeneration, renaissance, or revitalisation).

These processes of gentrification fundamentally contribute to environmental injustice. At the same time as creating ‘zones of abundance’, neighbourhood regeneration projects simultaneously (re-)create ‘zones of neglect and sacrifice’, which are burdened with environmental risks. As low-income and ethnic minority households are more likely to either reside in or to be displaced into these neighbourhoods, they are disproportionately exposed to environmental risk factors.

Moreover, gentrification enables and legitimises the exclusion of marginalised communities in multiple ways: 1) it devalues existing places and their residents in favour of regeneration, 2) it displaces longtime residents from regenerated neighbourhoods because of increasing property values, and/or 3) it alienates longtime residents as neighbourhood aesthetics, amenities and services change and become unaffordable and/or irrelevant.

As gentrification contributes to low-income households’ experiences of precarity and severs community ties and place attachments, it generates significant costs to personal and community health and wellbeing as well as social cohesion. The recommendations articulated in this brief emphasise the importance of transformative policy solutions that actively counter gentrification.
These include:
• Equitable investment in urban infrastructure
• Prioritising affordable housing
• Ensuring accessible transportation
• Empowering local communities
• Implementing a Te Tiriti o Waitangi approach to policy development

text: Countering gentrification in Tāmaki Makarau: Towards a framework for urban environmental justice This policy brief argues for urban policies that actively aim to end gentrification.

Gentrification is intimately tied to state-led processes of urban renewal. Though historically understood as the displacement of low-income households as an unfortunate byproduct of socioeconomic and demographic neighbourhood change, contemporary gentrification is constituted by profit-driven investment decisions that erase undervalued neighbourhoods and their communities in the name of urban renewal (variously referred to as redevelopment, regeneration, renaissance, or revitalisation).

These processes of gentrification fundamentally contribute to environmental injustice. At the same time as creating ‘zones of abundance’, neighbourhood regeneration projects simultaneously (re-)create ‘zones of neglect and sacrifice’, which are burdened with environmental risks. As low-income and ethnic minority households are more likely to either reside in or to be displaced into these neighbourhoods, they are disproportionately exposed to environmental risk factors.

Moreover, gentrification enables and legitimises the exclusion of marginalised communities in multiple ways: 1) it devalues existing places and their residents in favour of regeneration, 2) it displaces longtime residents from regenerated neighbourhoods because of increasing property values, and/or 3) it alienates longtime residents as neighbourhood aesthetics, amenities and services change and become unaffordable and/or irrelevant.

As gentrification contributes to low-income households’ experiences of precarity and severs community ties and place attachments, it generates significant costs to personal and community health and wellbeing as well as social cohesion. The recommendations articulated in this brief emphasise the importance of transformative policy solutions that actively counter gentrification.
These include:
• Equitable investment in urban infrastructure
• Prioritising affordable housing
• Ensuring accessible transportation
• Empowering local communities
• Implementing a Te Tiriti o Waitangi approach to policy development

year: 2025

title: Health ‘in queer street’: constituting sickness, sexualities and bodies in the spaces of lesbian health

authors: MacBride-Stewart, Sara

abstract: This thesis explores lesbian health. The appeal of this project is its attention to the constitutions, resistances, and reproductions involved in the construction of ‘lesbian health’. ‘Lesbian health’ provides the context for exploring the meanings of health, sickness, sexuality, and bodies. The analysis takes place in three stages. It begins with a review of gay-positive studies of lesbian health. Second, is a discourse analysis of constructions of ‘health’, ‘illness’, and ‘sexuality’. It concludes with a critical analysis of the fluid and leaky constitutions of gendered sexualities and bodies. 

I conduct a study with 17 self-identified lesbians, using open-ended interviews that cover a variety of topics in the areas of health practices and concerns. Feminist Foucauldian approaches inform the critical discourse analysis of the interviewee’s accounts. An examination of the co-constitution of discourses about ‘health’ and ‘sickness’ in relation to ‘lesbian’ sexualities reveals a binary relationship. That is, health for lesbians is constituted as overcoming the societal pressures and exclusions related to ‘being gay’, avoiding the implication that lesbian ‘health’ or ‘sickness’ may be inherent. I draw on Elizabeth Grosz's critical analysis of the corporeal as I examine lesbian bodies in the contexts of cervical screening and dental dams. In these health promotion contexts, ‘lesbian’ bodies are brought into being, but their presence is potentially threatening. Lesbian bodies are constituted, materially and discursively, as liminal, fluid, and abject. The consequence is that disclosure as ‘lesbian’ is self-regulated. Other consequences for cervical screening and safe sex promotion are explained by the leaky fluidity of bodies and places, which reinsert ‘lesbian’ into the hegemonic space and simultaneously render ‘lesbian’ external to such space.
 
I suggest that health practices, concerns, and promotion are ‘in queer street’, literally troubled by the unsettling of hegemonic assumptions. Focusing on the lived, sexed body in health research, using discursive and critical theoretical tools, may offer one more way of challenging assumptions about sexuality and gender, and raise questions in the practice and analysis of health that address diversity and difference.

text: Health ‘in queer street’: constituting sickness, sexualities and bodies in the spaces of lesbian health This thesis explores lesbian health. The appeal of this project is its attention to the constitutions, resistances, and reproductions involved in the construction of ‘lesbian health’. ‘Lesbian health’ provides the context for exploring the meanings of health, sickness, sexuality, and bodies. The analysis takes place in three stages. It begins with a review of gay-positive studies of lesbian health. Second, is a discourse analysis of constructions of ‘health’, ‘illness’, and ‘sexuality’. It concludes with a critical analysis of the fluid and leaky constitutions of gendered sexualities and bodies. 

I conduct a study with 17 self-identified lesbians, using open-ended interviews that cover a variety of topics in the areas of health practices and concerns. Feminist Foucauldian approaches inform the critical discourse analysis of the interviewee’s accounts. An examination of the co-constitution of discourses about ‘health’ and ‘sickness’ in relation to ‘lesbian’ sexualities reveals a binary relationship. That is, health for lesbians is constituted as overcoming the societal pressures and exclusions related to ‘being gay’, avoiding the implication that lesbian ‘health’ or ‘sickness’ may be inherent. I draw on Elizabeth Grosz's critical analysis of the corporeal as I examine lesbian bodies in the contexts of cervical screening and dental dams. In these health promotion contexts, ‘lesbian’ bodies are brought into being, but their presence is potentially threatening. Lesbian bodies are constituted, materially and discursively, as liminal, fluid, and abject. The consequence is that disclosure as ‘lesbian’ is self-regulated. Other consequences for cervical screening and safe sex promotion are explained by the leaky fluidity of bodies and places, which reinsert ‘lesbian’ into the hegemonic space and simultaneously render ‘lesbian’ external to such space.
 
I suggest that health practices, concerns, and promotion are ‘in queer street’, literally troubled by the unsettling of hegemonic assumptions. Focusing on the lived, sexed body in health research, using discursive and critical theoretical tools, may offer one more way of challenging assumptions about sexuality and gender, and raise questions in the practice and analysis of health that address diversity and difference.

year: 2001