title: "But I still love him": Women talk about love and violence, and counsellors respond

authors: Snowdon, Jennifer Mary (Jenny)

subjects: Feminist new materialist research

abstract: This feminist research enacts a new materialist performance of theory/practice that investigates love-entangled-with-violence in intimate heterosexual partner relationship. The study investigates the double dilemma of a woman’s love-connectivity to her partner that refuses to be unfelt and unthought, despite the disturbance of violence, with the counselling conundrum of how to effectively and ethically respond. The data materials were generated in two cycles of group interviews. The initial waves of data were drawn from narratives told in interviews with women whose intimate partners had subjected them to physical abuses and coercive controls produced through accretions of surveillance, accusation and constraint. These narratives were haunted by intensities of love dis-join-ted. Consequently, the women engaged with counselling or therapeutic programmes. As researcher, I wanted to learn what women had to say about their experiences of therapy and to take these readings of therapy to a group of counsellors in collective documents. In a second wave of interviews, a group of counsellors offered practice accounts of justice-doing, cut together-apart with women’s struggle, refolded into ethical considerations for finding safety. In that sense, both the counsellors and women-in-danger traversed uncertain territory. Collaborative therapeutic practices, such as those the counsellor group described in this research, act as apparatuses for interference and contestibility, and hence, for change. 

The study’s originating questions were about how power/knowledge and domination (Foucault) is exercised in heterosexual partner relationship. The theoretical arc of the study took an early turn towards new materialisms (Barad) and the affective potentialities of human-nonhuman assemblages (Massumi). Entities such as vehicles, guns and a knife, queered the trajectory of the study towards differentiating encounters with the thing power of clusters of actants other than and including humans (Bennett). The analysis of the research materials emerges through a Baradian diffractive approach, which maps the effects of difference. Taking Barad’s proposal for the inseparability of matter-discourse, the study sometimes maps affecting moments for the researcher-self onto the theoretical positions of the thesis. The contributions of this thesis are for counselling practices that attend to matter⇔discourse, including other-than-human bodies. A new materialist iteration of narrative therapy, the culmination of this research work, offers shifts in conceptual accounts of affect, and how to address what matters. These differences-in-the-(re)making are themselves indeterminate and ongoing.

text: "But I still love him": Women talk about love and violence, and counsellors respond This feminist research enacts a new materialist performance of theory/practice that investigates love-entangled-with-violence in intimate heterosexual partner relationship. The study investigates the double dilemma of a woman’s love-connectivity to her partner that refuses to be unfelt and unthought, despite the disturbance of violence, with the counselling conundrum of how to effectively and ethically respond. The data materials were generated in two cycles of group interviews. The initial waves of data were drawn from narratives told in interviews with women whose intimate partners had subjected them to physical abuses and coercive controls produced through accretions of surveillance, accusation and constraint. These narratives were haunted by intensities of love dis-join-ted. Consequently, the women engaged with counselling or therapeutic programmes. As researcher, I wanted to learn what women had to say about their experiences of therapy and to take these readings of therapy to a group of counsellors in collective documents. In a second wave of interviews, a group of counsellors offered practice accounts of justice-doing, cut together-apart with women’s struggle, refolded into ethical considerations for finding safety. In that sense, both the counsellors and women-in-danger traversed uncertain territory. Collaborative therapeutic practices, such as those the counsellor group described in this research, act as apparatuses for interference and contestibility, and hence, for change. 

The study’s originating questions were about how power/knowledge and domination (Foucault) is exercised in heterosexual partner relationship. The theoretical arc of the study took an early turn towards new materialisms (Barad) and the affective potentialities of human-nonhuman assemblages (Massumi). Entities such as vehicles, guns and a knife, queered the trajectory of the study towards differentiating encounters with the thing power of clusters of actants other than and including humans (Bennett). The analysis of the research materials emerges through a Baradian diffractive approach, which maps the effects of difference. Taking Barad’s proposal for the inseparability of matter-discourse, the study sometimes maps affecting moments for the researcher-self onto the theoretical positions of the thesis. The contributions of this thesis are for counselling practices that attend to matter⇔discourse, including other-than-human bodies. A new materialist iteration of narrative therapy, the culmination of this research work, offers shifts in conceptual accounts of affect, and how to address what matters. These differences-in-the-(re)making are themselves indeterminate and ongoing.

year: 2021

title: Business networks and the uptake of sustainability practices: the case of New Zealand

authors: Collins, Eva Marie

subjects: networks

abstract: This paper reports on the adoption of sustainability practices by a sample of over 800 firms in New Zealand, contrasting results from members of the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) with non-members. The study also examined differences related to business size. Not surprisingly, large firms were found to be more actively engaged in sustainability. On the other hand, of the sample approximately one-third cited the existence of barriers to adoption of sustainable practices. Of these, larger companies were more likely to state that costs or other priorities inhibited the adoption of such practices. Generally speaking members of an SBN were more likely than non-members to adopt environmental initiatives, citing in particular the importance of reputation and brand, but in terms of total waste and energy waste there were no significant differences between members and non-members. There were few differences between the two groups on the adoption of social practices. In assessing membership of an SBN and company size as determinants of good environmental practices, company size was found to be the more significant factor.

text: Business networks and the uptake of sustainability practices: the case of New Zealand This paper reports on the adoption of sustainability practices by a sample of over 800 firms in New Zealand, contrasting results from members of the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) with non-members. The study also examined differences related to business size. Not surprisingly, large firms were found to be more actively engaged in sustainability. On the other hand, of the sample approximately one-third cited the existence of barriers to adoption of sustainable practices. Of these, larger companies were more likely to state that costs or other priorities inhibited the adoption of such practices. Generally speaking members of an SBN were more likely than non-members to adopt environmental initiatives, citing in particular the importance of reputation and brand, but in terms of total waste and energy waste there were no significant differences between members and non-members. There were few differences between the two groups on the adoption of social practices. In assessing membership of an SBN and company size as determinants of good environmental practices, company size was found to be the more significant factor.

year: 2007

title: Indigenous people with disabilities: The argument for representation in human rights legislation (with specific reference to the development stage of the United Nations International Disability Convention)

authors: Hickey, Huhana

subjects: Tangata whaikaha

abstract: Until comparatively recently, human rights legislation was largely based on a universalist analysis. In treating all human beings alike, in failing to acknowledge the need for special measures to combat the marginalisation and oppression of particular groups, such as indigenous people and people with disabilities, it actually contributed to their invisibility and, hence, to their marginalisation and oppression. More recently, however, there has been a global trend towards the recognition of marginalised groups in human rights legislation. Even so, universalism, and the prejudice that so often accompanies it, is still in evidence. For example, although the United Nations is currently involved in drafting a Disabled Persons Convention, indigenous people with disabilities are not specifically represented. Their particular situation, one that involves a dual form of oppression (as indigenous people and as people with disabilities) is not acknowledged. Unless this situation is remedied, the Convention will inevitably be both less acceptable and less useful than would otherwise be the case.

text: Indigenous people with disabilities: The argument for representation in human rights legislation (with specific reference to the development stage of the United Nations International Disability Convention) Until comparatively recently, human rights legislation was largely based on a universalist analysis. In treating all human beings alike, in failing to acknowledge the need for special measures to combat the marginalisation and oppression of particular groups, such as indigenous people and people with disabilities, it actually contributed to their invisibility and, hence, to their marginalisation and oppression. More recently, however, there has been a global trend towards the recognition of marginalised groups in human rights legislation. Even so, universalism, and the prejudice that so often accompanies it, is still in evidence. For example, although the United Nations is currently involved in drafting a Disabled Persons Convention, indigenous people with disabilities are not specifically represented. Their particular situation, one that involves a dual form of oppression (as indigenous people and as people with disabilities) is not acknowledged. Unless this situation is remedied, the Convention will inevitably be both less acceptable and less useful than would otherwise be the case.

year: 2005-09