title: The Fast and the Spurious: Geographies of Youth Car Culture in Hamilton, New Zealand

authors: Beere, Paul

subjects: boy racers

abstract: “Boy racers” or “hoons” attract extensive media attention and are often the focus of public concern. Discourses about “hooning” often focus on notions of public safety and illegal behaviour. What is largely absent from these debates is alternative explanations as to why young people choose to engage in “hooning” behaviour, what drives them to congregate in public spaces and why they choose to express themselves through an “autocentric” culture. When these issues are addressed it is usually within broader policy frameworks which seek ways of dissipating youth activities in spaces constructed as “trouble spots”. This thesis represents an attempt to provide a reverse discourse about youth car culture and young people's presence in public spaces. Criminal activity not withstanding, youth car culture behaviour in this context is treated as a legitimate form of cultural expression that has the same social validity as other non-mainstream phenomena. Through feminist and poststructuralist understandings of identities, landscapes and place, the complexities of youth car culture will be unpacked in an attempt to expose “concerns” which may turn out to be little more than moral panic.

text: The Fast and the Spurious: Geographies of Youth Car Culture in Hamilton, New Zealand “Boy racers” or “hoons” attract extensive media attention and are often the focus of public concern. Discourses about “hooning” often focus on notions of public safety and illegal behaviour. What is largely absent from these debates is alternative explanations as to why young people choose to engage in “hooning” behaviour, what drives them to congregate in public spaces and why they choose to express themselves through an “autocentric” culture. When these issues are addressed it is usually within broader policy frameworks which seek ways of dissipating youth activities in spaces constructed as “trouble spots”. This thesis represents an attempt to provide a reverse discourse about youth car culture and young people's presence in public spaces. Criminal activity not withstanding, youth car culture behaviour in this context is treated as a legitimate form of cultural expression that has the same social validity as other non-mainstream phenomena. Through feminist and poststructuralist understandings of identities, landscapes and place, the complexities of youth car culture will be unpacked in an attempt to expose “concerns” which may turn out to be little more than moral panic.

year: 2007

title: Muslim-Jewish relations: some Islamic paradigms

authors: Pratt, Douglas

subjects: Islam

abstract: There is, arguably, an urgent need today for a critical understanding of Islamic views and ideological stances with respect to Judaism in general and, inter alia, with regard to Israel and Jews in particular. This is necessary in order to seek ways of addressing salient and pressing socio-political and inter-communal, if not directly interreligious, issues. This article identifies and discusses some leading Islamic ideological leitmotifs that have been determinative for the history of Jewish-Muslim relations. They remain critically important with respect to the way in which, broadly speaking, the Islamic world of today perceives and relates to Jews and Judaism. Addressing the impact of negative paradigms of Muslim-Jewish relations, and the identifying and promoting of positive paradigms instead, constitutes a profound and urgent challenge facing contemporary Islam.

text: Muslim-Jewish relations: some Islamic paradigms There is, arguably, an urgent need today for a critical understanding of Islamic views and ideological stances with respect to Judaism in general and, inter alia, with regard to Israel and Jews in particular. This is necessary in order to seek ways of addressing salient and pressing socio-political and inter-communal, if not directly interreligious, issues. This article identifies and discusses some leading Islamic ideological leitmotifs that have been determinative for the history of Jewish-Muslim relations. They remain critically important with respect to the way in which, broadly speaking, the Islamic world of today perceives and relates to Jews and Judaism. Addressing the impact of negative paradigms of Muslim-Jewish relations, and the identifying and promoting of positive paradigms instead, constitutes a profound and urgent challenge facing contemporary Islam.

year: 2010

title: My responsibility in the face of mass extinction

authors: Gray-Sharp, Katarina

subjects: autoethnography

abstract: Extinction is the “irreversible condition of a species or other group of organisms having no living representatives in the wild, which follows the death of the last surviving individual of that species or group” (Hine and Martin 2015g, para. 1). Mass extinctions are extinctions of the greatest magnitude, occurring “when many diverse groups of organisms become extinct over short periods of time” (Condie 2011, 250). These “are not step-events but rather a step into a prolonged alternative global ecosystem state” (Hull 2015, R941). Five mass extinctions have previously been recorded. A sixth has begun. Humans are the cause of the latest episode.

This thesis develops an Indigenous, non-agential conception of responsibility for considering an ethical problem of wide consequence. Founded in mātauranga Māori and recalling the work of Emmanuel Levinas, it applies Kaupapa Māori autoethnography, narrative, and conceptual analyses alongside exegeses and a replication study. Investigations of responsibility across various positions are encountered: those found in place and polity, those made as visitor and the commanded, those gifted as inherited erudition and in the suffering-with. Now facing the last structural violence, what is my responsibility?

text: My responsibility in the face of mass extinction Extinction is the “irreversible condition of a species or other group of organisms having no living representatives in the wild, which follows the death of the last surviving individual of that species or group” (Hine and Martin 2015g, para. 1). Mass extinctions are extinctions of the greatest magnitude, occurring “when many diverse groups of organisms become extinct over short periods of time” (Condie 2011, 250). These “are not step-events but rather a step into a prolonged alternative global ecosystem state” (Hull 2015, R941). Five mass extinctions have previously been recorded. A sixth has begun. Humans are the cause of the latest episode.

This thesis develops an Indigenous, non-agential conception of responsibility for considering an ethical problem of wide consequence. Founded in mātauranga Māori and recalling the work of Emmanuel Levinas, it applies Kaupapa Māori autoethnography, narrative, and conceptual analyses alongside exegeses and a replication study. Investigations of responsibility across various positions are encountered: those found in place and polity, those made as visitor and the commanded, those gifted as inherited erudition and in the suffering-with. Now facing the last structural violence, what is my responsibility?

year: 2021