title: Unpredictable, Incurable, Unemployable? A Collection of Constructed Narratives Exploring the Experiences of People with Chronic Conditions in Relation to Finding and Keeping Work

authors: Uerata, Lynley Moana

subjects: Chronic Conditions

abstract: People with chronic conditions have a health problem that is characterised by longevity, permanence, incurability and unpredictability of symptoms. They face significant challenges in gaining and maintaining employment, and are often seen as unemployable. As Chapter One shows, previous research on this topic tends to focus on selected aspects of their experiences. There is little literature which examines the employment issues of people with chronic conditions in a way that pays attention to the everyday life context. The main research questions addressed in this thesis are: What are the subjective experiences of people with chronic conditions in the context of finding and keeping paid employment? What are the meanings they ascribe to those experiences? How do they interact with and operate within the micro- structures of the family, friends, the medical system and government agencies? What is the role of societal norms, values and dominant ideologies? Chapter Two describes how this research draws on a “critical interpretivist” perspective and qualitative methodology to (re)present four people‟s own stories in their own words in order to explore the subjective experiences of people with chronic conditions within the context of work and broader social structures. Two in-depth, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with these four participants, designed to capture their subjective experiences and enable the researcher to retell their stories. Their stories form the heart of the thesis in Chapter Three. In Chapter Four, each narrative is summarised to highlight the employment issues faced by each participant, and answers are provided to the research questions. People with chronic conditions contend with a complex reality. These complexities stem from the fact that they are permanent, incurable and their symptoms unpredictable. And, because there lacks policies or political mechanisms that acknowledge the complex realities they face, they contend with these by themselves and with the people who are willing to assist them. In some circumstances, they are eminently employable.

text: Unpredictable, Incurable, Unemployable? A Collection of Constructed Narratives Exploring the Experiences of People with Chronic Conditions in Relation to Finding and Keeping Work People with chronic conditions have a health problem that is characterised by longevity, permanence, incurability and unpredictability of symptoms. They face significant challenges in gaining and maintaining employment, and are often seen as unemployable. As Chapter One shows, previous research on this topic tends to focus on selected aspects of their experiences. There is little literature which examines the employment issues of people with chronic conditions in a way that pays attention to the everyday life context. The main research questions addressed in this thesis are: What are the subjective experiences of people with chronic conditions in the context of finding and keeping paid employment? What are the meanings they ascribe to those experiences? How do they interact with and operate within the micro- structures of the family, friends, the medical system and government agencies? What is the role of societal norms, values and dominant ideologies? Chapter Two describes how this research draws on a “critical interpretivist” perspective and qualitative methodology to (re)present four people‟s own stories in their own words in order to explore the subjective experiences of people with chronic conditions within the context of work and broader social structures. Two in-depth, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with these four participants, designed to capture their subjective experiences and enable the researcher to retell their stories. Their stories form the heart of the thesis in Chapter Three. In Chapter Four, each narrative is summarised to highlight the employment issues faced by each participant, and answers are provided to the research questions. People with chronic conditions contend with a complex reality. These complexities stem from the fact that they are permanent, incurable and their symptoms unpredictable. And, because there lacks policies or political mechanisms that acknowledge the complex realities they face, they contend with these by themselves and with the people who are willing to assist them. In some circumstances, they are eminently employable.

year: 2011

title: Constructing Sobol' sequences with better two-dimensional projections

authors: Joe, Stephen

subjects: Sobol' sequences

abstract: Direction numbers for generating Sobol' sequences that satisfy the so-called Property A in up to 1111 dimensions have previously been given in Joe and Kuo [ACM Trans. Math. Software, 29 (2003), pp. 49–57]. However, these Sobol' sequences may have poor two-dimensional projections. Here we provide a new set of direction numbers alleviating this problem. These are obtained by treating Sobol' sequences in d dimensions as (t, d)-sequences and then optimizing the t-values of the two-dimensional projections. Our target dimension is 21201.

text: Constructing Sobol' sequences with better two-dimensional projections Direction numbers for generating Sobol' sequences that satisfy the so-called Property A in up to 1111 dimensions have previously been given in Joe and Kuo [ACM Trans. Math. Software, 29 (2003), pp. 49–57]. However, these Sobol' sequences may have poor two-dimensional projections. Here we provide a new set of direction numbers alleviating this problem. These are obtained by treating Sobol' sequences in d dimensions as (t, d)-sequences and then optimizing the t-values of the two-dimensional projections. Our target dimension is 21201.

year: 2008-08

title: Political critique and genealogical vision in te oriori a Rihi Puhiwahine, 1870s

authors: Iti Prendergast, Sam

abstract: Long before twentieth-century scholars developed the language to describe 'settler colonialism', nineteenth-century Māori writers, composers, and storytellers critiqued British imperialism and theorized colonial violence. In mōteatea, letters, and kōrero heke iho (narratives passed down), tūpuna Māori asked what British colonial settlement would mean for te ao Māori, the Māori world. As they reflected on the changes wrought by imperialism, tūpuna offered guidance for future uri (descendants). This is an article about the ways that one wahine Māori critiqued colonization and imagined Māori futures in the context of mid-nineteenth-century colonial invasion. More specifically, it is an article about how Rihi Puhiwahine, a renowned composer, guided her descendants through a world disfigured by British imperialism.

text: Political critique and genealogical vision in te oriori a Rihi Puhiwahine, 1870s Long before twentieth-century scholars developed the language to describe 'settler colonialism', nineteenth-century Māori writers, composers, and storytellers critiqued British imperialism and theorized colonial violence. In mōteatea, letters, and kōrero heke iho (narratives passed down), tūpuna Māori asked what British colonial settlement would mean for te ao Māori, the Māori world. As they reflected on the changes wrought by imperialism, tūpuna offered guidance for future uri (descendants). This is an article about the ways that one wahine Māori critiqued colonization and imagined Māori futures in the context of mid-nineteenth-century colonial invasion. More specifically, it is an article about how Rihi Puhiwahine, a renowned composer, guided her descendants through a world disfigured by British imperialism.

year: 2024