title: New Zealand and Maori land trusts

authors: Chevalier-Watts, Juliet

abstract: New Zealand, as in other jurisdictions, has a range of recognized trusts that would be familiar to many. These include express trusts, resulting trusts, constructive trusts, and charitable trusts. Perhaps more unfamiliar, at least to those outside New Zealand, are trusts that are unique to the New Zealand legal landscape and that are specific to Maori land. This article explores the relevance, and importance, of such trusts within New Zealand—Aotearoa. In doing so, the author considers a number of these Maori land trusts, and critically evaluates a range of issues, which includes governance; conflict of interest; unsatisfactory conduct; and dysfunction. While Maori land trusts are subject to the general laws of trust, it can be seen from the article how valuable such trusts are in recognizing and protecting Maori interests. As such, their unique nature reflects their fundamental relevance in indigenous culture, and also generally as an effective management tool for much Maori land.

text: New Zealand and Maori land trusts New Zealand, as in other jurisdictions, has a range of recognized trusts that would be familiar to many. These include express trusts, resulting trusts, constructive trusts, and charitable trusts. Perhaps more unfamiliar, at least to those outside New Zealand, are trusts that are unique to the New Zealand legal landscape and that are specific to Maori land. This article explores the relevance, and importance, of such trusts within New Zealand—Aotearoa. In doing so, the author considers a number of these Maori land trusts, and critically evaluates a range of issues, which includes governance; conflict of interest; unsatisfactory conduct; and dysfunction. While Maori land trusts are subject to the general laws of trust, it can be seen from the article how valuable such trusts are in recognizing and protecting Maori interests. As such, their unique nature reflects their fundamental relevance in indigenous culture, and also generally as an effective management tool for much Maori land.

year: 2016

title: Pākehā counsellors consider their positioning: Towards postcolonial praxis

authors: Crocket, Alastair Robert

subjects: Counselling

abstract: The challenges of achieving the potential, which the Treaty of Waitangi offers for a postcolonial present and future, have shaped life in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last four decades. This thesis draws on this history and challenge to consider the practice possibilities for Pākehā counsellors when they work with clients and colleagues of other cultures. It is strongly influenced by the Treaty of Waitangi but seeks not to be limited to a Māori/Pākehā binary. It has been undertaken in the hopes of informing developments in the practice of students seeking to qualify to work as counsellors and more experienced practitioners. The first theoretical foundation for this study is poststructuralism which is considered as a braided stream of theorizing where braids divide and unite. A Foucauldian social constructionism underlies this project, which extends to a consideration of subjectification, agency and positioning theory. This study is also intentionally postcolonial drawing on Said’s seminal works, Orientalism (1979) and Culture and Imperialism (1993) and North American and European writing about identity politics and intersectionality. It views the centring of the Treaty of Waitangi in this land as postcolonial work. These two emphases, poststructuralism and postcolonialism, provide the theoretical base for an exploration of the context of professional counselling practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Five experienced counsellors constituted a research group who firstly discussed practising as a Pākehā counsellor and then acknowledged their hopes and fears for their practice with clients of other cultures. In later stages of the data generation the participants were invited to join in processes of discourse analysis and deconstruction which produced shifts in practice and practice identity. This study identifies two forms of praxis that might inform a counselling practice which seeks to achieve a postcolonial purpose: these are named as critical discursive praxis and critical Pākehā praxis.

text: Pākehā counsellors consider their positioning: Towards postcolonial praxis The challenges of achieving the potential, which the Treaty of Waitangi offers for a postcolonial present and future, have shaped life in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last four decades. This thesis draws on this history and challenge to consider the practice possibilities for Pākehā counsellors when they work with clients and colleagues of other cultures. It is strongly influenced by the Treaty of Waitangi but seeks not to be limited to a Māori/Pākehā binary. It has been undertaken in the hopes of informing developments in the practice of students seeking to qualify to work as counsellors and more experienced practitioners. The first theoretical foundation for this study is poststructuralism which is considered as a braided stream of theorizing where braids divide and unite. A Foucauldian social constructionism underlies this project, which extends to a consideration of subjectification, agency and positioning theory. This study is also intentionally postcolonial drawing on Said’s seminal works, Orientalism (1979) and Culture and Imperialism (1993) and North American and European writing about identity politics and intersectionality. It views the centring of the Treaty of Waitangi in this land as postcolonial work. These two emphases, poststructuralism and postcolonialism, provide the theoretical base for an exploration of the context of professional counselling practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Five experienced counsellors constituted a research group who firstly discussed practising as a Pākehā counsellor and then acknowledged their hopes and fears for their practice with clients of other cultures. In later stages of the data generation the participants were invited to join in processes of discourse analysis and deconstruction which produced shifts in practice and practice identity. This study identifies two forms of praxis that might inform a counselling practice which seeks to achieve a postcolonial purpose: these are named as critical discursive praxis and critical Pākehā praxis.

year: 2010

title: Toward a theory of the general-anesthetic-induced phase transition of the cerebral cortex. I. A thermodynamics analogy

authors: Steyn-Ross, Moira L.

subjects: thermodynamics

abstract: In a recent paper the authors developed a stochastic model for the response of the cerebral cortex to a general anesthetic agent. The model predicted that there would be an anesthetic-induced phase change at the point of transition into unconsciousness, manifested as a divergence in the electroencephalogram spectral power, and a change in spectral energy distribution from being relatively broadband in the conscious state to being strongly biased towards much lower frequencies in the unconscious state. Both predictions have been verified in recent clinical measurements. In the present paper we extend the model by calculating the equilibrium distribution function for the cortex, allowing us to establish a correspondence between the cortical phase transition and the more familiar thermodynamic phase transitions. This correspondence is achieved by first identifying a cortical free energy function, then by postulating that there exists an inverse relationship between an anesthetic effect and a quantity we define as cortical excitability, which plays a role analogous to temperature in thermodynamic phase transitions. We follow standard thermodynamic theory to compute a cortical entropy and a cortical “heat capacity,” and we investigate how these will vary with anesthetic concentration. The significant result is the prediction that the entropy will decrease discontinuously at the moment of induction into unconsciousness, concomitant with a release of “latent heat” which should manifest as a divergence in the analogous heat capacity. There is clear clinical evidence of heat capacity divergence in historical anesthetic-effect measurements performed in 1977 by Stullken et al. [Anesthesiology 46, 28 (1977)]. The discontinuous step change in cortical entropy suggests that the cortical phase transition is analogous to a first-order thermodynamic transition in which the comatose-quiescent state is strongly ordered, while the active cortical state is relatively disordered.

text: Toward a theory of the general-anesthetic-induced phase transition of the cerebral cortex. I. A thermodynamics analogy In a recent paper the authors developed a stochastic model for the response of the cerebral cortex to a general anesthetic agent. The model predicted that there would be an anesthetic-induced phase change at the point of transition into unconsciousness, manifested as a divergence in the electroencephalogram spectral power, and a change in spectral energy distribution from being relatively broadband in the conscious state to being strongly biased towards much lower frequencies in the unconscious state. Both predictions have been verified in recent clinical measurements. In the present paper we extend the model by calculating the equilibrium distribution function for the cortex, allowing us to establish a correspondence between the cortical phase transition and the more familiar thermodynamic phase transitions. This correspondence is achieved by first identifying a cortical free energy function, then by postulating that there exists an inverse relationship between an anesthetic effect and a quantity we define as cortical excitability, which plays a role analogous to temperature in thermodynamic phase transitions. We follow standard thermodynamic theory to compute a cortical entropy and a cortical “heat capacity,” and we investigate how these will vary with anesthetic concentration. The significant result is the prediction that the entropy will decrease discontinuously at the moment of induction into unconsciousness, concomitant with a release of “latent heat” which should manifest as a divergence in the analogous heat capacity. There is clear clinical evidence of heat capacity divergence in historical anesthetic-effect measurements performed in 1977 by Stullken et al. [Anesthesiology 46, 28 (1977)]. The discontinuous step change in cortical entropy suggests that the cortical phase transition is analogous to a first-order thermodynamic transition in which the comatose-quiescent state is strongly ordered, while the active cortical state is relatively disordered.

year: 2001