Koi te hinengaro, koi te arero, koi te mahi!
Sharp of mind, tongue, and work!
Like what we do? Find out more.
Good research should never be one-sided, the researcher shouldn’t just be scrawling notes on the little ‘other’ people they observe below them. This discussion made me realise good social research is about bridging the gap between the researcher and the researched. To...
One of the messages that resonates mostly strongly with me was Carisa Showden's reminder that the assumptions one brings to the research process need to be treated delicately. It is far to easy to let ill-founded assumptions taint your research process in a way that...
Dr Patrick Thomsen's lecture early this semester stood out to me, for a number of reasons. His open attitude, his area of study, and, most significantly, his research method. Dr Thomsen collected his data through Talanoa, a Pasifika term derived from the words "Tatala...
THERE was once a man and a lion travelling together through a forest, debating who was more powerful. Whilst disputing, they passed a statue depicting a man strangling a lion. “Ha!” Said the man. “See there! Look how strong we are, prevailing even over the king of...
Let me start this reflection with a comment going back to the second week of this semester when Patrick Tomsen explained the importance of genealogy, that "it is iterative, living, and shifts with the lived experiences of the researcher in relation to the society they...
The discussion with Tracey McIntosh, Jemaima Tiatia-Seath, Nicole Perry and Carisa Showden was profoundly insightful; it made me consider power balances and inequities that had not even crossed my mind before. What stood out in relation to my personal research journey...
How do military and civilian food culture mimic each other? This post is just a train of thoughts that go in many directions, but may also trigger you to think or extend these ideas. However, I would like to start with canned food. As we know from the lecture, it was...
This year, amidst the lock down and the chaos, many New Zealanders are planning the long, arduous trek to the letter box to stand and honour the traditions of a nation, a stationary dawn parade for ANZAC day. Even while relegated to the confines of our properties,...
As coronavirus ravages through the world, I feel odd basking in inner peace. Solitude, and time with my family have left me with hours to enjoy the simpler pleasures that life normally gets in the way of. Picking out tomorrow’s lunch recipe with my family the night...
What language is the Bible in? There's no clear answer to this question, given that the Bible is constructed from many disparate parts that in places contradict each other, written in many languages and translated over and over again, through the many centuries the...
An unnerving idea proposed in Sinisa Malesevic’s The Sociology of War and Violence I keep returning to is that war is necessary in order to facilitate rapid progress. Although I largely brushed it aside as the product of bellicose sociology and the process of...
When assessing preparedness for conflict, the institutions for peace conflict with the absence of historical precedent. Hence we must look beyond our borders to observe foreign response to conflict: in doing so we facilitate the transformation of livelihood and relationships in a domestic context of conflict.