- School of People, Environment & Planning
Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa | Massey University
Private Bag 11-222
Papaioea | Palmerston North 4442
- University of Canterbury/Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, Geography, Faculty Memberadd
- Ethnography, China, Feminist Geography, Mothering, Community Economies, Diverse Economies, and 31 moreQinghai, Environmental Studies, Medical Anthropology, Development Studies, Geography, Culture, Community Development, Cultural Tourism, Sustainable Tourism, Chinese Studies, Methodology, Empowerment, Tourism Geography, Anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas, Tibetan, China Tourism, Gender and women in the workplace, Women Leadership, Gender, Ontology, Environmental Sustainability, Urban Political Ecology, Ecological Humanities, Anthropocene, Community Ecology, Food Sovereignty, Political Ecology, Participatory Action Research, Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, and Human Geographyedit
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This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in The handbook of diverse economies edited by edited by J.K. Gibson-Graham (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia), Kelly Dombroski (University of... more
This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in The handbook of diverse economies edited by edited by J.K. Gibson-Graham (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia), Kelly Dombroski (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), published in 2020, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-handbook-of-diverse-economies-9781788119955.html The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.
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Exploring the potential of mass tourism in the facilitation of community development : a case study of Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, Western China : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, New...more
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Research Interests: Sociology, Geography, Human Geography, Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, and 15 moreEmbodiment, Politics, Gender, Personhood, Feminist history, Feminist Geography, Intersectionality, New Zealand, Care, Scholarship, Public Administration and Policy, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Mana Wahine, Aotearoa, and Indigenous
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In this commentary, we reflect on our work with an urban youth farm where young people (re)connect to the food system. Participating in everyday soil creation and care activities nurtured new relationships with more‐than‐human ecologies... more
In this commentary, we reflect on our work with an urban youth farm where young people (re)connect to the food system. Participating in everyday soil creation and care activities nurtured new relationships with more‐than‐human ecologies and beings at an urban farm called Cultivate Christchurch. In this farm, participants engaged with soils and the process of making and regenerating soil from food waste via composting. We ask whether such activities can begin to help participants think with soil rather than about it, and to heal the ‘metabolic rift’, the socioecological disconnect from food growing and nutrient cycles.
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Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions... more
Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language.
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A model of “community economies” is arising from a feminist critique of political economy that rejects its features of dominance and subordination. This model is an ongoing process of negotiating our interdependence based on six... more
A model of “community economies” is arising from a feminist critique of political economy that rejects its features of dominance and subordination. This model is an ongoing process of negotiating our interdependence based on six coordinates: survival, surplus, transactions, consumption, commons, and investment. One set of emerging strategies activates a politics of language to describe economic diversity and make current ethical economic practices visible. A second set broadens the horizon of economic politics so that ethical economic practices might multiply. More than a dozen projects in various parts of the world illustrate how these collective actions work in practice
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Arisan is an Indonesian economic practice which has been in existence for hundreds of years, and is believed to have been brought to Indonesia by Chinese merchants interacting with the Orang Asli Indigenous people. It has primarily been a... more
Arisan is an Indonesian economic practice which has been in existence for hundreds of years, and is believed to have been brought to Indonesia by Chinese merchants interacting with the Orang Asli Indigenous people. It has primarily been a financing and social activity for women. The rules of the practice are that each member of the group puts in the same amount of money each at meeting, and each member gets one turn “winning” the collective sum. The round is finished when everyone has received the money. As a part of a set of traditional practices of helping each other (gotong royong), the Arisan member may ask the round winner to swap their turn in any emergency situation, so he/she can access the money without any interest paid. While anthropologist Clifford Geertz describes Arisan as a middle rung in an economy moving from traditional to capitalist, we argue it continues to provide valuable financial support to women in contemporary times. It is also a platform for women in the c...
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In 2007, the editorial team introduced the Gender, Place and Culture Annual Award for New and Emerging Scholars with funds supplied by Taylor & Francis (please see the 2011 Gender, Place and Culture Award announcement and call for... more
In 2007, the editorial team introduced the Gender, Place and Culture Annual Award for New and Emerging Scholars with funds supplied by Taylor & Francis (please see the 2011 Gender, Place and Culture Award announcement and call for applications in this issue). We are pleased to announce that for 2010 we have two award winners: Ms Zin Mar Oo, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand and Ms Kelly Dombroski, University of Western Sydney, Australia. Congratulations and best wishes for your continued work in the field of feminist geography!
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At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing-led governance frameworks that engage with both human and more-than-human wellbeing. Attempts to incorporate wellbeing indices into... more
At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing-led governance frameworks that engage with both human and more-than-human wellbeing. Attempts to incorporate wellbeing indices into wellbeing-led governance include the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the Gross National Happiness index of Bhutan, and a variety of emerging wellbeing-led governance frameworks in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some of these frameworks have begun to include more-than-human wellbeing indices in their toolkit, but like many geographers and Indigenous scholars, we are wary of the dangers of universalising and abstractionist ‘indexology’ ( Ratuva, 2016 ). In this paper, we review wellbeing-led governance frameworks with a view to more-than-human wellbeing and Indigenous knowledge. We outline an emerging pluriversal and prefigurative project where Indigenous scholars engage with partners in co-creation methods in...
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In this commentary, we reflect on our work with an urban youth farm where young people (re)connect to the food system. Participating in everyday soil creation and care activities nurtured new relationships with more-than-human ecologies... more
In this commentary, we reflect on our work with an urban youth farm where young people (re)connect to the food system. Participating in everyday soil creation and care activities nurtured new relationships with more-than-human ecologies and beings at an urban farm called Cultivate Christchurch. In this farm, participants engaged with soils and the process of making and regenerating soil from food waste via composting. We ask whether such activities can begin to help participants think with soil rather than about it, and to heal the 'metabolic rift', the socioecological disconnect from food growing and nutrient cycles.
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Urban wellbeing is an issue of global importance, as urban populations expand to incorporate more than 50 percent of the global population. Key urban challenges include crowded informal settlements in the Majority World (the Global... more
Urban wellbeing is an issue of global importance, as urban populations expand to incorporate more than 50 percent of the global population. Key urban challenges include crowded informal settlements in the Majority World (the Global 'South') and isolation and inequality in the Minority World (the Global 'North'). This chapter explores the potential of commoning to support and enhance urban wellbeing, through a consideration of two case studies: Kallyanpur Slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and an inner city urban farm in Christchurch, New Zealand. We suggest that commoning approaches evident in both cities have contributed to the wellbeing of their urban residents. We identify two key insights that commoning for urban wellbeing can provide: firstly, that wellbeing is a collective endeavour and, secondly, that the 'commons' of wellbeing extends beyond those directly involved in commoning activities to include other human and 'more-than-human' communities.
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Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions... more
Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language.
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In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to research, centred on Indigenous Māori knowledge, while opening space for cross-cultural perspectives and co-creation methods. We address the... more
In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to research, centred on Indigenous Māori knowledge, while opening space for cross-cultural perspectives and co-creation methods. We address the responses authored by Meg Parsons, Wendy Steele and Wendy Harcourt, starting by summarising what we took from each contribution. We discuss key questions raised by each of the authors in the context of the evolving research programme and broader developments on wellbeing governance in Aotearoa. Pluriversal and prefigurative experimental approaches are key to testing and iteratively advancing the research agenda in disruptive times.
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This report summarises the research and explains how we used the CEROI tool to document and measure the transformative social and environmental outcomes of Cultivate’s activities. Cultivate is the site in which effort, relationships,... more
This report summarises the research and explains how we used the CEROI tool to document and measure the transformative social and environmental outcomes of Cultivate’s activities. Cultivate is the site in which effort, relationships, money and materials are brought together. It is a site which produces a significant amount of food, but its benefits also extend to changed lives, changed relationships, and a more positive sense of Christchurch as a post-disaster city. These returns on Cultivate’s activities are not captured by notions of profit, ‘savings from helping young people to avoid the justice system’, or even the production of ‘good workers for the economy’. Instead, they might be described as ‘something more’. This research responds to the need to develop a language and an approach to thinking about value that helps us to represent this ‘something more’. We show how the concept of return on investment from a community economies perspective can enable us to describe and document this return in a more holistic sense (especially in comparison to conventional financial accounting approaches). We also suggest that the Cultivate case study offers an important example of how mental wellbeing and access to therapeutic urban environments can be addressed through the work of a self-sustaining community enterprise. In offering this perspective, we acknowledge that further work is required to refine the CEROI tool, so that it can be used to support the work of other community and social enterprises.
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Urban communities around the world are using farming and gardening to promote food security, social inclusion and wellbeing. For Christchurch-based Cultivate, urban farms are not only physical places but also incorporate an innovative... more
Urban communities around the world are using farming and gardening to promote food security, social inclusion and wellbeing. For Christchurch-based Cultivate, urban farms are not only physical places but also incorporate an innovative community economy premised on using common resources such as vacant urban land and green waste, to offer care for urban youth. Cultivate’s two urban farms are an important aspect of this care, for it is here that supportive and informally therapeutic environments are co-created and experienced by youth interns, urban farmers, trained social workers and volunteers. Cultivate’s urban farms are innovative examples of creative urban wellbeing initiatives that may be valuable for other organisations seeking to promote youth wellbeing and social development, both across New Zealand and further afield. To document and measure the holistic impact of Cultivate, we used a collaborative approach with Cultivate stakeholders to further develop an existing assessment tool: the Community Economy Return on Investment (CEROI). The project will finish in November 2018 with a series of workshops with urban designers to test and promote the use of the tool as a method for communicating the non-monetary return on investment to a wider community involved with other urban wellbeing projects.
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Exploring the potential of mass tourism in the facilitation of community development : a case study of Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, Western China : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, New...more
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Research at the intersection of wellbeing and economy has tried to understand socio-economic ‘development’ differently. Yet it has often done so by conceiving of wellness in narrowly individualistic terms, easily overlapping with economic... more
Research at the intersection of wellbeing and economy has tried to understand socio-economic ‘development’ differently. Yet it has often done so by conceiving of wellness in narrowly individualistic terms, easily overlapping with economic modelling based on individual rational economic actors. In this chapter, we reclaim wellbeing as a socio-economic concept based not on individual wellness or happiness, but collective practices of ‘surviving well together’. To do so, we draw from the vibrant scholarly tradition of diverse economies and community economies. The chapter introduces key ‘community economy’ concepts and discusses the implications of undertaking participatory wellbeing research using this approach.
Research Interests: Sociology, Psychology, Geography, Human Geography, Development Economics, and 13 moreFeminist Theory, Ethnography, Community Development, Sustainable Development, Quality of life, Social Enterprises, DeGrowth, Happiness and Well Being, Wellbeing, Feminist Political Economy, Community Economic Development, Feminist Political Ecology, and Post-Capitalism
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This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in The handbook of diverse economies edited by edited by J.K. Gibson-Graham (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia), Kelly Dombroski (University of... more
This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in The handbook of diverse economies edited by edited by J.K. Gibson-Graham (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia), Kelly Dombroski (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), published in 2020, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-handbook-of-diverse-economies-9781788119955.html The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.
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Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 involves transformational change in the business of business, and social enterprises can lead the way in such change. We studied Cultivate, one such social enterprise in Christchurch, New... more
Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 involves transformational change in the business of business, and social enterprises can lead the way in such change. We studied Cultivate, one such social enterprise in Christchurch, New Zealand, a city still recovering from the 2010/11 Canterbury earthquakes. Cultivate works with vulnerable youth to transform donated compost into garden vegetables for local restaurants and businesses. Cultivate’s objectives align with SDG concerns with poverty and hunger (1 & 2), social protection (3 & 4), and sustainable human settlements (6 & 11). Like many grant-supported organisations, Cultivate is required to track and measure its progress. Given the organisation’s holistic objectives, however, adequately accounting for its impact reporting is not straightforward. Our action research project engaged Cultivate staff and youth-workers to generate meaningful ways of measuring impact. Elaborating the Community Economy Return on Investment tool (CEROI), we explore how participatory audit processes can capture impacts on individuals, organisations, and the wider community in ways that extend capacities to act collectively. We conclude that Cultivate and social enterprises like it offer insights regarding how to align values and practices, commercial activity and wellbeing in ways that accrue to individuals, organisations and the broader civic-community.
All over the world, climate change adaptation interventions (CCAIs) are being implemented in a variety of ways, but mostly monitored using outcomes-based monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks that are prone to oversimplification and... more
All over the world, climate change adaptation interventions (CCAIs) are being implemented in a variety of ways, but mostly monitored using outcomes-based monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks that are prone to oversimplification and outside-imposed priorities and knowledges about climate change. Existing monitoring and evaluation practices can only provide results with reference to project goals and processes, and tend to be top-down and neo-colonial in method and scope. This means they may frequently miss unexpected or localised aspects of adaptation interventions, some of which may be useful beyond the local level. While it may be possible to just explore the neo-colonial aspects of this political ecology of monitoring and evaluation of climate change adaptation interventions in our fieldwork in Thai Binh Province of Vietnam, an affirmative political ecology also tries to identify and proliferate alternative possibilities for meaningful monitoring and evaluation of adaptation...
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Introduction Postdevelopment began in the domain of academic critique, a critique sometimes so scathing that it was read as a wholesale rejection of development. In our reading however, those critiques expressed a disappointment and... more
Introduction Postdevelopment began in the domain of academic critique, a critique sometimes so scathing that it was read as a wholesale rejection of development. In our reading however, those critiques expressed a disappointment and betrayal felt by those who saw that the development industry (multilateral or bilateral aid, INGOs and charitable organisations) had been founded on some worthwhile altruistic intention. The intention and the promise of a more equitable world, a global sharing of knowledge and resources, and greater shared wellbeing were, and remain, worthwhile goals. But from the beginning the industry was mired in the ethnocentrism and arrogance of the ‘First World’, colonial legacies of dispossession and destruction, and the emergence of institutions that would form the bedrock of contemporary global capitalism. In the late 1980s and 1990s, postdevelopment scholars provided a minority voice against the development machine, but never rejected the idea that greater glob...
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Many scientific research projects carried out in developing countries gather data and fail to return any summary of the findings to the community that provided the data. Residents from communities experiencing water issues are therefore... more
Many scientific research projects carried out in developing countries gather data and fail to return any summary of the findings to the community that provided the data. Residents from communities experiencing water issues are therefore deprived of effective participation in the use of findings, since communities might be seen as only a source of data. Indigenous writers have revealed the injustice of this reality and have suggested that this is typical of colonial or ‘colonising’ research methods. It is concerning because accessing research knowledge encourages communities to examine their issues and empowers them to formulate solutions. Inspired by decolonising methodologies, we explored different ‘decolonising’ approaches to returning research findings to participant communities using the results of a recent water research project conducted in Ndola, Copperbelt Province, Zambia. In this case study, we describe participant communities experience regarding access to research findin...
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Abstract The Great East-Japan Disaster, which began with the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, prompted discussions throughout the Japanese lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community on the vulnerabilities that LGBT... more
Abstract The Great East-Japan Disaster, which began with the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, prompted discussions throughout the Japanese lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community on the vulnerabilities that LGBT people face during disaster because of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. This short essay shares some of the post-disaster experiences, challenges and discussions of the LGBT community in Japan. Reports coming out of the LGBT community have stressed that pre-disaster discrimination and fears of discrimination and repression among LGBT people have hampered their recovery. There is a real fear of being discriminated against and having their family and friends discriminated against. This situation has led to the isolation and vulnerability of LGBT individuals. Despite the majority being reluctant to come out publically, the disaster forced numerous individuals to reveal their gender identity, particularly when confronted with life in shelters, the lack of supply of medication and so on. In turn, this has resulted in instances of discrimination and bullying. These accounts reveal that the main aims of disaster policies and disaster ethics – based on addressing the greatest good of the majority – largely fail to cater for LGBT people, who are not only victims of the disaster but can also be valuable contributors in the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) process.
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An interactive book review of Miranda Joseph's book, Debt to Society.
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Research Interests: Social Change, Geography, Geography, Human Geography, Feminist Theory, and 12 moreEthnography, Qualitative methodology, Actor Network Theory, Health Geography, Multiple Modernities, Human Pregnancy, Birth And Breastfeeding, STS (Anthropology), Structuralism/Post-Structuralism, Anthropology of China, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene, and Community Economies
Structured Abstract for International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy Purpose The article uses a case study of an online parenting forum to theorise how mothers’ everyday environmental and caring labour is a form of environmental... more
Structured Abstract for International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy
Purpose
The article uses a case study of an online parenting forum to theorise how mothers’ everyday
environmental and caring labour is a form of environmental and social activism in the home, that
while not organised as such, is still collectivised in a ‘hybrid activist collective’.
Design/methodology/approach
Using ethnographic data and content analysis from an online parenting forum for the nappy-free
infant hygiene practice known as ‘elimination communication’, the author compares the matters
of key concern arising for this group of mothers with economic activist concerns as identified by
Gibson-Graham, Cameron and Healy (2013) in their community economies work.
Findings
The article finds a high degree of resonance between the key concerns of the elimination
communication forum members with the key concerns of community economies. Furthermore,
the author identifies the components of what might comprise a ‘hybrid activist collective’ of
mothers and others undertaking direct action for environmental and social change.
Social implications
Mothers and others acting for social and environmental change in the home environment should
be encouraged and recognised for their important environmental and caring labour.
Originality/value
The article proposes the ‘hybrid activist collective’ as a way of understanding the human and
non-human elements that gather together to act for environmental and social change in
collectivised, but not formally organised, manner.
Purpose
The article uses a case study of an online parenting forum to theorise how mothers’ everyday
environmental and caring labour is a form of environmental and social activism in the home, that
while not organised as such, is still collectivised in a ‘hybrid activist collective’.
Design/methodology/approach
Using ethnographic data and content analysis from an online parenting forum for the nappy-free
infant hygiene practice known as ‘elimination communication’, the author compares the matters
of key concern arising for this group of mothers with economic activist concerns as identified by
Gibson-Graham, Cameron and Healy (2013) in their community economies work.
Findings
The article finds a high degree of resonance between the key concerns of the elimination
communication forum members with the key concerns of community economies. Furthermore,
the author identifies the components of what might comprise a ‘hybrid activist collective’ of
mothers and others undertaking direct action for environmental and social change.
Social implications
Mothers and others acting for social and environmental change in the home environment should
be encouraged and recognised for their important environmental and caring labour.
Originality/value
The article proposes the ‘hybrid activist collective’ as a way of understanding the human and
non-human elements that gather together to act for environmental and social change in
collectivised, but not formally organised, manner.
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Research at the intersection of wellbeing and economy has tried to understand socio-economic ‘development’ differently. Yet it has often done so by conceiving of wellness in narrowly individualistic terms, easily overlapping with economic... more
Research at the intersection of wellbeing and economy has tried to understand socio-economic ‘development’ differently. Yet it has often done so by conceiving of wellness in narrowly individualistic terms, easily overlapping with economic modelling based on individual rational economic actors. In this chapter, we reclaim wellbeing as a socio-economic concept based not on individual wellness or happiness, but collective practices of ‘surviving well together’. To do so, we draw from the vibrant scholarly tradition of diverse economies and community economies. The chapter introduces key ‘community economy’ concepts and discusses the implications of undertaking participatory wellbeing research using this approach.