The reflexive museum - opening the door to behind the scenes

In this paper I argue for a shift in conceptualising exhibitions: from products to be presented to processes to be revealed. I will explore how museum theory and praxis are inextricably intertwined and can be brought into fruitful dialogue within an exhibition setting. By revealing the processes leading to the definition of categories and the interpretation of identities, and by giving faces to decisions made, the ‘reflexive museum’ can become an embodiment of democracy, which does not silence controversies but gives diversity public voices. First, I sketch out recent academic musings on museological approaches. Then I present some examples of exhibitions in Germany in which these theories have been put into praxis. I conclude by arguing for a symbiotic relationship of museum theory and praxis enabling the museum to realise its unique potential as a dynamic ‘playground’ between academia and the public.

Life and living in advanced age: a cohort study in New Zealand - Te Puāwaitanga o Nga Tapuwae Kia Ora Tonu, LiLACS NZ: Study protocol

The number of people of advanced age (85 years and older) is increasing and health systems may be challenged by increasing health-related needs. Recent overseas evidence suggests relatively high levels of wellbeing in this group, however little is known about people of advanced age, particularly the indigenous Māori, in Aotearoa, New Zealand. This paper outlines the methods of the study Life and Living in Advanced Age: A Cohort Study in New Zealand. The study aimed to establish predictors of successful advanced ageing and understand the relative importance of health, frailty, cultural, social & economic factors to successful ageing for Māori and non-Māori in New Zealand.

Kaupapa Māori methodology: trusting the methodology through thick and thin

Kaupapa Māori is thoroughly theorised in academia in Aotearoa and those wishing to use it as their research methodology can find support through the writing of a number of Māori academics. What is not so well articulated, is the experiential voice of those who have used Kaupapa Māori as research methodology. My identity as a Māori woman researching with Māori women became integral to my methodology and approach to the research. The highs and lows of my research experiences with Kaupapa Māori methodology are examined in this article. The discussion contends that Kaupapa Māori research methodology can be a framework, guide and support for research within a Māori context and adds an experiential aspect to understanding the wider field of Indigenous research methodology. My hope is that through my experience with Kaupapa Māori methodology other Māori and Indigenous researchers will be eager to embrace their own research methodologies.

Rethinking news media and local government: journalism, politics and symbolic power

This essay explores why the relationship between news media and local government has been of little interest in journalism studies, especially in the Australian context. We argue that the reasons are complex but can be traced to issues of symbolic recognition and legitimacy. An overview of local government and news media in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand grounds the discussion in journalism and democratic theory. We draw on Bourdieu’s tradition of field-based research and theories of media power to highlight the important role 19th-century newspapers played in the establishment of municipalities. We then argue that local government’s omission from the Australian Constitution relates to issues of legitimacy and recognition that are reflected in the wider field of power and perpetuated within journalism practice and scholarship. Finally, practitioner perspectives and contemporary research underline the need for critical engagement and inquiry that recognise the fundamental importance of news and politics closest to the people.

First law and the force of water: law, water, entitlement

In this essay, the authors respond to several of the papers included in this special issue. First reflecting on the relation between waters, ‘First law’,1 and settler law, the authors then draw connections between some of the contributions to the issue. Water, the authors contend, is a productive site for thinking through the organs and processes of settler law, though such attention, they argue, also reveals how the ‘constitutional’ question of waters is occluded by the presence and dominance of settler law. The final section turns to Aotearoa/New Zealand as a negative example of this situation, one in which the constituting force of waters is nullified by the incorporation of indigenous politics within the processes and institutions of the settler legal order.

Interweaving whakapapa through Māori women educators' pedagogy

The strand of whakapapa - genealogy - weaves through Māori women educators '. Pedagogy This article is based on research carried out with three eminent Māori women educators from Aotearoa New Zealand, which answered the question' what is Māori women educators 'pedagogy?' The research used the Indigenous kaupapa Māori research methodology, which is based on Māori worldviews. From the research I developed a metaphor, which was based on a style of Māori weaving called whatu to articulate Māori women educators pedagogy. A crucial element of the metaphor was the whenu - the warp The whenu represented tikanga -.. whānau and hapū values, traditions and belief systems The data in my research, suggests that identity and in particular whakapapa, a strand of the whenu, were a fundamental aspect of Māori women educators' pedagogy. This article discusses whakapapa and its integral relationship with each of three themes of Māori women educators' pedagogy and how they interact.

Summer reading series #2 : seeing eye to eye

Martin Rumsby’s Eye I Aye (2007) appears a straightforward, almost naive film. A camera is zoomed into a flat image of a community bench in front of a shop, with cars and some pedestrians passing by. It could be any suburban street. At times the de-facto main characters Dida and Erana or their surrogates are seated there, both are of mixed race from Māori and Pākehā parents and the soundtrack frames their ‘history’. This meditation is interrupted by the weather, with sheets of raindrops caught by the camera’s autofocus, patterning the window, wiping out the outside scene. Later Rumsby also inserts his body and face between the camera and window, his eyes in shot re-securing the camera’s position. This technical tampering registers as unsettling and suspicious.

Other people's country : law, water, entitlement

This issue of Settler Colonial Studies comes out of a long-term collaboration between the guest editors which began, in earnest, with a panel on the theme of ‘Other People’s Country: Law, Water, Entitlement’ at the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference held at the University of Sydney in December 2012. The panel’s topic was drawn from our own work on encounters between settler and indigenous ‘laws’ over specific waters, including Lake Omapere in the Hokianga district of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada, Lake Cayuga in upper New York State, and the Wenlock, Archer, Stewart and Lockhart rivers in far north Queensland, Australia.1 Further, the conference’s provocative title (Materialities: Economies, Empiricism, & Things) corresponded to our own interest in thinking through the entangled objects of law – legislation, policies, institutions, treaties and so on – that ‘govern’ waters and that make bodies of water ‘lawful’ within these settler colonial sites today. Informed by the theoretical interventions of cosmopolitics and political ecology, each opening up new approaches to questions of politics and ‘the political’, we were interested in attempting to locate these insights within material settler colonial ‘places’ rather than abstract structures of domination. A claim to water is not simply a claim to a resource. It is a claim to knowledge and to the constitution of place and therefore, in the terms of Isabelle Stengers, to the continued constitution of the past, present and future of a ‘real world’.