SAANZ Conference 2024

Chair: Chamsy el-Ojeili

Lara Greaves
“Where do I enrol for my special treatment?” The effects of public backlash on an online Māori Electoral roll survey project

The online environment is becoming increasingly hostile to social science researchers both globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. This research explores the issues confronted by a group of (mainly) Māori scholars in trying to conduct an online survey in the public domain about Māori electoral roll choices. Here, we describe the experience of conducting a survey online though three effects: (1) effects on the project administration, (2) effects on the researchers, and (3) the effects on the data. To supplement this discussion, we present an analysis of some of the online comments on the publicly available Facebook advertisements for the survey (n=157). Given the content of the comments, we created codes based on Moewaka Barnes and colleagues’ (2012) 14 Anti-Māori Themes and added supplementary codes. We describe the effects on the researchers and our efforts around a safety plan. We also present analysis of participant data in the survey (n=1,958) compared to the nationally representative New Zealand Election Study (n=747 of Māori descent), which, encouragingly, shows no discernible effect on the data collection. The research note illustrates pitfalls in the online environment for a Māori political science project and highlights potential issues for Aotearoa New Zealand.


Diwakar Khanal
Perspectives and Experiences of Migrant Care Workers in New Zealand's Aged Residential Care

Abstract: Migrant care workers (MCWs) from the Global South frequently migrate to meet the growing demand for labour in aged care sectors in countries such as Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Japan, the UK, and the USA. In New Zealand, the aged care sector increasingly relies on MCWs, yet their experiences often remain marginalized and underexplored. Research highlights that Asian MCWs, particularly women, encounter systemic challenges, including racism, gender oppression, exploitation, low wages, and social marginalization. These issues are further exacerbated by cultural differences, language barriers, and unfamiliarity with local care practices, underscoring the precariousness of their roles despite their critical contributions. Existing research in New Zealand, reveal that MCWs endure emotionally and physically demanding work, providing "affective care" while managing long hours that contribute to burnout and fatigue. This study will explore the perspectives and experiences of MCWs in New Zealand’s aged care industry, with aims to address workforce sustainability, inclusivity, and equity. The study seeks to contribute to the development of a more sustainable and equitable aged care sector by deepening the understanding of MCWs' experiences, ultimately contributing to the existing body of literature on migrant labour in aged care through qualitative research using critical migration perspective.


Ritu Parna Roy and Francis L. Collins
Exploring the production and maintenance of racialised burden in New Zealand’s immigration system

This paper explores how racialised burdens are constructed within New Zealand’s immigration system. Racialised burdens are the mechanisms of state power and administrative practices that limit the citizenship rights of racially marginalised groups and perpetuate patterns of inequality. Within immigration systems, ostensibly neutral policies and administrative directives such as skills assessment and selection criteria are often used as a policy instrument for ‘risk’ management or as filtering devices for selecting desirable immigrants. The framing of immigration in these ways claims outward neutrality and deters the scrutiny of the deliberate political choices that shape these instruments and their unequal effects. Drawing on the scholarship of racialised organisation theory, public administration and social policy, we developed a protocol to examine different migration and labour mobility categories and related policies to understand the production and maintenance of racialised burdens within the immigration system. Through analysis of the immigration policy measures in New Zealand, we identify the existence and implications of racialised burdens and the ways in which they unevenly affect white and non-white migrant groups while maintaining the pretention of a fair immigration system.

Chair: Jordan Dougherty

Rebecca Stringer
Barbie, Feminism and the Politics of Recuperative Détournement

Much of the emerging wealth of feminist criticism addressing Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (Warner Bros 2023) persuasively frames this film as recuperative, reading Barbie as a media text that visibly mobilises feminist ideas, but does so in a way that reshapes those ideas around the values of neoliberal capitalism, discarding intersectional feminist challenges to structural oppressions and producing instead a depoliticised, commodified version of feminism that delivers cinematic pleasures but is “always available to be recuperated by the market” (McNeill 2024). This paper builds upon this feminist criticism of Barbie as recuperative by focusing on the ways in which the film and its associated marketing anticipate this criticism: ‘If you hate Barbie, this film is for you.’ Reading Barbie with reference to Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, I argue that its anticipatory elements mark a form of what McKenzie Wark calls ‘recuperative détournement’, whereby corporate messages appear to detour ‘off-brand’, to enhance their ‘on-brand’ impact. Mindful that the spectacle diverts our attention both toward and away, I argue that by foregrounding the fraught feminism of Barbie, the film’s makers and marketers divert attention from irredeemably ‘off-brand’ terrain: the appalling conditions in Mattel factories, and Mattel’s environmental crimes. As McKenzie Wark observes, “Capital draws the line at the détournement of its own means of production”.


Yuki Watanabe
Exploring Queer Identities in Popular Media: The Discourse of Homosexuality in Contemporary Japan

In the 21st century, the term 'queer' has emerged as a significant identity marker, celebrated for its inclusivity and defiance of normative labels. Yet, queer individuals still encounter pervasive stigma, including discrimination, harassment, and violence, highlighting the persistent complexities and contradictions surrounding queer identities. This paper explores these tensions, situating them within specific cultural and historical contexts that shape the understanding of sexual orientations and identities.

When compared to the construction of queer identities in the West, the significance (or absence) of particular terminologies in different cultures plays a critical role in shaping queer identities. In Japan, the concept of nonke (literally meaning ‘no feeling’), frequently used in popular media genres such as Boys’ Love (BL), refers to heterosexual individuals among BL fans and within the broader gay community. Through a discourse analysis of Japanese popular media texts, this paper investigates how nonke functions to both normalize and destabilize gay subjectivity, particularly in contrast to how its English equivalent operates in Western contexts. Using queer theory as a lens, I argue that this term illustrates how sexuality is constructed and communicated as fluid and relational, rather than fixed or essential, highlighting the historically and culturally contingent nature of sexual identities.


Simon Clay
Trans Futures, Drug Utopias, and Gender Euphoria

We are in a watershed moment when it comes to gender. The trans and non-binary community has never been so visible and continues to gain unprecedented social and political freedoms. However, ‘gender-critical feminists’ and the political right have been moderately successful (particularly in the US) with their scare campaign on the dangerous ‘gender ideology’ that ‘trans activists’ are inflicting upon society. Gender-based violence and institutional discrimination against trans people continue to soar, and the lack of inclusive healthcare provision has resulted in a dismal level of well-being among members of this community. In this paper, I discuss the community-based gender-affirming care practices trans and non-binary people have created due to the inaccessibility of gender-affirming medical care. I describe the queer ways these individuals use illicit substances in community settings to gain a sense of gender euphoria, community intimacy, and self-acceptance. These gender-affirming drug practices not only allow trans and non-binary people to circumvent the discrimination and gate-keeping within the healthcare system, they also allow for yet-unimagined expressions of gender-sexuality to emerge. It is through the creation and embodiment of alternative gender-sexualities that radical emancipatory trans futures can be realised.

Chair: Anna Friedlander

Jay Jomar F Quintos
“The Rot that Remains” in the Cinematic Rendering of the Islamised Indigenous Peoples in Mindanao, Philippines

In this presentation, I aim to examine the remaindered lives depicted in the cinema on the Moro – a collective term for the Islamised Indigenous peoples of Mindanao, Philippines – produced after the all-out war of the Philippine government against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Three films could be cited to demonstrate this: Marilou Diaz Abaya’s Bagong Buwan (New Moon) (2001), Gutierrez Mangansakan II’s House of the Crescent Moon (2002), and Adjani Arumpac’s Walai (Home) (2006). These films engage with spaces that exhibit what Derek Walcott (1992) considers “the rot that remains” enmeshed in the “elegiac pathos” and “prolonged sadness” where “the melancholy (is) as contagious as the fever of a sunset like the gold fronds of diseased coconut palms.” The perplexed characterization of the remaindered lives of the Moro amidst the wars in Mindanao might be productive to construe as congruent to what Ann Laura Stoler (2016) calls “duress” – the colonial effects that “may sometimes be a trace but more often an enduring fissure, a durable mark” (6). Duress is similar to durabilities as they are both the hardened, intractable, and tenacious qualities of colonialism. These forces penetrate the sinews and sites of the mundane and monumental seen in waste, surplus, trash, rubbles, and decays. Such presence of the remaindered lives trying to escape the duress and durabilities are astutely calibrated in how the Indigenous peoples of Mindanao, particularly the Moro, endure the constraints and confinements of the historical, political, and economic conditions brought by colonialism and other imperial forces and dangers. The Indigenous peoples of Mindanao – with what remained to them outside the value-laden lives imposed by the viruses of civilisation – wrestle with the durable effects and marks of colonial orders and forces that are already ingrained in various lifeways and lifeworlds. 

Sonja Bohn 
Telling the stories of mountains: the social production of value in nature tourism

Storytelling, or “interp” as guides in Piopiotahi Milford Sound call it, is part of the labour that produces economic value for one of Aotearoa’s major export industries – nature tourism. This work forges a connection between tourists and the land on which they’re hosted, but it also draws on and reinforces the idea of wilderness as other to the human world, enhancing the value of ‘wild’ nature. This investment in naturalness often disguises the political and social relations that underlie tourism work.

The tourism industry has recently been subject to critique, resulting in calls for slow travel, regenerative sustainability, and values-based tourism. These aim to reduce environmental and social harms and provide more meaningful tourism experiences, often diversifying toward eco and high-end products. Such offerings fulfil the romantic notions of authenticity-seeking nature tourists and often appear less commercial aesthetically, but they rarely consider labour relations and do not inherently challenge the precepts of capitalism.
On the other hand, engaging with Marxism and anti-colonial theory allows critique to shift away from tourism end-products, to considering the relations that enable their production, including labour relations, Indigenous dispossession, and environmental exploitation. Such a relational focus could lead beyond a reductive authenticity/commodification binary, toward imagining travel in a world where place-host-guest interactions are characterised by whanaungatanga: good relationships.


Steve Matthewman, Luke Goode, Peter Simpson, Raven Cretney, John Reid
The Residential Red Zone (RRZ) as Futures Lab - Placemaking in the Anthropocene: Preliminary Findings

Aotearoa New Zealand has long been considered a global laboratory. It is one of the most urbanised, unequal and disaster-prone countries in the world. Ōtautahi-Christchurch is paradigmatic here. An “extreme city” in terms of its inequalities and environmental hazards, the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence created the biggest urban renewal project in this country’s history. The 2010 earthquake also gave the city’s poorest suburbs the equivalent of half a century to a hundred years of sea-level rise in a single hit. The future has already arrived here. Managed retreat has taken place. The residential red zone (RRZ), 602 hectares of land along the Avon Ōtākaro River Corridor, is arguably the greatest area of managed retreat in an urban setting anywhere in the world.

This presentation shares preliminary findings from our Marsden-funded research on the RRZ. In so doing, it offers insights into the “sociology to come”. Cities are the landscapes of the Anthropocene, and this century’s political ecologies will most sharply manifest in littoral zones such as where Ōtautahi-Christchurch is located. To date, the literature on managed retreat has been monopolised by technocratic concerns of policy, governance and compensation. We offer insights into the complexities of managed retreat at a human scale.

Chair: Tamika Ashbrook

Ben Laksana
Weaponizing Precarity: Governmental Precarisation and the Struggles of Indonesian Tertiary Student Activists

Drawing from an ethnographic study of 11 student activists in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, this research examines how the Indonesian state weaponizes precarity to control and subjugate vulnerable populations. Using Isabell Lorey’s (2015) concept of governmental precarisation, I argue that neoliberal state policies deliberately sustain precarity by intensifying financial hardships and limiting access to essential resources for university students. Despite higher education’s portrayal as a path out of poverty, many students face uncertain job prospects, low wages, and an oversaturated market. This normalization of precariousness traps students between the promise of education as a means of social mobility and the harsh realities of neoliberal governance. As a result, these precarious conditions force tertiary students engaging in activism to reassess their activists roles. I argue that this often leads to disengagement from activism as precarious living conditions erode their capacity to resist. Thus this self-perpetuating cycle of precarisation not only normalizes insecurity but further reinforces state control. This study sheds light on how neoliberal policies shape the experiences of tertiary students and their activism in Indonesia, revealing the underlying power structures that maintain these precarious conditions and limit possibilities for resistance and social change.


Joseph Elkington-Potter
Institutional Whispers: Academic Bullying in NZ

Sociology often critiques power structures and inequalities in society, but the discipline often fails to turn the lens inward, reflecting on our practices and institutions. Internationally, failures to adequately respond to and support those experiencing bullying, particularly academic bullying within universities, have raised significant concerns (Mahmoudi, 2019; Moss & Mahmoudi, 2021; Twale & DeLuca, 2008). However, in Aotearoa New Zealand, there has been limited exploration into the prevalence, lived experiences, specific conditions, and disciplinary factors that foster academic bullying within universities. This paper seeks to facilitate a discussion on what this issue might look like in the context of Aotearoa NZ, particularly for postgraduate and/or early-career Māori scholars. This research is part of a broader PhD project exploring the experiences of complaints across NZ universities, focusing on how institutional responses—or the lack thereof—perpetuate harm.


Sultan Ahmed
Towards decolonizing disaster risk communication and resilience building; Indigenous knowledge insights from High Mountain Asia

This research examines disaster risk communication (DRC) and resilience-building in HighMountain Asia (HMA) through the lens of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) of the Wakhi people, who span the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and China. Preliminary findings reveal a nuanced dynamic: while elders emphasize the value of IK—rooted in centuries of evolution—youth increasingly favor scientific methods as more relevant to contemporary challenges. This contrast highlights a gap in DRC, as government-led initiatives prioritize scientific knowledge and operate in an autocratic, supply-driven manner, whereas NGOs employ participatory approaches, though their reach and effectiveness remain limited.
Indigenous practices such as resilient construction, communal storage, land planning, and ritual offerings reflect a profound relationship with the environment, grounded in both practical adaptations and spiritual traditions. These practices embody a spiritual bond with nature, where rituals and offerings seek harmony with natural and supernatural forces, reinforcing both community resilience and individual confidence in facing disasters. Yet, formal systems often marginalize these practices.

This study advocates for a decolonized approach that respects both scientific and Indigenous epistemologies, recognizing the unique resilience strategies of cross-border communities. By bridging these knowledge systems, this research aims to foster inclusive, context-sensitive frameworks for DRC in HMA.

Chair: Emily Keddell

Szu-Hsien Lu
Retaining custody as a practice of social justice: What community child protection social workers can do to support parents with intellectual disabilities in Taiwan

Each year, around 80 to 100 parents with intellectual disabilities (PID) are involved with child protection services in Taiwan, and roughly 20 to 25 percent of them face child removal. Several determinants shape these separations, for example, parents’ insufficient parenting ability and cognition, low levels of social support, poverty, and inadequate and inaccessible parenting support. To help PID retain custody or have their children returned from foster care, social workers could explore working more collaboratively with parents and addressing these challenges to improve parenting capacity. In Taiwan, community child protection social workers (CSW) are essential in assisting PID to fulfill this aim because of their long-term and frequent involvement, as the preexisting research suggests that these parents require sustainable and intensive support. This presentation is based on a preliminary analysis of my doctoral research data from twenty-three semi-structured interviews with Taiwanese child protection social workers, three of whom are CSW. I will focus on one CSW's work to demonstrate what supports a parent to retain custody. The presentation will illustrate how CSW can contribute to social justice for PID by reconciling parenting rights and the children's best interests in their practice, as these rights are usually considered contradictory.


Tian Tian
An Exploration of Social Work Intervention in cases of Child Sexual Abuse in a Multidisciplinary Context in New Zealand

The multidisciplinary approach is key to child protection systems globally, with social workers playing a central role in supporting victims and their families. Puawaitahi, established in 2002, was created to strengthen collaboration and streamline child protection investigations and treatment. However, research on multidisciplinary collaboration in New Zealand’s child protection system, particularly from a social work perspective, is limited. This study examines the practical and conceptual challenges of such collaboration at Puawaitahi and explores how collaboration shapes the role of social workers in child sexual abuse interventions. The research included in-depth interviews and focus groups with social workers, police, health, and other professionals at Puawaitahi, alongside observation of 31 multidisciplinary team meetings. Data was analysed using thematic analysis to explore key themes like collaboration processes, communication, working relationships, disciplinary differences, and power dynamics.

This study found that Puawaitahi demonstrated strong multidisciplinary collaboration, featuring an efficient management structure, transparent case-handling procedures, and good information sharing. However, the collaboration was influenced by hierarchical dynamics, with medical professionals leading the process and police and Oranga Tamariki (OT) holding statutory authority at the policy level. Differences in how professionals viewed collaboration, particularly regarding whether the child or the whānau should be prioritized, created tensions. Both statutory and health social workers faced challenges due to their perceived weak professional capital in these collaborations, often adopting passive roles, highlighting disputes over professional knowledge claims. These power imbalances ultimately hindered the effectiveness of the collaboration. This study highlights the structural tensions in New Zealand’s multidisciplinary child protection system, focusing on how power dynamics, professional knowledge, and procedural challenges affect social workers' roles in collaboration. The findings have significant implications for practice, education, policy, and research, with recommendations to align collaborative ideals with real-world practices.

Chair: Charlotte Bruce Kells

Anna Friedlander
Hormones and data in the digital menstrual tracking entanglement
An agential realist analysis of apps and menstruating bodies

Period tracking apps - digital applications that people use to track their menstrual cycles - are among the top-downloaded apps by adult and adolescent women in health categories, with hundreds of millions of downloads worldwide. There is a growing body of international sociological research into digital menstrual and fertility tracking, but with a few notable exceptions (Hohmann-Marriott; Riley), there is little sociological work into menstrual and fertility tracking in Aotearoa.
Within this context I perform an agential realist investigation of the sociotechnical entanglement of apps, app users, tracking practices, app development, gender, and bodies in Aotearoa, with a particular focus on the emergence of two phenomena – hormones and data. How are hormones and data enacted in, with and through tracking apps, and what are the implications? What role does power play, and how do the various elements of the menstrual tracking entanglement shape each other? In this presentation I present early results from my research into digital menstrual tracking entanglements in Aotearoa.


Yunyi Zhang
Shaping Mothering Ideas: How 1.5 and 2nd-Generation Chinese New Zealand Mothers Engage with Chinese and Western Discourses

Despite the significant presence of Chinese migrant families in countries like New Zealand, the experiences of 1.5 and 2nd-generation Chinese New Zealand mothers remain underexplored. Situated between their Chinese heritage and New Zealand’s sociocultural context, these mothers encounter diverse and sometimes conflicting discourses on motherhood and gender norms. This paper delves into the mothering ideas, perceptions, and expectations shaping 1.5 and 2nd-generation Chinese New Zealand mothers who navigate a complex interplay of Chinese and Western cultural norms, values, and institutional structures.

Drawing on John Gillis’s concepts of ‘the families we live by’ and ‘the families we live with,’ the paper unpacks how these mothers interpret and position themselves within diverse motherhood ideals or discourses. The analysis also considers the impact of broader cultural expectations, family dynamics, and educational values within the Chinese New Zealand community. By teasing out the layered discourses of what it means to be a Chinese New Zealand mother, this paper illuminates how these mothers traverse the nuanced cultural spectrum and engage with diverse ideas to shape their maternal beliefs in a culturally diverse society.

This research contributes to the Gender and Sexuality stream, shedding light on the cultural negotiation processes of immigrant mothers in a multicultural society.

Chair: Steve Matthewman

Sneha Singh
Understanding Identity and Belonging Amongst Indian Diaspora in Aotearoa

This paper is a part of my larger doctoral project titled Understanding (Digital) Citizenship Practices of Women in Indian Diasporic Communities. In this paper, I discuss the issues of identity, belonging and citizenship based on the narratives and experiences of my research participants. My analysis draws on the semi-structured interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and social media data of 25 research participants. Having various national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious affiliations, the processes of identity construction is complex and multi-faceted for the Indian diaspora in Aotearoa. I discuss how my participants (who come from very diverse backgrounds) navigate through their identity and belonging in relation to Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and/or other countries of origin. Based on semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, I classify their belonging into four types- transnational, regional, religious/linguistic and political belonging. By constructing multiple ways of belonging (four, stated above), my research participants challenged the formal citizenship discourses (in terms of legal status of citizenship) by claiming citizenship and belonging to India, New Zealand and other countries of their origin. As such, this paper contributes to the literature on diaspora, migration and citizenship studies.


Janepicha Cheva-Isarakul
Temporalities and staggered legal inclusion: the legal production of “statelessness” in Thailand

In the public campaigns to end statelessness, citizenship and statelessness tend to be positioned as legal opposites—the former as a normative legal status guaranteeing total inclusion and the latter as a legal deviance with abject rightlessness. This static dichotomy fails to capture the nuances of the 21st century regime of statelessness, which often oscillates between inclusion and exclusion and expresses itself in quasi-legal categories. This presentation examines governance and the legal production of contemporary statelessness in northern Thailand, a region with a large semi-legal “alien” population. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research and the lens of institutional, biographic and everyday temporalities (Robertson 2019), I highlight the dynamism within the ways the Thai state “sees” (Scott 1998) and manages its “alien” population in the last three decades. I argue that these aspects of temporalities embedded in a complex system of categorisations and identification lead to staggered inclusion and a hierarchy of statelessness among people who otherwise share similar backgrounds. The regime renders each stateless person stateless in their own way, and each generation a specific set of legal limitations and hurdles. Statelessness in contemporary Thailand is therefore best understood not as complete rightlessness but a hierarchy of hope dictated by temporalities.


Ruchika Ranwa and Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert
Genealogies of Dispossession and Marginalisation: Case of Kalbeliyas of Rajasthan, India.

Drawing on Anibal Quijano’s concept of “coloniality of power” and Maria Lugones’s concept of “coloniality of gender”, this paper analyses the historical genealogies of marginalization experienced by Kalbeliya women dancers of Rajasthan and its ongoing manifestations in structuring power relations, social hierarchies and “unfreedoms” in post-independent India. Despite being recognized as heritage bearers by UNESCO in 2010, Kalbeliya dancers continue to face social stigma. This stigma is historically rooted in dominant colonial discourses of morality and respectability concerning women in the 20th century, reflecting Indian upper caste and class anxieties about moral transgressions. Paralleled with colonial notions of the 'excessive' sexuality of low caste women, dancers, in particular, were constructed as “common” women (Thapar, 1993), who transgressed normative regulations of sexuality, marriage and domesticity. These forms of marginalisation have re-configured in the post-heritage recognition phase for Kalbeliya dancers as they are encountered with new forms of exploitative economic relations and unequal power dynamics, which reflect conditions akin to “modern slavery”. Despite UNESCO’s emphasis on improving local heritage bearers' participation in safeguarding their heritage, the dominance of Indian state institutions in these processes has led to a) dispossession of Kalbeliya dancers of their rights and responsibilities as heritage bearers and b) commercialization and extraction of Kalbeliyas’ heritage through private sector led tourism (Ranwa, 2021) This puts their heritage at the risk of erosion and exacerbates their vulnerability to exploitation. The paper draws on ethnographic field work conducted by the first author between 2018- 2024 in Jodhpur, Jaipur and Jaisalmer, cities in Rajasthan.

Chair: Karen Nairn

Kyle Matthews
Free Speech, Hate Speech, and the Free Speech Union

Recommendation 40 of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Shooting called for the repeal of New Zealand’s ineffective hate speech laws and the creation of a new Crimes Act offence of inciting racial or religious disharmony. After a public backlash the Labour-led government delegated this work to the Law Commission in 2022. In March 2024 the new Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith halted this work, ending hopes for effective hate speech laws in Aotearoa.

In this paper I analyse the media statements, letters, and twitter feed of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which advocates for absolutist free speech rights, to interrogate their arguments and influence in these debates. I argue that the FSU understands free speech in a simplistic way, prioritises free speech rights over rights to be free from harm, emphasises global symbolism rather than evidence grounded in Aotearoa, is only absolutist when it serves them, and privileges already dominant voices while ignoring the racialised communities that hate speech targets. I suggest instead that tikanga Māori could guide us through the challenges of balancing free speech rights with rights to be free from harmful speech.

Fairleigh Evelyn Gilmour
Violence against women and the Dangerous Speech Framework: Exploring the tensions

In this presentation, I explore the tensions between feminist articulations of allegations of violence against women – in particular the calls to believe victims and to punish perpetrators – and the historical use of the threat of violence against women and girls as a justification for and precursor to genocide as documented in the Dangerous Speech framework. I explore the use of hashtags in the aftermath of October 7th, in particular the reworkings of the #believewomen and #metoo hashtags. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the foundations of feminist arguments in relation to the concept of belief and to challenge the ways in which these ideas have been re-appropriated in the context of violent conflict between militarized groups.

Kyle Matthews & Kayli Taylor
Rethinking Security & Radicalisation: A principled response to insecurity and violent extremism

We argue that the search for security in an insecure world drives approaches to radicalisation and violent extremism. These approaches target ‘radicals’ and securitise ‘at risk’ communities and are entangled with race, colonisation, xenophobia, and white supremacy.

We propose that the state should turn from targeted practices focused on radicalisation and securitisation towards principled responses which address the structural drivers of insecurity. We argue for ten principles to guide that work including enacting te Tiriti o Waitangi, human rights and global justice, non-violence, transparency and democratic accountability, and structural responses to the marginalisation and othering of communities.
We use these principles to interrogate ‘Know the Signs’, a guide produced by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service which encourages the public to recognise and report individuals at risk of engaging in violent extremism. While this guide upholds some human rights and uses evidence on violent extremism, it misuses that evidence, neglects te Tiriti and global justice issues, overlooks structural drivers of violent extremism, and is not accountable to affected communities or the wider population. We conclude that a principled approach to violent extremism offers a critical utopian way of thinking about the challenges of security in an insecure world.

Chair: Liz Beddoe

Ian Hyslop
Abolition, social work and social science

Social work is located in regimes of power and occupies a (more or less) contradictory position within neoliberal western capitalist states like Aotearoa. The concept that there is no exterior to this sociological totality condemns resistant discourse to the realms of complicity with an oppressive socio-economic regime. Abolition perspectives potentially offer way out of this bind by rejecting the status quo and its underpinning logics of carcerality and epistemic hierarchical classification – the ubiquitous ghost of Descartes. The analysis which abolitionist thinking makes available allows for a reimaging and rebuilding of resistant ideas and practices which challenge the place of social work and social science within dominant regimes of truth. It offers a way forward to a world worth winning.


Neil Ballantyne
Emancipatory social science and anti-oppressive social work: The legacy of Erik Olin Wright.

The global definition of social work, as articulated by the International Federation of Social Workers, states that social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that, amongst other things, promotes the empowerment and liberation of people. The knowledge base for social work has a rich history of different theoretical perspectives, frameworks and practice models, some of which directly address aspects of human oppression, discrimination and marginalisation. These approaches can be grouped under the umbrella term of anti-oppressive practice, including anti-discriminatory practice, anti-racist practice, feminist, green and Marxist perspectives. This presentation draws on the work of the US analytical Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright to consider how his concept of emancipatory social science might be applied in the context of anti-oppressive social work. The presentation will focus primarily on a close reading of two of Wright’s publications – Envisioning Real Utopias and How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century – exploring their implications for anti-oppressive practice. I will argue that Wright’s emancipatory social science framework complements existing anti-oppressive social work practice. Its open, flexible, and adaptable nature is inclusive of different political traditions and cultural contexts, including Indigenous perspectives. In these challenging times, emancipatory social science provides a rallying point, a tūrangawaewae (common ground) on which diverse social groups can connect and work collectively to craft real utopias.


Olivia LaMontagne
Macro Social Work Practice in Aotearoa

Despite the ethical and professional obligations for social workers to contribute to social change, macro social work practice in Aotearoa is marginalised by managerial approaches in social services under a neoliberal context. Social change and social justice are often discussed as ideals in social work, but the practical aspects of macro social work are less known. Drawing on survey results from one hundred and twenty-three social workers, this presentation identifies the types of macro social work tasks that social workers do, as well as the opportunities and barriers for macro social work in a variety of practice settings. By identifying how and why social workers practice macro social work, implications will be explored as to how to meet the challenges of macro social work in practice settings and beyond.

Chair: Simon Clay

Chris Brickell
Who’s Afraid of Performativity?

We don’t know what performativity means any more. There is a lot of talk about ‘performative’ (read: empty) gestures in the context of online and offline activism, while Judith Butler’s formulation from 1990 – which brought together repetitions, social norms, and the constitution of identity – hovers in the background. Butler’s new book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, declines to ‘defend or reconsider’ an earlier theory of performativity ‘that clearly now seems questionable in certain ways’ (p. 23). This paper reassesses Butler’s earlier ideas in light of more recent developments, and suggests some creative ways forward.

Karen Nairn and Carisa Showden
Doing gender in activist spaces: Intersectionality and the limits of change Karen.nairn@otago.ac.nz

Social justice activists are always on notice for how they enact their values. Put prosaically: do they practise what they preach? Research with activists in Aotearoa from six groups addressing Indigenous rights, climate justice, feminist and queer rights, and economic inequities, provide the context for analysing how intersectional gender performances and interactions can be sites of change (Deutsch, 2007). A total of ninety participants took part in our study and two-thirds identified as women and/or gender diverse. We undertook interviews and observations of meetings, campaign events and their social media between 2018 and 2021. This was an optimistic moment for social justice activism in Aotearoa and the start of the rising backlash that is more evident now. Understanding what social justice groups can achieve when political conditions are relatively favourable is important for informing how to prepare for the backlash that inevitably follows. In this presentation we demonstrate how social justice activism is a complementary and contradictory eco-system of ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ normative practices of gender, sexuality and race, and how this eco-system is shaped by changing political conditions.

Chair: Bruce Cohen

Ella Hurdley

Medical sociologists have found that dominant institutions (i.e.government agencies, mass media, medical professions) have a tendency to obscure how chemical pollution contributes to disease. Examples include framings of breast cancer, leukaemia, and depression. However, a similar analysis has yet to be conducted on the portrayal of infertility. Infertility is an important case because environmental scholars have found strong associations between infertility and exposure to PCBs; pesticides; heavy metals; and radiation. To address this gap, I analyse the infertility information provided by three
dominant institutions: 1) online publisher (healthline.com); 2) a government agency (healthdirect.au); and 3) a charitable trust endorsed by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (healthify.nz). The New Zealand institution is particularly important to analyse because of the country’s high infertility rates (up to 26% of the population) and decreasing birth rates (lowest in 20 years). In carrying out a content analysis, I found that all three sites framed
infertility in reductionist terms, especially the NZ website. These findings suggest dominant institutions downplay the relationship between environmental pollution and in/fertility. The NZ case is troubling when we consider the country’s high use of pesticides, herbicides, and chemicals in food and timber production. Another concern is that the social determinants of health in Aotearoa disproportionately impact Māori, and in this case, populations more heavily exposed to pollution.


Mary Silcock
‘Inside the Ministry of Health: critical opportunities to do sociology’

The Ministry of Health science advisory functions are multi-disciplinary but are heavily skewed to biomedical, health and public health approaches. While sociology overlaps and compliments these disciplines, the machinery of government and traditional hierarchies of knowledge create a condition where there is a constant power imbalance in the practices of producing evidence for decision-making. There is currently limited multi-disciplinary capacity to support science advice that includes critical and diverse knowledge. This knowledge is arguably what is most needed to address the complexity facing our health systems, healthcare practice and disparities in health outcomes in the population. As an action to address this imbalance and bolster the strength of sociology knowledge, the Office of the Chief Science Advisor hosted a sociology honours student from Victoria University of Wellington throughout 2024. The impact of having a greater physical presence, more formal linkages to academia and the increased capacity to provide subject matter expertise from the Office of the Chief Science Advisor will be presented. Practising sociology outside the academy and practical suggestions for increasing the influence of sociology in Government settings will be provided.


Chris McMillan
Flights of Fantasy: The (non) communication of air transportation emissions by international sporting organisations

Facing a potentially existential threat from the climate crisis as well as criticism of their own environmental impacts, sporting entities have increasingly sought to develop and communicate environmental sustainability strategies. In particular, major international governing bodies such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and World Rugby have publicised significant commitments to reducing their environmental impact. While promising transformational changes, these strategies have predominantly focused on localised issues such as energy generation and use, waste management and construction materials, as well as making adaptative adjustments in response to the changing climate. Conversely, despite making up the majority of carbon emissions from commercial sporting activity, especially mega-events, air transportation has an uneasy presence in these strategies. In particular, although these organisations' own calculations of their carbon footprint highlight the significant role of flights, they receive limited attention in their environmental strategies. In this presentation, I explore this tension within the environmental communication of major international sporting organisations, highlighting the disavowal and displacement of responsibility for transportation emissions. In doing so, I ask how sociologists can most effectively represent and critique these points of tension within environmental communication.

Chair: Neil Vallelly

Lydia Le Gros and Sebastiaan Bierema
Housing, Financialisation, and Utopia in Ursula Le Guin’s ‘the Dispossesed’

Building on our previous research on housing-market financialisation, this paper explores the place of housing in Ursula Le Guin’s utopian novel the Dispossessed as a way of understanding and reimagining social housing provision in Aotearoa. The role of the built environment in constraining and shaping possibilities for action is a prominent theme in the Dispossessed. Images of walls as ambiguous boundaries are particularly noteworthy—functioning both to delineate and to bind together inside/outside and inclusion/exclusion. Just as walls translate social facts into concrete realities and stabilise social norms, housing also shapes individual and societal behaviours.
We draw this link using Ruth Levitas’ Utopia as Method, for whom images of utopia contain both an interpretative (archaeological) and an imaginative (architectural) function. In its archaeological form, the Dispossessed highlight the contingency of a housing system designed around private property rights. This allows us to reframe the function of individual homeownership in Aotearoa as a conservative technology, and to emphasise the relationship between housing and environmental abundance/destruction. As an architectural moment, Le Guin does not so much posit a utopian blueprint as create a space for imagining alternative ways of thinking about housing provision in Aotearoa.


Jessica Terruhn and Francis L. Collins
Finding the best tenants available: Discretion and discrimination in tenant selection in New Zealand’s private rental sector

Scholarship on housing inequalities has consistently documented that rental housing discrimination significantly contributes to housing precarities for minoritised households. This body of research has highlighted the intersectionality of discrimination, its complexities with respect to where, when and how it occurs, and that contemporary discrimination can be subtle and difficult to detect. An important aspect of this work, and one we contribute to with this presentation, is scholarship that has initiated debate about the very definition of discrimination in the context of discretionary tenant selection practices in competitive private rental housing markets. Our central argument is that the definition of discrimination must be widened to recognise and address the inherently discriminatory outcomes of discretionary tenant selection processes. We base our argument on two empirical research projects on housing inequalities in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We juxtapose survey findings that demonstrate home seekers’ widespread experiences of discrimination and data from interviews with property managers that illuminate the ways in which home seekers’ experiences of discrimination are dismissed as unfounded. Property managers plausibly deny discrimination in tenant selection with reference to the Human Rights Act while normalising discretion in identifying the best tenants available. Such discourses not only deprecate home seekers’ experiences as erroneous perceptions but normalise inequalities in access to the private rental sector as the product of personal shortcomings in the context of competition rather than structural disadvantages in the context of rental housing commodification.


Francis L. Collins and Jessica Terruhn 
‘Landlords are just ordinary people’: rental housing precarity and discourses of worthiness in Aotearoa New Zealand
It is widely recognised that there is significant and growing precarity in rental housing in Aotearoa New Zealand, characterised by insecure tenure, unaffordability, poor quality housing, constant residential mobility and risks of homelessness. As has been observed internationally, this housing precarity is significantly linked to financialisation and the entrenching of private landlordism as an ideal form of investment and housing provision. In this presentation we examine the normalisation of housing precarity in Aotearoa New Zealand through discourses that differentially construct the societal worthiness of landlords and tenants. Our paper draws on interviews with property managers and the specific ways in which they articulated security of tenure, suitability for housing, rights of tenants and landlords and questions of dignity in relation to housing. Persistent through these interviews were countervailing discourses that differentially framed the worthiness of tenants and landlords. Tenants, especially people on low incomes and implicitly racialised minorities, were frequently dehumanised by interviewees in a manner that normalised permanent temporariness in housing tenure and framed housing as a privilege to be earned, and one that some people would never be worthy of. In contrast, the figure of the landlord was the focus of moral recuperation, characterised as ordinary people just seeking to get by and providing an important societal service. Our analysis of these discourses aims to extend insights into the linkages between housing precarity and landlordism, and the urgency of transformative responses that establish secure housing as a fundamental right.

Chair: Fairleigh Gilmour

Richard Jackson, Rula Talahma, Alex Miller and Vivienne Anderson
The responsibility of the social scientist in a time of genocidal settler colonial violence

This panel will discuss academic responsibility and the role of social science in a time of escalating genocidal violence by the Israeli settler colonial state. Among a wide range of issues, it will consider whether the argument for institutional neutrality is valid in the current context of Israeli violence, whether the university’s commitment to Te Tiriti necessitates a similar commitment to the decolonisation of Palestine, and whether there are compelling arguments against the adoption of the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, particularly in relation to boycotting Israeli academic institutions.

Chair: Liz Beddoe

Binhua Chen
Raising Critical Consciousness in Social Work through Theatre of the Oppressed

Since the rise of radical and critical social work, social workers have been expected to critically analyse and act in response to structural problems challenging service users. Over the years, the concept of critical consciousness, developed by the popular educator Freire, has gained the attention of social work scholars. However, current research has focussed more on its aspect of critical reflection, and there is still a gap in how to cultivate critical action. Influenced by Freire, Augusto Boal developed the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), an approach which he called a ‘rehearsal of the revolution’. The TO may be instructive in how we can move beyond the cognitive level of critical consciousness in the process of consciousness-raising. Based on my experience facilitating TO workshops with practitioners and service users over the last five years in China, this paper will present TO’s potential for developing critical consciousness and action in social work.


Lauren Devine
“Processing People”

The state’s role and purpose in categorising individual vulnerabilities is opaque. Vulnerability has many causal factors, from intrinsic (e.g. ageing, disability, illness, race, culture, diversity) to extrinsic (e.g. abuse, neglect, discrimination, injury, poverty). Hyper-managerialist approaches to health and social care provision rely on categorisation to ration and deliver restricted services, failing to acknowledge categorisation historically served to ration and restrict rights. As a function of categorisation, the phenomenon of “labelling” is entrenched across social work, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and criminology. The labels perform a heuristic function enabling agencies to assess and deliver appropriate services, but also enable state agencies to assess and restrict individual autonomy and freedoms. The research presented in this paper uses Rose’s historical lens technique “using history rather than grand theory as a way of taking apart the self-evidence of the present.” (1987). This illustrates the opaqueness in the space between formalised categorisation and coercion.


Natasha Mariette
Reforming Adult Protection in BC: The Imperative for Social Work Leadership

This paper examines the adult protection framework in British Columbia (BC), Canada and argues that social work engagement is imperative at all levels of policy and practice to achieve a human rights and socially just approach to adult protection. Adult abuse, neglect, and self-neglect is a social justice issue with devastating consequences including loss of dignity, physical and psychological harm, premature admission to facility care, financial loss, and even death. Responses to adult abuse, neglect, and self-neglect vary across jurisdictions internationally and nationally. Within Canada, each province and territory are responsible for determining its own model of adult safeguarding. In BC, the Adult Guardianship Act (AGA) designates seven agencies to respond to reports of adult abuse, neglect, and self-neglect and are unable to seek support and assistance on their own. Despite the existence of adult protection legislation, the current model in BC experiences significant challenges in protecting vulnerable adults. These challenges stem from a disconnect between macro, mezzo, and micro levels of adult protection work. Effective adult safeguarding requires collaboration and coordination across all levels. Social workers' expertise in direct service provision, understanding the complex bio-psycho-social-spiritual factors that create and perpetuate vulnerability to abuse, neglect, and self-neglect, and commitment to creating systemic change makes social work leadership crucial in transforming adult protection work in BC. Active social work engagement and leadership across macro, mezzo, and micro levels of adult protection is needed to ensure a socially just approach to adult protection in BC.

Jordan Dougherty and Melanie Beres
Interventions in Sexual Violence: Student-led interventions

This stream is based on the Gender Studies paper offered at Otago, GEND311 – Interventions in Sexual Violence, which offers students the opportunity to explore what makes an effective sexual violence prevention project. Across the semester, our students worked within groups to develop their own intervention, which they presented to their tutorial streams under the guise of a funding pitch. Students employed the knowledge gained throughout the course and creatively fulfilled an intervention brief. They carried out a needs assessment, highlighted their goals and objectives, provided a methodology and broke down their intended evaluation methods.
In this session, we will first go over the framework for sexual violence prevention the students were presented with at the beginning of semester, before handing over to the students themselves present their interventions. We will also reflect on the joys and struggles of teaching this paper and discuss some of the student projects that could not present themselves.


Presentation One: Beyond the Binary: Teaching Inclusive Sex Ed
Authors: Alfie Smeele, Sophie Green, Morgan Alcock, Nicki Graham

In Aotearoa, our relationships and sexuality curriculum is not being taught to a high standard, especially regarding queer sexuality, consent and relationships. This discrepancy in relationships and sexuality education for queer students is harmful and is a contributing factor to the higher rates of sexual harm queer people experience. Our intervention is a professional development course for teachers that would aim to educate teachers on teaching relationships and sexuality curriculum inclusively. It would do this by challenging harmful cis/hetero norms about sex consent and relationships, including queer understandings and experiences of relationships, sex, and consent, using a model of consent that emphasizes empathy rather than gendered power dynamics.


Presentation Two: Spark a Shift
Authors: Anna Harris, Beth Dunphy, Maleah Abbott-Newland, Oliva Shaw

Spark a Shift is a tertiary workshop intervention programme that aims to reduce ongoing victimisation following sexual violence within relationships for University of Otago students. The five workshops will target the gender norms and rape myths that entrench sexual passivity and feelings of self-blame in women and AFAB people. They will teach context specific rape resistance strategies to empower participants and help participants to reclaim their sexual desire by understanding what they do want to in order to know what they don't want. Overall, Spark a Shift wishes to deliver a programme that targets the underlying causes of sexual violence and provide ways for participants to feel confident in their ability to defend themselves.

Chair: Anna Friedlander

Talisa Pelser
Power, Representation, and Attitudes in TikTok's Online Sex Work Discourse Post-COVID-19.

This research is centred around contemporary attitudes and perceptions of online sex work on TikTok post COVID-19. The arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 propagated communications and socialisations to become primarily digital, inducing a global sense of social and physical isolation. This shift to the virtual spaces gave rise to the short-form social media app; TikTok, a platform that has revolutionised content creation, consumerist culture, digital engagement, and cultural narratives. Concurrently, COVID-19 enabled a pivotal moment in the adult entertainment industry, increasing global pornographic consumption and catalysing online sex work into mainstream markets and media. The emergence of online sex work follows a period of feminist sex work literature that houses prolific debates surrounding its presence, usage, and
consumption, often entangling dynamics of power, agency, and commodification in its discourse. Sex work remains a topic that is embedded in heavily contested ideologies surrounding its moral and ethical implications, concerns of exploitation, and its validity as job under patriarchal capitalism. The perceptions and consumptions of such work and its content is often polarised, ranging in feminist and non-feminist critiques alike. The purpose of this research is to analyse
what narratives exist surrounding online sex work on TikTok; a platform that continues to have a profound and extensive impact on global cultures and disseminations of new, recurring, distinct, and evolving ideologies. My research uses a typology and feminist critical discourse analysis to profile what narratives exist and deconstruct how present narratives are created and sustained through language and broader discourses. Utilising this digital ethnography and critical
examination, my research profiles contemporary narratives within digital spaces and through global perspectives, highlighting narratives that both parallel and diverge from key feminist sex work ideologies. Through this analysis I address key questions of (a) what dominant narratives circulate around online sex work on TikTok, (b) how prevailing narratives operate through regulations within TikTok, and (c) how narratives are sustained and reproduced through
discourse


Lorraine Smith, Sophie Lewis, Karen Willis, Marika Franklin, Maja Moensted
Title: People’s Experiences Of Chronic Illness And Loneliness: How Well Does Australian Healthcare Policy And Systems Deliver Good Care And Support?

Healthcare policy and practice positions chronic disease as requiring personal control and individual self-management. This positioning is problematic for people who are lonely and living with chronic illness. Loneliness isolates people from services, peers, and community. Active participation in social life is hampered by ill-health, problems with mobility, access to services, geographic location, and reduced emotional and psychological resources. Policy statements regarding chronic condition self-management acknowledge the influence of social determinants, but the emphasis remains on personal choice and ignores the multi-layered social problem that is loneliness. In this presentation we examine the complex and sometimes confusing Australian healthcare system, and the government policies and strategic frameworks that over the last 20 years have shaped chronic disease healthcare services offered to Australians. We explore the extent to which these services provide meaningful support to those living with chronic illness and loneliness, providing examples from our research examining the social consequences and people’s capacities for living well with chronic illness. Our learnings presents us with an opportunity to recognise and act on the critical importance of social connection and its impact on health, both short- and long-term, so that more targeted and effective interventions can be developed.

Linda Madden, Penelope Carroll, Karen Witten
States of dis/ability - looking at the past to imagine a new future of dis/ability.

Through Aotearoa’s history, the embodied ‘state of being disabled’ has hinged around the ‘State’ as the primary driver by which the concept of disability is reproduced. Narratives about what disablement means have typically been constructed through legislative ‘state-ments’ (government acts, policies etc.) that define disabled bodies and mediate how dis/ability is understood. As a result, ableist attitudes – largely unseen – permeate most spheres of everyday life in Aotearoa and often remain potent regardless of rhetoric espousing empowerment and inclusion. This paper explores the historical origins and impacts of disability legislation, and implications for community and citizenship. We also address what a new sociology of disability could look like in terms of both resistance to the past and a reclaiming of disabled identities. Finally, we propose that the sociologies of the future shift the onus for change from within the disabled community and employ methodologies designed explicitly to encourage reflection and conscientization among non-disabled individuals who might otherwise be reluctant to change their ableist attitudes.

Chair: Liana MacDonald

Simon Barber
The imperialism of no borders


Neil Vallelly
The Borders of Hospitality

In May 2022, then Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert in the US to announce the re-opening of the New Zealand border in the wake of Covid-19 restrictions. During the discussion, she said: “Welcoming guests to New Zealand is so much a part of who we are. Hospitality is part of our identity; we call it manaakitanga. So, please come back and make us whole again.” A year earlier, Amnesty International released a report titled “Please Take Me to a Safe Place” that outlined the detainment of asylum seekers without charge in New Zealand prisons. How can these two scenes of (in)hospitality co-exist? By drawing on Jacques Derrida’s late work on hospitality, this paper examines the political contradictions at play in the examples above, as well as the challenges of hospitality as a theoretical concept in the context of contemporary border regimes. The paper asks two broad questions. First, where does hospitality begin and end—where are its borders? Second, in what ways do borders facilitate and restrict hospitality? The paper finishes by reconstructing a theory of hospitality in the face of increasingly violent border regimes, one in which manaakitanga is not appropriated for political ends but is instead privileged in an ethics of common care.


Patrick Vakaoti and Tui Rakuita
 A Sociology of ‘Our Sea of Islands’

The late Tongan scholar Professor Epeli Hau’ofa popularised the phrase ‘our seas of islands’. This acknowledged relationality and holism in the Pacific as opposed to ‘islands in the far sea’ connoting the Pacific as small islands dotted across a vast ocean. Historically, the latter view reduces the Pacific as of object of study and it’s underdeveloped people and traditions needing to ‘progress’. Sociology has been complicit in this project.
As sociologists we see the value of the discipline in the Pacific. This paper is our attempt to present a case for a sociology of ‘our sea of islands’; a sociology that is relevant for the Pacific. In doing so we wish to do three things. First, we draw on our sojourns as former students and teachers of sociology at the University of the South Pacific. Second, to identity the parameteres of possibilities that the sociological tradition has for our sea of islands and thirdly admumtrate on a few themes that need to be incoporated into a sociological discourse on and about the Pacific. Our intention is to initiate a sociology for Oceania that reflects our contemporary realities.

Chair: Peter Howland

Penelope Carroll, Linda Madden, Karen Witten
Ableism: a potent force impeding full citizenship?

Ableism – largely unseen and unquestioned – plays a significant role in the structure and functioning of society in Aotearoa, as elsewhere. People whose bodies fit an ‘ablebodied’ norm are situated as ideal (and are thus privileged) while ‘disabled’ bodies are deemed deviant (and problematised and marginalised). This has a significant effect on participation parity across all life domains, denying many disabled New Zealanders full citizenship. As more than one-in-five New Zealanders are categorised as ‘disabled’, ableism’s reach in cementing socio-cultural and economic inequalities is vast.

Despite decades of rights-based rhetoric, accessibility legislation and inclusionary frameworks, disabled people continue to be marginalised. A clear and critical focus is required to surface ableist attitudes and practices and avoid reproducing exclusionary ableist systems and structures. Two current research projects – one Health Research Council-funded, the other Marsden-funded – are surfacing ableist beliefs in the physical activity, health, employment and culture sectors; provoking self-reflection within the sectors; and employing creative strategies to tackle ableism and help ensure a non-ableist future for Aotearoa.

In this presentation, we discuss deep-seated ableist attitudes and practices revealed in research with participants from across all sectors and our creative dissemination of these findings to date.


Conor Lorigan
Outside the university is outside the modern self.

1. Rangi as resonance (Carl Mika) operates from a different subjectivity to the modern (Pākehā) self (Denise Ferreira Da Silva).
2. What is rangi as resonance? (Carl Mika, Maori Marsden, Symon Palmer, Madi Williams, Edouard Glissant)
3. What is the modern self? (Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Mark Fisher, Achille Mbembe, Simon Barber)
4. Rangi as resonance as surreal – returning Pākehā to an image unrecognisable from before (Viveiros Da Castro, Mark Fisher).

From this outline I will attempt to raise questions of what we mean by outside the university. The outside is going on regardless of us (inside) so then we can ask why or how we think we could be removed from the outside and how this then structures our thought of in/outside the university.

Chair: Charlotte Bruce Kells

Emily Beck
Critical Insights into Aotearoa Youth Justice Residences through Qualitative Interviews with Youth Residents and Staff

Though youth crime has more than halved in the past decade in Aotearoa (Ministry of Justice, 2024), community outcry over offenses like ‘ram raids’ has caused the government to enforce a more punitive approach to youth offending, promoting an increased use of youth justice residences (YJR) and the reopening of military-style boot camps. This heightened tough-on-crime approach disproportionately affects rangatahi Māori, who make up the majority of youth in custody (Francis & Vlaanderen, 2023). Despite this increased attention on youth offending, academic scholarship on Aotearoa YJR remains lacking. This is a presentation of master’s research that explores whether the ongoing piecemeal reform of YJR, geared towards restorative justice and cultural sensitivity, is a feasible solution to youth offending when situated within a western justice system, operating in a neocolonial context. This presentation reflects on seven semi-structured interviews with youth justice residents and staff members and describes the reflexive thematic analysis that was conducted. Critical race theory and counter-colonial criminology are used as framework to identify structural and systemic barriers that make YJR a not only ineffective, but harmful intervention for youth. This presentation closes with a discussion on how transformative justice can offer an alternative direction for youth justice reform.


Grace Gordon
Beyond bars and bootcamps: Reimagining safety in Aotearoa New Zealand

Carceral safety logic positions justice institutions as a primary source of safety, and this logic dominates internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent political change in Aotearoa New Zealand has seen government commitments to the introduction of wide-reaching anti-gang legislation, ineffective youth justice policies such as ‘bootcamps’, and amendments to sentencing legislation that would result in a burgeoning prison population, all in the name of ‘public safety’. Concerningly, the promotion of these punitive policies occurs in tandem with the systematic neglect of marginalised communities, what Ruth Wilson Gilmore terms ‘organized abandonment’. The trauma experienced by these communities, whose lives are marked by precarity and oppression, is then weaponised against them through criminalisation and carceral safety logic. Using the case studies of the Waikeria prison expansion and the ‘Military Style Academy Pilot’ for youth, this paper problematises Aotearoa New Zealand’s reliance on carceral safety logic and argues that this logic perpetuates harm, particularly among already marginalised communities. It promotes early developments of a reimagining of safety through sustainable, care-based approaches that provide an overdue antidote to harm and violence in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Carceral safety logic positions justice institutions as a primary source of safety, and this logic dominates internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent political change in Aotearoa New Zealand has seen government commitments to the introduction of wide-reaching anti-gang legislation, ineffective youth justice policies such as ‘bootcamps’, and amendments to sentencing legislation that would result in a burgeoning prison population, all in the name of ‘public safety’. Concerningly, the promotion of these punitive policies occurs in tandem with the systematic neglect of marginalised communities, what Ruth Wilson Gilmore terms ‘organized abandonment’. The trauma experienced by these communities, whose lives are marked by precarity and oppression, is then weaponised against them through criminalisation and carceral safety logic. Using the case studies of the Waikeria prison expansion and the ‘Military Style Academy Pilot’ for youth, this paper problematises Aotearoa New Zealand’s reliance on carceral safety logic and argues that this logic perpetuates harm, particularly among already marginalised communities. It promotes early developments of a reimagining of safety through sustainable, care-based approaches that provide an overdue antidote to harm and violence in Aotearoa New Zealand.


Claudia Murdoch
Restorative practice in New Zealand schools: The challenges and successes.

This presentation outlines the findings of a Master of Arts in Criminology project on the challenges and successes of restorative practice in New Zealand schools. The work is situated within a political context of rising tough-on-crime rhetoric and zero-tolerance responses to young people’s misbehaviour. Restorative practice, by contrast, prioritises the mana, accountability, emotional capacity and harm-repair capability of the young people who experience it. As a result, it is a mechanism for decreasing exclusionary punishment use. The current literature suggests that the reduced rates of suspensions, stand-downs, exclusions and expulsions that result from effective restorative practice are important in disrupting the school-to-prison-pipeline.

This project aims to increase understanding of the factors preventing or enabling effective restorative practice. 11 semi-structured, qualitative interviews with teachers, school counsellors and restorative practice experts investigated their experiences enacting restorative practice in both a proactive and reactive capacity. It asked them about their experiences working with young people and the issues and opportunities they face within their schools. These issues and opportunities will be analysed in the presentation, alongside their implications on alternatives to punishment in the criminal justice system more broadly.

Chair: Ian Hyslop

Bindi Bennett and Donna Baines
Emancipatory Decoloniality as Leadership in Social Service Organisations: Insights from Indigenous and Anti-Oppressive Yarnings and Approaches

Around the globe, there is a growing demand for leadership in resolving longstanding social injustices experienced by Indigenous peoples. As part of a larger, international study, this article draws on early findings from yarnings/qualitative interviews to contribute to theorising Indigenous leadership in social service organisations. Within our research design, the team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers consciously centre Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in order to build emancipatory, decolonising theory and practice. The analysis in this article identifies Indigenous social justice leadership in a number of overlapping forms including: Indigenous-centered/cultural centered ways of being, knowing and doing; intersectional identities; partnerships; and envisioning for all. The article concludes with further early theorising and calls for future research to delve more deeply into Indigenous leadership as it develops in resistance to new conditions, including the far-right push-back against human rights and equity, and the constraints of neoliberalism.

Katheryn Margaret Pascoe
Examining the potential for employing a Delphi Panel for social work research in competitive and constrained contexts

Supervised student placements are central to social work education and there is substantial literature outlining the important role of practice educators in work integrated learning, including the need for training. This presentation reports on the use of a Delphi Panel to answer “What are the potential opportunities and limitations for delivering a national training program for social workers supervising student placements (Practice educators) in Aotearoa New Zealand?”

A Delphi panel provides a systematic process for engaging a varied group of experts and professionals in a structured, iterative research design. Best suited for exploratory research, Delphi panels are used to commonly used in policy and educational research to gain insight through a series of sequential questionnaires accompanied by response summaries. The presentation will provide a critical discussion of the methodological decisions and how Delphi panels may be harnessed in social work, policy and welfare research. A Delphi panel provides the opportunity for dialogue amongst a range of stakeholders where panellists can share without apprehension of revealing their identity to other participants. This method can help facilitate fair and equitable communication by reducing the risk of an individual dominating discussion or voices going unheard as can happen in focus groups. This is particularly relevant for contentious topics or competitive contexts. Limitations include inhibited ability to follow-up on nuances and restricting discussion to a linear process which can exclude full participation from individuals and cultures which value transparent, dynamic and cyclical dialogue. Additionally, conceptualising consensus is questioned in knowledge production and what is considered expertise for participation.


Neil Ballantyne
A practice-oriented approach to doing lively document analysis: Analysing documents on the datafied border in Fortress Europe.

Document analysis is a taken-for-granted aspect of many research projects where documents are considered textual repositories of content and investigated for their insights into human discourse, organisational behaviours or policy priorities. During analysis key, recurring concepts and categories are abstracted from a corpus of documents and subjected to quantitative content analysis – sometimes using text mining – or, more commonly in social work research, qualitative thematic or discourse analysis. Recently, Kristin Asdal, Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Oslo, advocated for a practice-oriented approach to document analysis. This strategy resonates well with actor-network theory and adopts a material-semiotic perspective on document analysis. In this context, documents are considered textual or semiotic in the sense that they convey meaning, but also as material artifacts in two senses. They are material objects in and of themselves. They are doubly material to the extent that social and natural phenomena are brought into documents to work on them: turning objects into issues or acting to quieten controversies. The interplay between the material and semiotic reveals documents to be lively players in forming or closing issues. In this presentation, I will illustrate the value of a practice-oriented approach to document analysis by discussing its application to a case study of the work of the Data Justice Lab at the University of Cardiff. I focus on some research outputs by the Lab highlighting the impact of data-driven systems and artificial intelligence on refugees and asylum seekers at the European border.


Xiaohang Yang
A Comparative Research of Value Conflicts in Social Work Education for Chinese Mainland Students in China and New Zealand

Social work is a crucial global profession, but its education and practice are heavily shaped by national contexts. Social work programmes have to balance integrating international standards with adapting to local cultural contexts. This can lead to value conflicts for students who are adjusting to different educational systems.
My PhD research aims to investigate the value conflicts experienced by Chinese Mainland students in social work education in China and New Zealand. A review of literature reveals that in Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and a commitment to human rights and social justice form the basis of bicultural social work education. However, Chinese Mainland students often find it challenging to understand these Māori concepts and Western social work values. Social work education in Mainland China is based on Western social work models that emphasise individualism and social justice, which can conflict with traditional Confucian values of familism and collectivism.
This presentation outlines the value conflicts experienced by Chinese Mainland students in social work education and highlights the challenges of globalisation and indigenisation within social work education. It can encourage dialogue between social work education systems in China and New Zealand.