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Caring Food Systems? The Transformative Potential of Regenerative Agriculture in New Zealand
Get PDFAgri-food systems around the world are facing an urgent need to transition to more sustainable forms of production. A growing body of literature argues that achieving radical change in the agri-food system requires a radical renegotiation of our relationship with the environment alongside a change in our thinking and approach to transformational food politics. To do this, this study uses a feminist political ecology approach to investigate the degree to which components of a more-than-human ethic of care are embedded within New Zealand’s emerging regenerative farming movement. The purpose of this research is to understand the potential of regenerative farming to act as political and social spaces for radical and transformative change.
The research is based on farm visits and interviews with farmers and key organizational stakeholders who are either practicing or supporting regenerative agriculture in Otago, Southland and Canterbury. It was found that undertaking regenerative agriculture requires a significant shift in mindset away from the reductionist paradigm that dominates conventional farming towards a more holistic and relational understanding of biological and social ecosystems. This shift is characterized by greater attentiveness to on farm biology, but also the use of this engagement to complement data-driven guidance for on-farm decisions and care of the land. Personal wellbeing and fulfilment through farming seems to increase with reframed, holistic and principle-based perspectives being applied to personal and social lives, as well as to on farm biology. Collaboration is found to be favoured within social networks of regenerative spaces. The relational approaches to farming represent a challenge to the existing social norms and economic-political structures of the New Zealand farming landscape. In conclusion, it is argued that the mindset shift is what differentiates ‘being regenerative’ from the technical practices of regenerative agriculture. While the two overlap, it is the mindset that is crucial to the transformational potential of regenerative agriculture
"A cockered silken wanton": The cockered child in late medieval and early modern literature and drama
No full textThis thesis is concerned with the ‘cockered child,’ an iconic character in late medieval and early modern society, yet a figure almost entirely forgotten today. To be ‘cockered’ meant to be spoilt — to be overindulged as a child by one’s parents, or, to wilfully overindulge oneself as an adult. Such a cossetted lifestyle was believed to encourage amorality and weakness, and to prevent or subvert maturation. Cockered boys were thus portrayed as immature, effeminate, and foolish; cockered girls as defiant, aggressive, and promiscuous.
The cockered child became a potent figure for promoting the rising tide of humanist thought from the late medieval era on. Following classical tenets, humanists maintained that education facilitates reasoning, and that reasoning allows the making of moral choices. Education was thus seen as a moral enterprise, and it was believed amongst humanists that educating those in power could allow society to return to the glories of the classical past. To encourage parents to send their children to school, humanist writers associated the uneducated with the cockered stereotype — so that the unschooled were tarred as corrupt, weak, and socially corrosive. This view was consistently disseminated by humanist authors for a period of several hundred years, appearing in conduct and pedagogical literature, and, most reliably of all, in morality drama.
The standard morality play plot mirrors the parable of the prodigal son, with the humanum genus protagonist modelled upon the titular character. However, because the Bible fails to mention the source of the prodigal’s rebelliousness, humanists were able to fill this gap and ascribe it to lack of education and cockering. Other moral paradigms were often added to this narrative, such as the pilgrimage of life, Aristotelian ethics, humoralism, and others, which resulted in a multi-layered ethical argument that demanded that children be schooled or face ruin. This practice also meant that the cockered humanum genus became the allegorical focus of an all-encompassing moral vision.
Over time, the humoral point of view became the most popular, and cockered children came to be strongly linked to the melancholic complexion. Thus, we find the regular appearance of immature, effeminate, and melancholic characters in early modern comedy. Sir Andrew Aguecheek from Twelfth Night (c.1600) and Bartholomew Cokes from Bartholomew Fair (1614) provide two fine examples of this trend. Figures such as these would have been recognised by a contemporary audience as alluding to the cockered humanum genus tradition, and thus inevitably introduced allegorical content into the plays in which they appear.
Vice and Virtue, who together with the humanum genus typically feature in the psychomachian morality play tradition, underwent similar transformative processes. The Vice came to be associated with the rash and angry choleric complexion, a condition which, for example, underlies Sir Toby Belch and Wasp who also appear in the two plays just mentioned. Thus, when early modern plays feature contrasting characters who exhibit melancholic effeminacy and choleric hyper-masculinity, they are alluding to a well-known cultural convention that was indelibly linked to the older morality drama, and restate the allegorical arguments that the genre was used to portray.
Virtue changed in a rather different manner. In early plays, the Virtue character is a dull homiletic figure who loves to preach. Due to the cultural associations between education, morality, and maturity, which the cockered child came to embody, this role was transformed into that of the Virtuous Wife, a character who assumes the function of the Forgiving Father and redeems prodigal young gallants through marriage. This merger of secular and spiritual events (marriage and salvation) shows how attaining masculine maturity, represented by marriage, could at that time be compared to moral salvation. The Virtuous Wife also allowed playwrights to rescript ethical narratives into romance, and thereby allowed the morality tradition to continue in a more subtle and realistic form.
I conclude with a study of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that draws these various threads together, and demonstrates that a single overriding discourse can be found in many early modern plays. This discourse echoes that of the morality genre — and repeats the humanist touchstone that the educated will grow up to become noble adults, whilst the uneducated are weak, amoral, and a hazard not only to themselves but also to their wider community and commonwealth. It is, however, only through understanding the cockered child’s history that this content can be discerned. It is my contention that the cockered child stereotype was a figure of enormous cultural significance, a character who appears in some of the most famous dramas written during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the embodiment and disseminator of ideals that helped medieval England negotiate its way into the early modern era
Dispersive probing of dynamical processes and Feshbach resonances in ultracold gases
Get PDFTrapped ultracold gases are highly controllable experimental systems with unique quantum properties, making them a brilliant medium for research in solid state physics, quantum computation, and precision measurements. The standard technique for observing a cold atomic sample is time-of-flight absorption imaging. While this provides valuable information regarding the distribution and quantum state of atoms, the process destroys the sample via spontaneous emission and recoil heating, allowing for acquisition of just one data point per experimental run. In this thesis we develop and implement a complementary hyperfine state sensitive, off-resonant, optical dispersive interrogation system that uses frequency modulation spectroscopy to monitor the temporal dynamics of atomic population during coherent dynamical processes in cold atom systems. The applicability of this robust and powerful tool is expanded to simultaneously measure both the F = 2 hyperfine state population of 87Rb and the F = 9/2 hyperfine state population of 40K. This dual-species probe is used to monitor the sympathetic cooling process, whereby 40K is cooled indirectly via collision with a sample of 87Rb, which itself is undergoing forced RF evaporative cooling.
The dispersive probing technique is then used to investigate a range of magnetic Feshbach resonances in 87Rb. Feshbach resonances allow the atomic interaction strength to be precisely tuned via an external magnetic field. Rapid and effcient location and identification of four such resonances were demonstrated between the |F=1, mF=1> and |F=2, mF=0> states. Despite the resonance-induced loss features being 18 G. The resonances consist of two known s-wave features in the vicinity of 9 G and 18 G, and two previously unobserved p-wave features near 5 G and 10 G. The dispersive detection approach is further used to monitor the atomic loss in real-time, and directly characterise the two-body loss dynamics for each Feshbach resonance. We further characterise the four observed Feshbach resonances by dispersively measuring the 2-body loss rate coefficient, K21, as a function of magnetic field.
Finally, the dispersive probe method is paired with an FPGA-based feedback algorithm and used to perform reliable transfer of 87Rb atoms to a target quantum state in the presence of an unknown, random magnetic field. The algorithm processes off-resonant optical measurements of state populations during a microwave-induced adiabatic rapid passage in real time, and terminates the process when a certain threshold in population transfer is achieved
Sticky business: Adhesion of Microplastics to Common New Zealand Macroalgae and Implications for Phenanthrene Toxicity
No full textMarine microplastic pollution presents a significant threat to coastal systems, where anthropogenic activities have resulted in the accumulation and abundance of pollutants in this environment. Although a number of studies have reported the presence of microplastics on macroalgae, there is a lack of in-depth information regarding microplastic adhesion and retention to these important primary producers, and subsequent morphological or physiological effects. Although microplastics can interact with harmful chemical compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, exacerbating or mitigating their toxicity, no research currently exists on the combined effects of these two pollutant groups in marine macroalgae. Consequently, this study aims to provide a comprehensive insight into microplastic adhesion, retention, and effects on marine macroalgae, and to examine the effects of microplastic exposure in combination with phenanthrene, a common polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. Disks were excised from the blades of red, green, and brown macroalgae to allow for comparisons between species. Macroalgae disks were exposed to different concentrations of 1 – 5 um fluorescent thermoset amino formaldehyde microplastics across several exposure durations, followed by wash cycles and imaging. Adhesion and retention trends were identified using fluorescence microscopy and the imaging processing software ImageJ. While a significant increase in adhesion to the green macroalgae U. pertusa was observed between the 1-hour and 24-hour exposure treatments, no significant increase occurred between the 24-hour exposure and longer exposure treatments, suggesting adhesion occurs within 24 hours of exposure. Furthermore, although wash cycles were effective at removing a significant percent of the adhered microplastics, a considerable proportion of microplastics were retained. Biochemical analysis results also showed a dose-dependent effect on microplastic toxicity, where concentrations of 50,000 mp/mL resulted in a significant increase in enzymatic antioxidant activities (APOX, CAT, GPOX, GR, and SOD) and markers of oxidative stress (Lprox and PC) in U. pertusa and the red macroalgae Gigartina sp. Microplastic adhesion trends and subsequent effects were also species-specific, with the brown algae U. pinnatifida exhibiting lower microplastic adhesion and retention compared to U. pertusa and Gigartina sp., and no change in enzymatic antioxidant activities and markers of oxidative stress. Exposure to phenanthrene at concentrations of 0.1 uM and higher resulted in an increase in U. pertusa enzymatic antioxidant activities and markers of oxidative stress, with higher doses presenting qualitative observations of cellular damage and a decline in macroalgal growth. However, when 0.1 uM phenanthrene was combined with 1–4 um HDPE microplastics at 25,000 mp/mL, a mitigating effect was observed. These findings suggest that microplastic sorption can reduce the available phenanthrene in the media and subsequent toxicity. In summary, this study comprehensively examines the adhesion and retention of microplastics to three different macroalgae species, and provides novel insights into the effects of microplastic and phenanthrene toxicity in a marine macroalgae model
Has the Queen V Strawbridge been resurrected?: Cameron V R and public welfare offences
No full textR v Strawbridge saw the Court of Appeal in 1970 adopt a “half-way house” between an absolute offence and requiring the Court to prove knowledge. The case of Cameron v R was perhaps an incident in which the court appeared to be resurrecting the ‘Strawbridge’ category of offence in 2017. The article concludes, however, that Strawbridge will continue to apply to a limited band of cases that involve the specific misidentification of prohibited drugs only, and thus has not been resurrected at all
The behaviour of dissolved silica within Blueskin Bay and its tributary waters
No full textThis study investigates the variability of dissolved silica levels within the natural water systems of the Otago region. It examines three rivers in the area: the Clutha, Taieri, and Leith, the Otago Harbour, the Southland Current and the Blueskin Bay Counter Current System. It considers seasonal variations, comparing and contrasting temperature, levels, salinity levels, river flows, rainfall, and draws these factors together to give an interpretation leading to concrete conclusions. That there is a linked system of silica flux in the rivers and marine waters, and that biological activity is the major sink for the highly conservative dissolved silica. This is particularly true in the period of the spring bloom. However biological activity is not appreciable in winter months.
Sampling took place at two weekly intervals in the harbour at 25 set sampling points, in the rivers weekly and in the sea monthly within the counter current system at 7 sites at mile intervals offshore. Sampling equipment included plastic bottles , glass salinity bottles, a Conductivity, Temperature and Depth probe ( CTD) and NIO (National Institute of Oceanography) deep sea sample bottles. Sampling
platforms varied from river bridges, to a runabout in the harbour, to the R. V. Munida a 14m ocean going vessel in the offshore regions
Beyond "doing a few interviews"
Get PDFThe aim of this article is to provide a short introduction to students, practitioners, and academics, who are considering a project that goes beyond doctrinal legal research. This includes those who are considering the common approach of “doing a few interviews” to supplement their doctrinal work. To illustrate the types of inquiry made in socio-legal research, the author uses research related to self-represented litigants. This article is overview of what is involved in creating and carrying out a socio-legal project
What is pro bono and how much do lawyers do?
Get PDFAccess to justice is firmly on the policy agenda and pro bono work is an important part of that agenda. While it can only ever make a limited contribution to closing the justice gap, it can provide access to legal services for some who would otherwise miss out. For pro bono to make this contribution, however, it needs to be very clear that only some types of free legal work achieve this goal and can, therefore, properly be called “pro bono”. Ensuring that the profession has this shared understanding of what constitutes pro bono work lays the foundation to organise and encourage the profession to do more. A shared definition means that the pro bono contributions of the profession can be measured and rewarded, and pro bono can provide part of the solution to the justice gap
Space use and resource selection of the Orokonui Ecosanctuary kākā(Nestor meridionalis) population
No full textReintroductions are an important feature in New Zealand conservation. With the rise of fenced sanctuaries on the mainland, taxa are being reintroduced to novel areas that are typically not encountered by wild populations, such as urban areas and highly fragmented environments. Understanding how animals use the space and resources in these landscapes, and identifying the threats they may face, is key for long-term conservation.
Kākā (Nestor meridionalis) are a large species of forest-dwelling parrot that are endemic to New Zealand and typically require large areas of native forest and a high level of pest control. In the last two decades, kākā have been reintroduced to ring-fenced sanctuaries in Wellington City (Zealandia Ecosanctuary) and Dunedin (Orokonui Ecosanctuary), heralding a new era of urbanised kākā. In Wellington, the population has expanded rapidly, resulting in a self-sustaining population, whereas in Dunedin, the population has been stable at approximately 50 individuals, despite successful breeding and yearly top-up translocations from captive facilities.
To investigate the space use and resource selection of kākā in the Orokonui population, ten kākā were tracked using GPS devices that use a SWIFT fix algorithm. An aim of this study was to test the suitability of these GPS devices with a stationary test, in vegetation conditions that represented kākā habitat. These devices performed comparably to standard-fixing GPS devices, resulting in similar estimates of fix success rate and median of the linear error, although they had more outlier locations.
The second aim of this study was to investigate space use of the Orokonui kākā, particularly their home range size and monthly variability, and to estimate risk based on the proportion of the home range that lies outside the fence of the sanctuary. The ten kākā were tracked for an average of 144 days, deriving locations every three hours. Utilisation distributions were estimated using dynamic Brownian Bridge Movement Modelling (dBBMM), and home range sizes varied widely between individuals (mean +/- SD = 6.6 +/- 5.4 km2), with significant age-related differences. Larger home ranges were observed in younger kākā, which may indicate more exploratory behaviour, and may also place them at higher risk to predation or human-based threats beyond the sanctuary fence. The estimate of risk based on proportion of an individual’s home range that was outside the sanctuary corresponded with mortality events prior to and during the study, with the observed mortality of seven kākā, six of which were three years or younger. There was a high level of monthly variation in home range sizes, which differed between sexes. Females increased their home range sizes prior to the nesting period, whereas males showed an opposite trend.
The third aim of the study was to estimate resource selection by Orokonui kākā to identify their key resources, and to assess their potential for population growth in the landscape beyond Orokonui Ecosanctuary. To provide robust population-level estimates of resource selection within a step selection function (SSF) framework, a population-level model using a Bayesian approach (integrated nested Laplace approximation) was fitted for all individuals combined, with individual as a random effect. Native forest (predominately Podocarpaceae and broadleaf spp.) was the only land cover type to be positively selected at a population level relative to the reference category, kanuka. Estimated probability of resource use was projected over the wider Dunedin area, suggesting a substantial amount of potential habitat is available. To explore individual variation of resource selection, a conditional logistic regression model was fitted for each kākā. Native forest was positively selected relative to kanuka by all but two kākā, and there was mixed selection and avoidance of exotic conifer and suburban areas. There was an increasing selection of native forest, and an increasing avoidance of exotic forest and suburban areas in older individuals, suggesting a higher adaptability in younger individuals.
The present study provides valuable fundamental knowledge of kākā spatial ecology, and highlights the variability of kākā behaviour at an individual level. It is expected that these findings will be valuable to the long-term management of the Orokonui Ecosanctuary kākā population, and will provide useful information for future kākā translocations and management throughout New Zealand