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Organisational change in the New Zealand Labour Party, 1974-81
No full textThis thesis is an examination of the organisational changes that have occurred in the extra-parliamentary wing of the New Zealand Labour Party between the Annual Conferences of May 1974 and May 1981. Changes in the Party structure during the period are a major component of the study, with particular reference to the effects of these changes in the major metropolitan centres. The thesis attempts to examine the reasons for the major structural changes approved in 1974, the immediate impact of the new structures and the increased emphasis given to implementing the 1974 blueprint, in the aftermath of Labour's election defeat in 1975. A central focus of the study in the post 1975 period is the activity of the N.Z. Council at the highest level of the Party and the Councils attempts to restructure the Party organisation. The thesis attempts to explain the reasons for the emergence of a more assertive N.Z. Council and for the consequential reduction of the influence of the Parliamentary Labour Party in organisational matters.
The first chapter is a prelude to the changes which occurred within the Party in the mid 1970's. It covers the 1967 - 73 period and traces the early attempts at constitutional change, the initial resistance to reform of the Party structure and gives reasons for the gradual acceptance of the need for change within the Party. Chapter two focuses on reasons for the major structural changes that were approved at the 1974 Annual Conference and examines the implications of these changes in the dominant organisational units of the Party at the national and local levels.
Chapter three is devoted to a study of the internal reappraisal of Labour's organisation, in the wake of the disastrous 1975 election campaign, while chapter four deals with the attempts by the N.Z. Council, during the 1976-78 period, to respond to the serious organisational problems facing the Party. A feature of this chapter is the build up in Party membership, which was intended to diminish the Party's communications problems, and to establish a basis for the restructuring of the Party organisation.
Chapter five is an account of the revival of the Labour Party at the local level during the 1976-78 period and explains how different forms of regional organisation evolved in the main centres. The long term consequences of the massive increase in branch membership are dealt with in chapter six. This chapter, which covers the first two years of Jim Anderton's Presidency, deals with the reasons for Anderton's victory, with the drive towards further modernisation of the Party machine (by means of a new look Executive) and with the effect of the increased assertiveness of the N.Z. Council in the internal Party arena.
Chapter seven concentrates on the “new breed” of Regional Organiser employed by the Party during the 1979-81 period and on attempts of these organisers to upgrade the Party at the regional level
Drivers of ethical consumption: A cross-cultural comparison
No full textEthical consumption covers a diverse range of areas including environmental concerns, fair trade, consumer boycotts, voluntary simplicity and sustainable consumption. They are driven by motivations and values which vary from culture to culture. A detailed qualitative research was conducted regarding ethical consumption, motivations behind them and core values driving them in two dissimilar societies. The data gathering was done by in-depth, open ended interviews from 72 respondents in Pakistan and 70 in New Zealand. Laddering technique was applied to analyse them. Values revealed by respondents were mapped on to the Schwartz value scale. Analysis revealed that ethical consumption choices in Pakistan were influenced by motivations like religiosity, concern for health, environment and frugality. They were driven by values like tradition, conformity, universalism, hedonism, achievement and security. In New Zealand, ethical choices were mostly related to the pollution reduction, environmental protection and purchase of local products. They were driven by values like universalism, achievement and hedonism. The research helps governments devise policies to promote ethical consumption. It aids marketers, market products which appeal to societal norms and values
Agency, uncertainty and power: Why people consider assisted dying at the end of life
No full textAssisted dying is a significant issue in Aotearoa New Zealand given the continued controversy over the End of Life Choice Bill (2017), Act (2019) and forthcoming referendum. However, the views of people approaching the end of life are largely missing from the public debate and New Zealand research. My PhD research is an open enquiry into the perspectives of people with approximately one year’s life expectancy who would have considered an assisted death (if it were available). Fourteen participants and six family members were interviewed.
My thesis focuses on the socio-cultural values that dying people used to explain their views on assisted dying. The conceptual framework incorporates both the sociology of death and dying and the ‘wish to hasten death’ literatures. The discursive and assemblage methodological approaches were chosen because of their analytic power to illuminate the dynamism, the contextual and relational elements of the wish to hasten death, overlooked by much of the literature.
Identifying an assemblage of medicalised dying demonstrated that participants were not passive recipients of medicalisation; rather they rejected, co-opted and embraced it. I illustrate how participants strategically re-medicalised dying by framing their dying, death and suffering as activities that require medical intervention to achieve the good death that ‘medicine’ had promised them.
Assisted dying appealed because it offered individual control and mitigated the risk of dying badly. Yet any regime of assisted dying reinforces health professionals as in control of dying and increasingly controls freedom. Within this paradox of control, I argue there is still scope for choice, activism and an ethical making of the self, although limited by the biopolitical regime, that equates to a degree of freedom for participants.
Participants contested normative discourses about life, dying and death. I show how participants sought to expand the boundaries of acceptable dying and to normalise assisted dying. Foucault’s principles of exclusion, rarefaction and games of truth shed light on the power structures that privilege some discourses, ideologies and groups over dying persons’ experiences.
Participants described being disenfranchised by medicine’s rejection of assisted dying as a legitimate option at the end of life. In the face of this perceived epistemic injustice and uncertainty, assisted dying offered a technique of certainty against the risk that dying badly posed for their ontological security. My research suggests participants exercise agency through their attempts to ‘strategically negotiate’ and re-medicalise dying, and contest normative discourses of dying and longevity for their own aims. These three concepts—strategic negotiators, contesting normative dying, and freedom within the paradox of control—constitute the original contributions of this research.
If the debate in Aotearoa New Zealand on assisted dying is to be moved forward, attention must be paid to the contextual reasons people would consider choosing assisted dying. The wish to have the option of assisted dying is a manifestation of a new paradigm of dying that reflects changing individual, societal and ideological concepts about: what is a good life, what is a good death and importantly in between, what is undesirable dying
Ornstein Uhlenbeck- Jump Models of Evolution
No full textIn this thesis we explore models of continuous trait evolution which allow for sudden changes in trait values. Starting with the Ornstein Uhlenbeck process, we introduce two new models based on combinations of the Ornstein Uhlenbeck process and a jump process.
Chapter 1 introduces the biological background. We summarise the evolutionary processes relevant to our models, introduce terminology associated with phylogenetic trees, and describe the experiment to which we will eventually apply our models.
Chapter 2 discusses models of continuous trait evolution. We first review a number of models found in the literature, then describe the versions of the Ornstein Uhlenbeck process which are the focus of this work. For each of our models we define the transition densities needed to calculate the likelihood of data generated under the model on a phylogeny.
Chapter 3 describes three methods for approximating the likelihood under one of our new models. The first of these uses weighted sums of Hermite polynomials to approximate partial likelihoods and makes use of nice properties of the Hermite polynomials to calculate an approximate likelihood based on these partial approximations. The second method is based on numerical quadrature in which partial likelihoods are approximated by interpolatory polynomials. The third method approximates a weighted sum of Gaussians by a smaller weighted sum of Gaussians. The accuracy and convergence properties of all three approximations are evaluated numerically.
Chapter 4 attempts to infer model parameters from data. We discuss how to incorporate sampling of individuals and multiple traits into our model. We take a Bayesian approach to parameter estimation and sample from the marginal posterior distribution of each parameter using MCMC. We investigate our ability to correctly estimate model parameters on simulated data and find that only some parameters are estimated well. Finally, we estimate model parameters from data on protein expression levels sampled from white clover (Trifolium repens) under artificial selection.
Chapter 5 summarises the main conclusions and discusses outstanding questions and further work to be done
New Zealand marine zooplankton dynamics through the lens of climate change
No full textMarine mesozooplankton (zooplankton >0.2 mm in size) play critical roles in ocean food webs and biogeochemical cycles. Because mesozooplankton are taxonomically and functionally diverse, community composition is an important factor that influences zooplankton-mediated ecological functions. In particular, food web processes such as grazing and trophic transfer within diverse plankton communities set the foundation for the flow of energy and important biomolecules such as fatty acids throughout marine ecosystems. However, our understanding is limited regarding how these complex processes will respond to climate change as the oceans become warmer and more acidic due to increased anthropogenic carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.
The present thesis aims to explore the roles of zooplankton in New Zealand marine ecosystems through the lens of a changing ocean. Specifically, this thesis 1) describes zooplankton community compositions and associations with water masses and seasons during a year when there was a summer marine heatwave event off the south-eastern coast of New Zealand, and 2) investigates the responses of two important zooplankton-mediated processes within marine food webs – grazing behaviour and fatty acid trophic transfer – to the combined climate stressors of ocean warming and acidification.
To characterise zooplankton communities off the south-eastern coast of New Zealand, mesozooplankton were collected along an oceanographic transect passing through neritic, modified subtropical, and subantarctic surface waters from November 2017 to September 2018 (Chapter 2). During the study period, some samples were coincidently collected when there was a summer marine heatwave event. Multivariate analyses revealed that zooplankton community compositions differed significantly among water masses and were characterised by seasonal community shifts involving copepods, pelagic tunicates, chaetognaths, and thecosome pteropods. These findings improve our limited understanding of the present-day biology off the Otago coast and provide first insight into seasonal differences in zooplankton composition in the different water masses. The findings also provide a possible window into how zooplankton communities could be affected by future heatwave events, but more importantly serve as a baseline dataset for future Munida transect zooplankton studies.
To investigate effects of climate change on zooplankton grazing dynamics, mesozooplankton grazing incubation experiments (24 h) were carried out under present-day temperature and pH conditions and those predicted for the year 2100 in the form of single and combined stressors. The incubations used either isolated copepods of a single species or a mixed mesozooplankton community incubated with their natural prey communities. The incubations took place during short-term mesocosm studies (20-22 days) in two consecutive years (Mesocosm Experiment 3 in 2017 and Mesocosm Experiment 4 in 2018), which were part of a larger project (CARIM – Coastal Acidification: Rates, Impacts, and Management) designed to assess effects of climate stressors on New Zealand coastal marine ecosystems (Chapters 3 and 4). Results demonstrate the complexities and variable interactions within natural plankton communities and suggest that climate change may alter zooplankton grazing dynamics under combined (Chapter 3) or single stressors (Chapter 4) at both the community (Chapter 3) and species level (Chapter 4). Results from both chapters also contained some negative grazing rates, which, while biologically impossible, are not uncommon in zooplankton grazing experiments using disappearance-based methods and bottle incubations. This indicates that, although the methods used were the best currently available, they were not robust enough to fully resolve all trophic interactions within the experimental system.
To investigate the effects of climate change on plankton fatty acid content and trophic transfer, the relative fatty acid compositions of the mesozooplankton and prey community within one of the coastal climate change mesocosm experiments (Mesocosm Experiment 4) were analysed (Chapter 5). Results show that neither acidification alone nor acidification in combination with warming significantly affected the close correlation between diet and consumer fatty acid composition. However, polyunsaturated fatty acids, particularly the relative concentration of C18:4n-3, decreased in zooplankton under combined acidification and warming but not in the diet, which suggests combined stressors may have directly affected zooplankton physiology regardless of the fatty acid composition of the diet.
Overall, the present thesis improves our understanding of how ocean warming and acidification may affect zooplankton community dynamics, particularly in New Zealand waters. The main findings 1) provide an important baseline of zooplankton distributions and community compositions against which future studies can be compared, and 2) demonstrate the complexities of zooplankton trophic interactions, suggesting their responses to climate stressors will also be complex and variable. Specifically, results from mesocosm experiments imply that effects of climate stressors on copepod grazing are likely species-specific, are different across levels of biological organization, and are influenced by variability in the prey field, including internal microzooplankton dynamics. Mesocosm results also suggest climate stressors do not affect the overall trophic transfer of fatty acids from diet to zooplankton consumers at the community level but may still directly affect some zooplankton polyunsaturated fatty acids. The present thesis also highlights the need for continued and long-term monitoring efforts of zooplankton off New Zealand’s coasts, and the development of methods that are conducive for accurately estimating grazing rates of copepods within climate manipulation experiments in productive coastal systems. Findings from this thesis add to our understanding of present-day zooplankton-driven ecological functions in New Zealand waters and have implications for improving predictions of future climate change effects on marine ecosystems
Women and Islam in Malaysia: Narrative and myth in the qualitative analysis of two controversial online news stories between 2014 and 2018
No full textThis study investigates the mythic aspects of news to highlight the role of myth in news narratives of selected Malaysian online news portals through examining the structure and content of individual reports and comparing news and myth. The aim in studying news narratives as myth is to capture and unpack the beliefs, values and established assumptions found in online news portals about the gender norms and roles of Malay Muslim women in the context of the Islamisation phenomenon in Malaysia. This study examines the ten most popular online Malaysian news portals, involving two controversial case studies on women and Islam: (i) a Malaysian gymnast’s sports attire controversy and (ii) a fatwa against Sisters in Islam. The range of these case studies provides an opportunity to determine the type of myth used by the ten most popular English- and Malay-language Malaysian online news portals. Given the climate of Islamisation, this thesis argues that the issue of women and Islam is contested by the media. The use of myth in news reporting varies based on different cultural sources—Christian, Islamic and Malay—influenced by the ownership, readership, religious and racial inclinations of the news portals. The findings reveal that the online English language news portals question the religious norms and consensuses that control female roles, gender and identity, while the online Malay language news portals tend to perpetuate an ‘ideal’ type of contemporary Malay Muslim woman. This thesis concludes that news narratives present a battle between the liberal and conservative interpretations of Islam in Malaysia
Characterising the internal structure of major fault zones, using samples from outcrops and boreholes from the Alpine Fault Zone, New Zealand
No full textIt is important to characterize the internal structure of major fault zones to understand their gross physical attributes, including their mechanical, seismic, and hydraulic properties. Using the Deep Fault Drilling Project (DFDP)-1 core samples and outcrop samples from the Alpine fault zone, I characterized the structure of cataclasites by mineralogical and microstructural analyses. The constituent minerals of the protolith mylonites were comminuted during cataclasis generating particles with new size and shape distributions, but new minerals also grew authigenically during deformation.
The developed method of SEM-EDS analyses improving spatial resolution using lower accelerating voltage enabled identification minerals and determination of major element compositions of particles as small as ~ 2 µm diameter. Compositions of phyllosilicates in fault rocks from the DFDP-1 measured using this method show pressures of ~100 - 200 MPa, and fairly high temperatures of ~350 ºC were estimated for the analysed ultramylonite sample, while variable temperatures in the range ~180- 350 ºC were estimated for cataclasites, and lower temperatures of ~160 ºC were estimated for ultracataclasites. These results demonstrate that cataclasis from a mylonitic protolith is a progressive process occurring throughout the brittle fault zone during exhumation.
The particle size distribution in different types of fault rocks shows that higher fractal dimension (D) by foliated ultracataclasite/cataclasite represents a process of ‘selective fragmentation of particles’. Lower D by ultramylonite and unfoliated cataclasite represents a process of ‘constrained comminution’. Orientation distribution of particles shows that the textural transition from ultramylonite through unfoliated cataclasite to foliated (ultra-)cataclasite involves increasing the number of dominant orientations initially through fracturing and then by rotation of particles. Foliations in cataclasites most likely formed by progressive fragmentation of particles during multiple repeated increments of coseismic slip.
Therefore, during exhumation, the fault zone develops a new mineralogy by hydrothermal alteration of pre-existing minerals, and precipitation of new minerals. The newly-formed minerals are mostly phyllosilicates, which are known to be frictionally weak, but velocity-strengthening. This means that during exhumation the fault gradually weakens and becomes less likely to accommodate earthquake ruptures
Peace Education in Afghanistan: A Comparative Study of Conflict and Post-Conflict School Textbooks
No full textAfghanistan has experienced numerous educational curricula supporting its different governments’ policies regarding the establishment of formal education. Afghanistan’s school textbooks were published in support of alternate ideological regimes or governments during the years 1979 to 2002. From 2003 to 2014, the Afghanistan Islamic Republic government, with support from international donor agencies, worked to change the direction of education towards peace, free from political intervention and favouritism. The purpose of this research is to evaluate three different approaches to education in Afghanistan by examining a range of school textbooks, from three distinct political and cultural regimes, from a peace education perspective. This thesis focuses in particular on the extent to which the objectives of peace education appear in Afghanistan’s newly developed school textbooks between the years 2004 and 2014. There has not previously been a systematic investigation of peace education qualities in national curriculum in Afghanistan from the three distinct ideological regimes that comprise political modernity in the region—the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (Communist), the Islamic State of Afghanistan (Jihadi) and the current Afghanistan Islamic Republic and this doctoral thesis presents an historic and comparative appreciation for education as a vehicle of nationalism from a peacebuilding perspective.
Using components of the Peace Education Curricular Analysis Project, an analytical framework developed by peace scholar Katerina Standish, three objectives of peace education are surveyed in the Afghanistan data: 1. recognizing violence, 2. resolving conflict non-violently, and 3. fostering an environment of positive peace. School textbooks from the Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISAG), and the current Afghanistan Islamic Republic Government (AIRG) were analysed using directive qualitative content analysis (Krippendorf 2004). Illustrative statistics derived from summative or quantitative content analysis (Neuendorf 2002) have also been used as the methodology for this research. This analysis finds that Afghanistan school textbooks from 1980 to 2002 (regime 1 and 2) were largely ideological support mechanisms for the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISAG), whereas textbooks that were developed from 2004 to 2014 under the Afghanistan Islamic Republic Government (AIRG), have somewhat met peace education objectives. This original research demonstrates that the Afghanistan Ministry of Education, in contrast to the two prior political–cultural regimes in the country, is exhibiting more explicit peace education intentions in order to recognize and transform violence and contribute to positive peace, but that many opportunities exist to further strengthen peace education content in the school textbooks in the country.
As peace education theory implies that education systems can help to transform society (Harris 2004), this study’s findings illustrate how one post-conflict nation is embracing peacebuilding via the national curriculum. This analysis of current school textbooks in Afghanistan demonstrates that students are, to some extent, receiving education towards peace, and that the integration of information relevant to peace education is an attempt to empower students towards sustainable peace in Afghanistan
The seasonal ecophysiology of Undaria pinnatifida (Harvey) Suringar in Otago Harbour, New Zealand
No full textSince the discovery of the Asian kelp, Undaria pinnatifida, in Wellington, New Zealand in 1987, interest has been expressed in the wild harvest or cultivation of this edible species. As there is little data on the ecology of this species outside its native habitat, the objectives of this study were to investigate the seasonal ecophysiology of Undaria pinnatifida in Otago Harbour, New Zealand, to enable a more informed appraisal of the potential impacts of U. pinnatifida on New Zealand's coastal ecosystems.
Field investigations showed that sea surface temperature correlated with blade growth rate of Undaria pinnatifida, however, evidence for the environmental control of sporophyte senescence was equivocal. Seasonal variation in blade and stipe growth rate, and sporophyll development, produced a temporal cline of morphological traits characteristic of both f. typica and f. distans. Phenotypic response to environmental factors produced an extreme morphology of U. pinnatifida f. typica. (= f. narutensis), which was morphologically similar to U. undarioides. The seasonal growth pattern of U. pinnatifida sporophytes in Carey's Bay was typical of a seasonal annual (sensu Sears and Wilce 1975). Also, the seasonal changes in sporophyte population structure did not indicate the persistence of successive cohorts through to the next season. Recruitment of U. pinnatifida sporophytes showed a variable response to environmental factors, which may enable U. pinnatifida to colonise regions over a wide latitudinal range and environments which differ from those experienced in its endemic habitat. The development of gametophyte cultures indicated that the physiological requirements of vegetative and reproductive development occured for U. pinnatifida over the temperature range similar to that of Otago Harbour (7 - 16°C). This may indicate an adaption to sub-optimal temperatures, enabling U. pinnatifida to complete its lifehistory at temperatures which are lower than those experienced in its native habitat
Carbon-rich coordination cages
No full textThis thesis consists of five chapters describing the synthesis and host-guest binding studies of various carbon-rich metallosupramolecular cages.
Chapter 1 provides an introduction of the field of metallosupramolecular chemistry, describing the three main synthetic methods of metallosupramolecular cage formation (symmetry interaction, directional bonding, and weak-link approaches) along with examples of host-guest binding interactions and applications of various cage systems. Also included in Chapter 1 is an overview of PAHs, focusing on the synthesis and applications of assorted HBCs.
Chapter 2 describes the synthesis of a number of quadruply stranded M2L4 cage architectures, with phenylene and anthracenylene linker units. The effects of the two linker units with differing surface area and bulk were studied on two aspects: on host-guest binding interactions with a number of guest molecules, and the controlled formation of heteroleptic M2AnB4-n cage systems.
Chapter 3 describes the formation of two octahedral M6L8 cages, consisting of either ethylene or phenylene linker units. The two linkers units differ in length and surface area, leading to different cavity and portal sizes, and their effects on host-guest binding interactions with a range of guest molecules were investigated.
Chapter 4 describes the synthesis of two distinct cage architectures, the semi-octahedral M6L4 and the triangular prismatic M6L2 cages, utilising the same trigonal benzene core ligand with 4-pyridyl coordinating units and either the cis-capped Pd(II) or the di-Ru(II) clip units. The benzene core M6L4 and M6L2 cage architectures were synthesised as a smaller, less synthetically challenging analogues of the HBC core cage architectures to be attempted later.
Chapter 5 describes the synthesis of four generations of HBC ligands and the attempted synthesis of the octahedral M6L8, semi-octahedral M6L4, and triangular prismatic M6L2 cage architectures with the HBC ligands