1,720,973 research outputs found
When Two Worlds Collide: Mātauranga Māori, Science and Health of the Toreparu Wetland
No full textMuch of our understanding of wetland health and function comes from scientific-based monitoring and methodologies. However, there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from Māori-value based assessment methods for monitoring wetlands in New Zealand. I used the Wetland Cultural Health Index (WCHI) and a variety of scientific wetland survey methods to examine how these two approaches complement each other. For this research, I worked with the people from Mōtakotako marae at the Toreparu wetland (Waikato), developing a set of site specific cultural indicators.
Comparative analysis revealed a range of similarities and differences between the WCHI indices and scientific parameters. We found that as Wetland Cultural Health Measure (WCHM) scores increased, there was also an increase in dissolved oxygen concentration, SQMCI-sb values, and total nitrogen concentrations. Cultural indices provided an overall indication of site health. It was apparent, however, that scores of contributing indicators could vary markedly at any one site. As such, high scores for some indicators (e.g., vegetation values) may obscure low values for other variables (e.g., water quality), providing an index that depicts site health as being of average condition.
Capacity and resourcing issues were also highlighted as being an issue for Māori to be able to successfully carry out wetland monitoring, but also for staff in councils and other research and environmental governing bodies to build and maintain relationships with tangata whenua. Other challenges around site access provided a unique opportunity to develop and trial new WCHI assessment techniques. The use of video assessment to carry out WCHI monitoring was of varying success. Indicators that could be scored by visual assessment were useful, but indicators that relied on sound or felt sensation were difficult to assess. The use of mauri (life force) as an indicator had benefits when applied to the whole catchment, but the volunteer participants challenged its validity when used at the smaller site scale. Volunteers found assigning a numerical value to mauri very difficult, and felt that reducing mauri to a single number may diminish the significance of this holistic and metaphysical concept. Mauri has been used successfully as a measure of environmental health but it is important to communicate and understand what mauri is and why it is measured.
Overall, the WCHI provided a wealth of information that could not be captured through scientific sampling, such as the presence of dye source, loss of bird/fish species and baseline information on the past condition of the Toreparu before the surrounding land was converted for agricultural use. This confirms that our understanding of wetland health is enhanced through the inclusion of cultural values.
As the New Zealand government and Māori move towards a future of collaborative research and management of freshwater ecosystems, there is a need for greater understanding around cultural values and priorities. By using both scientific and Māori-value based wetland monitoring methods, Māori can articulate a range of values, goals and priorities to help inform environmental decision makers and empower iwi and hapū to have a meaningful and sustainable role in the management of wetlands. There needs to be a foundation of mutual understanding and relationships built between environmental governing bodies and Māori for the future success of collaborative research and management of New Zealand's wetlands
The influence of cultural identity on willingness to pay values in contingent valuation surveys
Full text linkCurrent New Zealand resource management legislation requires local government actively recognise and take into account Māori values in resource management planning. This means the decision process and participants must interact with evidence based on Māori epistemologies. The Māori world-view is holistic in nature in that it embodies historical, environmental, and spiritual values, as well as modern experiences. Concerns arise for Māori communities when planners and developers utilise economic tools such as willingness to pay surveys to determine the total value of a proposed project. Other concerns are caused by surveys that ask a participant “are you Māori” and fail to recognise the diverse realities that exist for Māori. This paper draws from a survey of 700 respondents to identify the extent to which current conventional Contingent Valuation methodologies can measure changes in the environment where the response is culturally influenced. The influence of culture on willingness to pay decisions will be investigated using a measure of Māori identity. These cultural indicators involve assessing an individual's commitment and involvement in Māori cultural issues including: Te Reo (Māori language), whānau, other Māori, whakapapa (genealogy) and tikanga (Māori world view)
Can non-market valuation measure indigenous knowledge?
Full text linkCurrent New Zealand resource management legislation requires local government actively recognise and take into account Maori epistemologies in resource management planning. The Maori world-view is holistic in nature in that it embodies historical, environmental and spiritual values, as well as modern experiences. Concerns arise for Maori communities when planners and developers utilise only economic tools such as willingness to pay surveys to determine the total value of a proposed project. this paper draws from a survey of 700 methodologies can measure changes in the environment where the response is culturally influenced, particularly from Maori respondents who identify strongly with traditional Maori cultural values
The Price of Mauri: Exploring the validity of Welfare Economics when seeking to measure Mātauranga Māori
No full textSince the 1980s New Zealand has pursued neo-classical or market-based policies with a particular fervour. Market-based options are seen by resource management decision makers as essential frameworks for efficiently allocating resources, an approach that continues to support the view of the inherent dominance of Western knowledge. This is particularly concerning, given that Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand), have an important role to play in New Zealand resource management and perceive their own knowledge systems have been marginalised. The primary goal of this thesis is to explore the validity of welfare economics when seeking to measure quantitatively Mātauranga Māori or Māori views of the environment through the contingent valuation method. A contingent valuation study is carried out using three separate samples drawn from the general Māori population in Auckland city, a hāpu/sub-tribe indigenous to the Auckland isthmus, and drivers of motor vehicles in Auckland city. Data collection modes include a postal survey and face-to-face interviews. This thesis challenges the validity of political-legal ethnicity constructs to measure Mātauranga Māori. The search for a central tendency will lead to biased, misleading and inaccurate results. The thesis also challenges the validity of contingent valuation to produce true economic measures and to measure and identify Mātauranga Māori. Despite advances in analytical techniques, economic efficiency measures are always deficient, given the difficulty of capturing and anticipating all impacts and valuing them appropriately. Mātauranga Māori is derived from a Māori epistemology and should be considered or analysed with primary reference to this body of knowledge. Economic analysis is only one important cog in the machinery of resource management policy. Given that an economist's contribution to local and regional resource management is most valuable when focusing on the economic efficiency of the proposed resource allocation, it is appropriate that other perspectives such as Mātauranga Māori be considered
The influence of cultural identity on willingness to pay values in contingent valuation surveys
Full text linkCurrent New Zealand resource management legislation requires local government actively recognise and take into account Māori values in resource management planning. This means the decision process and participants must interact with evidence based on Māori epistemologies. The Māori world-view is holistic in nature in that it embodies historical, environmental, and spiritual values, as well as modern experiences. Concerns arise for Māori communities when planners and developers utilise economic tools such as willingness to pay surveys to determine the total value of a proposed project. Other concerns are caused by surveys that ask a participant “are you Māori” and fail to recognise the diverse realities that exist for Māori. This paper draws from a survey of 700 respondents to identify the extent to which current conventional Contingent Valuation methodologies can measure changes in the environment where the response is culturally influenced. The influence of culture on willingness to pay decisions will be investigated using a measure of Māori identity. These cultural indicators involve assessing an individual's commitment and involvement in Māori cultural issues including: Te Reo (Māori language), whānau, other Māori, whakapapa (genealogy) and tikanga (Māori world view).Māori, Indigenous, Culture, Natural Resource Management, Well-being, Values, Contingent Valuation, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Political Economy,
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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