We don’t need just the DFC, we needs lots of comics, and what’s more, we can make them. Let’s get to it!

Comics have too often been dismissed as unsophisticated, popular culture texts or as a phase of reading which children are encouraged to move out of towards more ‘worthy’ literary fare. Mel Gibson, in exploring the recent comics-book initiative by David Fikling, The DFC, defends the attraction and value of comics culture and the complexity of its multimodal narratives

Like Sand through the Hour Glass . . .

Postcard from Jory Gibson, during the Linfield College Year Abroad Program at the Universidad de Alicante, Spai

Recent shocks and long-term change in the Samoan economy

The strengths exhibited by the Samoan economy during the period of steady growth from 1998 to 2007 have since been tested by considerable volatility in economic activity, declining employment, rapidly rising prices, the global financial crisis, and the September 2009 tsunami. The economy has done reasonably well in the face of these challenges with key economic support in the form of aid, remittances and tourism. Questions are raised about the future viability of these forms of support

On (Not) Making Oneself Known

This chapter uses an exploration of the nature of selfhood in Hamlet to stage a discussion of the concept of literary knowledge. What does it mean to claim for our various practices of literary production that they can yield, collectively if not always individually, a “form of knowing”: that there exist distinctly literary ways of making sense of the world and thus of presenting it as an object of understanding? Making sense of this, this chapter argues, requires an account of the nature of narrative and the manner in which it bestows a distinct form of intelligibility upon the events it relates. Hamlet brings to view a striking feature of the nature of this intelligibility and its role in generating the forms of meaning that make Hamlet, and literary narrative more generally, elusive.</p

Maori women and dual ethnicity: Non-congruence, “passing” and “real Maori”

In this study, I wanted to explore the often uncomfortable experience of having dual ethnicity. I did this through open-ended interviews with nine women, who, like me, were aged between 20 and 30 and who identified as being of both Maori and Pakeha (or other) descent. While the women all identified as having dual ethnicity, as the interviews progressed it became clear that many of them had little pride in being of Pakeha descent and identified more strongly with their Maori heritage. In most instances the way they were identified by other people was incongruent with how the participants identified themselves. By virtue of having fair skin, many were able to “pass” as Pakeha. This provided them with certain advantages, notably being exempt from racist treatment. On the other hand, their appearance often resulted in them being labelled as not being a “real Maori.” Paradoxically, when they were identified as Maori, others, both Maori and non-Maori, sometimes expected them to be an expert in all things Maori. For most participants being a “real” Maori did not rely on looking Maori or on being able to speak Te Reo fluently. Instead, having whakapapa was considered the most essential element on which to base their Maori identity

The rising public sector pay premium in the New Zealand labour market

This note reports propensity score matching estimates of the public sector pay premium in New Zealand for each year from 2003 until 2007. Comparing with observably similar private sector workers shows that public sector workers have received a pay premium that has grown in each year, from almost zero in 2003 to 22 percent in 2007. Unless there have been unmeasured changes in the attributes of public sector jobs that give rise to compensating pay differentials, this rising public sector pay premium is most plausibly attributed to an increase in non-competitive rents

Praying for Peace: Family Experiences of Christian Conversion in Bhaktapur

In Nepal’s public discourse, Christianity is often described as a divisive force, perhaps a plot by foreign powers to undermine the cohesion of Nepali society. In this article, I present ethnographic material from Bhaktapur suggesting that, at least with respect to family life, the social effects of conversion may often differ from this stereotypical picture. In Bhaktapur, I argue, conversion is more frequently a consequence of pre-existing conflicts within families than a source of new ones. Furthermore, in some contexts, the social, ethical, and ritual practices of Bhaktapurian churches can bring reconciliation to troubled families. In other contexts, conversion can heighten intrafamilial tensions, in particular through the commitment it brings to exclusivist theology. I explore how converts negotiate the conversion process and the tensions that precipitate and result from it, describing how familial power dynamics influence such negotiations. To give the reader a fleshed-out sense of the lived experience of Christian and part-Christian families in Bhaktapur, I give thick descriptions of the conversions of one church minister and his family, and of a church house fellowship in which post-conversion family tensions are discussed. Connecting this ethnography with wider research on Bhaktapurian Christianity, I delineate the competing forces at work in converts’ family lives. In light of the rapid growth of Christianity in Nepal, and the heated and sometimes violent nature of political responses to this, ethnographic research is urgently needed to examine not just the causes but also the longterm effects of Christian conversion; this will help to clarify whether patterns found in Bhaktapur are replicated elsewhere in the country

Negotiating textual talk : conversation analysis, pedagogy, and the organisation of online asynchronous discourse

This paper uses Conversation Analysis to investigate the ways in which participants in an online asynchronous postgraduate reading group managed and negotiated their contributions within the discussion. Using the conversation analytic concerns with sequential organisation, adjacency pairs and topicality, this article shows the analytic insights that this perspective can bring to the examination of written asynchronous discourse. The paper shows that in the section of the discussion analysed here, the discourse displayed remarkable similarities to the ways in which face-to-face conversation has been seen to operate in terms of the organisation of conversational turns, the application of specific interactional rights, the lineal development of topics of conversation, and the structural use of question-answer turn pairs. The paper concludes by showing how this form of analysis can relate to the formation of reflexive pedagogy in which course design can be created to take account of such findings. It shows how a detailed understanding of how pedagogy is played out in interaction is fundamental for reflecting on the relationship between pedagogic aims and educational practice

Endings

Postcard from Jory Gibson, during the Linfield College Year Abroad Program at the Center for Cross-Cultural Study in Seville, Spai