School of Social Sciences and Public Policy
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There is a wide range of research activity in AUT's School of Social Sciences and Public Policy. The school has an active research community, with staff and postgraduate research in areas such as psychology, sociology and public policy.
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- ItemA Necromantic Hauntology of the Void in the Canary Islands: In/Re-Surrection(Addleton Academic Publishers, 2024)My wrestling with (not) belonging, which started almost a decade ago with my arrival to Aotearoa/New Zealand, was prevalent during my re-turn (Barad, 2014) to my birthplace, the Canary Islands, seeking to revive my connections to the land, its histories and its/my Indigeneity. My engagement with te ao Māori (‘the Māori world’) was essential to (re)connect with the whenua (‘land’) in a way I had never done before, as an ancestor, cradling (non-)descendants of the Indigenous Canarians (see Ramirez & Pasley, 2022; Ramirez, 2024). The im/possibilities of the in/determinacy of Canarian Indigeneity’s nothingness/openness (Barad, 2012) require an engagement with our Indigenous Canarian inheritance beyond Western thinking. While questions that emerged during my re-turn produced more questions, my travels also offered strategies to move forward. Developing a Canarian onto-epistemology is imperative not only to decolonise the Canary Islands but also to save what is left (cultural and (hi)storical preservation) and save the whenua (from unstainable tourism). This begins with initiating necromantic hauntological practices of the void to ‘heal’ wounds left in the Canary Islands by colonisation and subsequent colonialities. The pasados que (nunca) fueron y futuros que (nunca) pueden ser (‘pasts that were (not), futures that can (never) be’) that materialise in the current culture, language, peoples and institutions (legal and educational), revive and reconfigure my relationship to the land, its histories and its/my Indigeneity. A process of in/re-surrection started. It is now that I am un/becoming Indigenous.
- ItemWhat It Means to Belong in the Global South: A Coda to Two Special Issues on ‘Wrestling with (Not) Belonging’(Addleton Academic Publishers, 2024) Pasley, Ampersand; Ramirez, Elba; Sturm. SeanBelonging, as this special issue demonstrates, is no simple matter. Indeed, the complexity of the topic demanded a double issue to make space for the many and varied ways in which (not) belonging can make itself felt. Notably, the (not) of (not) belonging in this collection transcends the rationalist reduction of ontology to negative difference, whereby we know what something is through its relation to what it is not. Many contributions acknowledge the injustice of colonial concepts of belonging. While injustice can neither be erased nor resolved once and for all, the works in this double issue demonstrate how attending to these spectres of coloniality offers the possibility of different – and possibly more just – worlds. Several other contributions also explore strategies for knowing and being differently. Some strategies for tending to the wounds of injustice involved more practical enactments. What we sensed when we reread the contributions to write this coda was that the contributions – although differentiated by the contributors’ experiences as people(s) and those of their peoples – had something in common. We saw that they expressed a sense that (not) belonging could be traced in relations of difference, of becoming-with and becoming-otherwise.
- ItemScaling Climate Finance: Forest Finance Instruments(Climate Innovation Lab, 2020-02-26) Hall, D; Lindsay, SThe Lab’s inaugural concept paper, Scaling Climate Finance: Forest Finance Instruments, proposes seven innovative instruments, each ranked in respect to impact strategy and additionality. The paper analyses an environmental impact bond, a leveraged carbon fund, a green covered bond, an equity fund designed to upscale continuous cover forestry, risk-adjusted loans, and an exchange for investing in Nature-Based Solutions. Each concept was developed by reviewing international innovations, adapting promising structures to the unique local context of Aotearoa New Zealand, and conducting workshops and reviews with sector experts and government observers to test, refine and validate the structure. The paper also identifies relevant indicators for impact assessment, such as IRIS metrics, and potential regulatory changes to support the delivery of more sustainable forest outcomes.
- ItemTrust Predicts Compliance With COVID-19 Containment Policies: Evidence from Ten Countries Using Big Data(Elsevier, 2024-07-20) Sarracino, Francesco; Greyling, Talita; O'Connor, Kelsey; Peroni, Chiara; Rossouw, StephanieWe use Twitter, Google mobility, and Oxford policy data to study the relationship between trust and compliance over the period March 2020 to January 2021 in ten, mostly European, countries. Trust has been shown to be an important correlate of compliance with COVID-19 containment policies. However, the previous findings depend upon two assumptions: first, that compliance is time invariant, and second, that compliance can be measured using self reports or mobility measures alone. We relax these assumptions by calculating a new time-varying measure of compliance as the association between containment policies and people's mobility behavior. Additionally, we develop measures of trust in others and national institutions by applying emotion analysis to Twitter data. Results from various panel estimation techniques demonstrate that compliance changes over time and that increasing (decreasing) trust in others predicts increasing (decreasing) compliance. This evidence indicates that compliance changes over time, and further confirms the importance of cultivating trust in others.
- ItemHealthcare Interpreting As Relational Practice: Understanding the Interpreter’s Role in Facilitating Rapport in Health Interactions(SAGE Publications, 2024-07-26) Major, GeorginaThis article explores the extent to which healthcare interpreting can be considered “relational practice.” It describes an interactional sociolinguistic study conducted in Australia, based on video recordings of two naturally occurring interpreted general practice consultations. Participants were hearing Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreters, deaf patients, and hearing doctors. Analysis of these recordings was supplemented by reflective interviews with participants. The study examines the ways in which interpreters facilitate good working relationships between participants, and to explore the extent to which their decision-making is driven by relational considerations. The analyses presented in this article provide evidence that relational work is an important aspect of the healthcare interpreter’s role. Some of the ways in which it is achieved, however, may challenge our ideas about “appropriate” interpreter behaviour. Thus, the skilled and experienced interpreters in the study were seen to modify face threats, directly influence the flow of interaction, and actively facilitate social talk and humour, occasionally even engaging in it themselves. It is argued that interpreters’ decisions can only be understood within the discursive context in which they occur, and such behaviour can highlight interpreters’ attentiveness to the maintenance of good rapport.