Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation
A Public Talk by David Shanks- Let’s NOT Talk About Censorship with David Shanks, Chief Censor, New Zealand, @NZOFLC in case if you missed out on the live stream.
Follow us on Facebook : @CAREMassey – Twitter : @CAREMasseyNZ – Youtube : @CAREMassey for future events.
https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey/videos/1184843791708014/
Date: Thursday 26 September 2019
Time: 11.30 am – 12.30 pm
Venue: SSLB3 (Social Sciences Lecture Block), Palmerston North, Massey University.
Abstract: David Shanks is the Chief Censor, Office of Film & Literature Classification. Come and listen to David discuss why he banned the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto. He will also discuss other censorship concerns, including pornography, suicide and mental health.David is a senior public servant who has held roles as chief legal officer and a number of acting deputy chief executive positions. Most recently, David was Director – Health and Safety and Security at the NZ Ministry of Education.
Facebook livestream details will be shared on @CAREMassey a week prior to the event.
Follow us on our social media platform for more details:
Facebook : @CAREMassey
Twitter: @CAREMasseyNZ
Youtube:@CAREMassey
Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) proudly invites Teanau Tuiono as our next Activist-In-Residence from 5th – 9th August and we would like to share some insights about Teanau’s project for his residency – The Solidarity Project.
The Solidarity Project is all about exploring conversations of solidarity and whānaungatanga across cultures and communities. Teanau has over 20 years’ experience as an activist, advocate and organiser at local, national and international levels on social justice and environmental issues. In Pasifika communities he is known for his work in the education sector and climate change advocacy. In Māori communities he is known for his indigenous rights activism. He has an interest at working at the intersection of indigenous rights and environmental issues where he has worked with remote indigenous communities on the frontlines of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Have a look at the his talks and conversations below for some insights about the project, more to follow in the coming days.
Come and join us at the CARE Events:
PUBLIC TALK
WEDNESDAY, 07 AUGUST 2019 12:00PM,
PALMERSTON NORTH CITY LIBRARY EVENTS CENTRAL ( GROUND FLOOR)
LIVESTREAM ON CARE FB PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey/videos/341724333429636/
WHITE PAPER LAUNCH
FRIDAY, 09 AUGUST 2019, 10:00AM
CoMMS LAB, B.109 MASSEY UNIVERSITY, MANAWATU CAMPUS
LIVESTREAM ON CARE FB PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey/videos/372259300150168/
RSVP on Facebook: Activist-In-Residence- Teanau-Tuiono
Abstract:
With the rise of white nationalism and white supremacy, how can Tangata Whenua, Pasifika, Migrant and Refugees of Colour build solidarity between their communities? Teanau’s Activist-in-Residence will explore the activist experiences of solidarity and whanaungatanga across cultures and communities.
Teanau has over 20 years’ experience as an activist, advocate, and organiser at local, national, and international levels on social justice and environmental issues. In Pasifika communities he is known for his work in the education sector and climate change advocacy. In Maori communities he is known for his indigenous rights activism.
He has an interest at working at the intersection of indigenous rights and environmental issues where he has worked with remote indigenous communities on the frontlines of climate and biodiversity loss.
Events:
PUBLIC TALK
WEDNESDAY, 07 AUGUST 2019 12:00PM,
PALMERSTON NORTH CITY LIBRARY EVENTS CENTRAL ( GROUND FLOOR)
LIVESTREAM ON CARE FB PAGE
WHITE PAPER LAUNCH
FRIDAY, 09 AUGUST 2019, 10:00AM
CoMMS LAB, B.109 MASSEY UNIVERSITY, MANAWATU CAMPUS
LIVESTREAM ON CARE FB PAGE
RSVP on Facebook: @CAREMassey
It will always be hard to keep Muslim and migrant perspectives in the foreground as long as material support is wanting, write Mohan Dutta and Murdoch Stephens
After the mosque attacks in Christchurch, there was a strong call from media to centre Muslim responses. For a few short weeks, the voices from the attacked communities were not only heard but prioritised.
But as the weeks turn to months, there has been a change to the way we talk about voices and speech. No longer were people discussing prioritising the voices from specific communities. Instead, to the fore rode more abstract and legal questions of hate speech and free speech.
We have no problem with a public discussion on hate speech and free speech, even if it means we have to put up with myopic views of freedom to speak that exclude freedom from hate speech. However, we are concerned that this debate has overshadowed the need for medium and long term reforms that focus on whose voices are prioritised.
Two days after the mosque attacks, one of the authors of this article spoke at length to a senior member of the government who assured him that there would be government support for these communities. But as the budget came and went, there was very little to help sustain these communities other than short-term funding for mental health. Compare that to the opaque $25m spent on stopping asylum seekers arriving by boat and it feels like little has changed. Even the much needed Multicultural Hub is backed by the local council, not central government.
Prioritising Muslim voices generally meant seeking out those community members already skilled at public communication. In the medium term, we can’t expect these individuals to continue to offer commentary: most are employed in other jobs, and not always places that look kindly on advocacy and journalism.
Luckily, we already have organisations established that can provide commentary from Muslim and migrant perspectives. Consider the work by Anjum Rahman from the Islamic Women’s Council, Imam Gamal Fouda from the Al-Noor mosque or Ahmad Tani from the Canterbury Refugee Centre.
We are particularly interested in the last of these three. The day after the mosque attacks it was the Canterbury Refugee Centre and Mr Tani who hosted Jacinda Ardern in Christchurch. Tani’s organisation is one of a handful around New Zealand funded through MBIE’s Strengthening Refugee Voices (SRV) programme. SRV organisations organise hui to collect and then communicate former refugee experiences – including many new Muslim New Zealanders – to Immigration New Zealand. Though we understand there is no neat crossover between refugee and Muslim communities, the SRV programme is one way that the least heard voices from the Muslim community can be amplified.
Emerging in the third term of the previous Labour government, it is fascinating to look back on where the policy came from. Then Immigration Minister David Cunliffe, speaking to refugee community leaders, announced the SRV funding as part of an earlier $62m budget package for the area. But the allocation for these refugee community groups was only $250,000 per year. That is not $250,000 per organisation, but in total, across all resettlement centres.
More than ten years since the establishment of SRV it is time for a review. Resettlement of refugees has moved away from Auckland with five other centres – Wellington, Waikato, Nelson, the Manawatū and Dunedin – now hosting more in each case than our largest city. On top of this, the next year will see the opening of six new resettlement centres in smaller regions.
Immigration New Zealand explicitly states, on page three of their resettlement strategy, “At the heart of the Strategy is the refugee voice. The Strategy was developed by Government and service providers in conjunction with former refugees and the identification of strategic priorities is undertaken in consultation with refugee communities.”
We agree that voice lies at the heart of sustaining an infrastructure for addressing the climate of hate experienced by refugees. Building spaces where voices of refugees can be heard is integral to addressing the challenges experienced by refugees. Moreover, the broader climate of prejudice and hate is addressed through the presence of refugee voices.
Last week, Immigration NZ told resettlement organisations that SRV would be reformulated for the expanded quota. But instead of facilitating this work through the usual full year contract, the groups we talked to have been offered just six months. In addition to the actual work of engaging with resettled communities, they are now being required to do the groundwork of redesigning the programme, which one of our contacts described as “a significant workload increase”.
In researching our just released White Paper on Strengthening Refugee Voices for the CARE centre, we discussed these issues with many interested parties. One of us met with Immigration NZ representatives in their MBIE headquarters in Wellington recently renovated for $15m. But when we met the head of a smaller resettlement organisation – not one of the original four – we had to meet in a public library. They simply did not have the funds for an office, let alone a salary. This person was tasked with coordinating and reporting on one of the largest refugee background communities on a budget of $6,000. How, we wondered, can refugee voices really be at the heart of the strategy when the material support is so wanting?
Over the coming months, the country will be doused in debates over free speech for those already affluent enough to want for nothing. Some of the newest members of our Muslim community, on the other hand, will arrive to a new land, and perhaps a new language. How, we ask, will their voices be heard?
In November 2018 Murdoch Stephens was invited to be an activist in residence with Professor Mohan Dutta’s CARE research centre at Massey University in Palmerston North. The White Paper that emerged from that residency can be found here.
Soruce: SHOUTY MCSHOURFACE. PHOTO: GETTY
CARE is proud to release the White Paper “Strengthening Refugee Voices in New Zealand” by Dr Murdoch Stephens & Professor Mohan J Dutta.
The attached white paper – The state helps the refugee speak: dialogue, ventriloquism or something else? – on the funding of refugee voice organisations was prepared between November 2018 and April 2019. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on two Mosques in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 the need to address the issue of refugee support organisations becomes acute as they a significant role in the representation of many Muslim citizens in New Zealand. Specifically, the lack of funding for organisations that are tasked with connecting with refugee communities and representing those voices to government, media and the public undermined the ability of these organisations to respond after the attacks. We particularly note the absence of “democratic communication infrastructures” owned by refugees for representing their voices in New Zealand. (Stephens and J Dutta, 2019)
Strengthening Refugee Voices in NZ
by Dr Murdoch Stephens & Professor Mohan J Dutta
We at the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) are delighted at the recent recognition of our community partner, Deccan Development Society (DDS), with the 2019 UN-Equator Prize.
The Equator Prize is a recognition of community-led grassroots initiatives that offer solutions to sustainable development.
For the last three decades, the Deccan Development Society (DDS), has been developing culture-centered interventions in agriculture and ecology through sanghams, grassroots cooperatives owned by dalit women. These grassroots cooperatives are spaces for knowledge generation, drawing on indigenous knowledge, offering solutions to sustainable ecologies, and challenging the global onslaught of neoliberal agriculture, felt locally.
The interventions developed by the DDS have been at the forefront of offering an alternative model of agricultural ecologies anchored in indigenous knowledge. Through ongoing advocacy and activist interventions, the dalit women have disrupted patriarchal structures, caste structures, and state-corporate structures that promote neoliberal agriculture. Constituted in the backdrop of the epidemic of farmer suicides across India amid its accelerated neoliberal transformation, DDS has offered an alternative model for sustainable ecologies.
The articulations of ecologies at the heart of health formed the basis of the culture-centered collaborations developed by CARE in collaboration with DDS. Our partnership formed the basis of developing communicative interventions anchored in the voices of the women farmers. These interventions disrupted the neoliberal structures that constitute agriculture and offered alternative agrarian ecologies for health and wellbeing.
However, the centering of such linkages fundamentally disrupts the hegemonic narratives of health and wellbeing. Structures often deploy various techniques of violence and erasure in response to subaltern voice and subaltern knowledge. In our own collaborations with DDS, we have come to understand the everyday formations of structures that work actively to erase subaltern voices through techniques of neoliberal accounting. For instance, in an audit, it was suggested that the topic of suicide of cotton farmers in India did not further the objectives of CARE.
The implicit question, what does re-defining ecology and agriculture through the voices of women have to do with health, formed the basis of the violence of accounting. The narrow definition of health within the neoliberal ideology perpetuates erasures that devalue the knowledge of subaltern communities.
That more of the same, more of the same neoliberal dogma is not going to address the current ecological crisis we are in the midst of is a lesson that the dalit women farmers organised under the umbrella of the DDS voice with cognition. The recognition that we need to fundamentally overthrow the neoliberal order has to be centered in conversations on sustaining ecosystems.
CARE is now the official publisher of PRism – an academic journal with a focus on public relations and communication. The journal was founded in 2003 and is ranked B in the ABDC journal list. Some of the world’s leading public relations scholars’ have published in PRism, including James Grunigand Robert L. Heath.
A Call for Papers for two upcoming issues has been released. This includes a special issue “Indigenous theorizing: Voices and representation”.
Call for Papers: Two issues in 2019
Special issue: “Indigenous theorizing: Voices and representation” Volume 15, Issue 1
Due date: 12 August 2019 (to be published in December 2019)
In this special issue, we welcome rigorous and original contributions that explore Indigenous voice as a space for theorizing communication. We welcome submissions that examine Indigenous/First Nations as participants in the generation of transformative knowledge claims. This can include but is not limited to:
• Indigenous/First Nations communication practices (including traditional forms e.g. storytelling)
• Indigenous/First Nations activism for social justice
• Indigenous/First Nations struggles for voice and sovereignty
• The role of Indigenous/First Nations media for public communication
• Indigenous/First Nations organizational communication with publics/stakeholders
• The use of social media by Indigenous/First Nations for public communication
• The presentation of images, news and/or other information by Indigenous/First Nations
• Media representation of Indigenous/First Nations in public communication
We welcome original research, case studies, theoretical, conceptual and methodological papers relating to the topic. We encourage contributions from Indigenous/First Nations scholars.
General issue: Volume 15, Issue 2
Due date: 12 August 2019 (to be published in December 2019)
In this general call for papers, we are seeking manuscripts on public relations, but will also consider research from organizational communication, intercultural communication, media studies, journalism, interpersonal communication, organizational psychology, political science, marketing communication, social marketing, change communication, or any other relevant perspectives on the practice and study of public communication.
Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitisation
James E. Grunig
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Organisational legitimacy: The overlooked yet all-important foundation of OPR research
Damion Waymer and Robert L. Heath
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Engaging worldviews, cultures, and structures through dialogue: The culture-centred approach to public relations
Mohan J. Dutta, Zhuo Ban and Mahuya Pal
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Please visit the official PRism website: www.prismjournal.org
A talk by Assoc. Prof. J Jacob Jenkins on the Impact of Course Material Costs on Historically Underserved College Students
