Arts and Social Sciences Papers
This collection houses research from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato.
All items in Research Commons are provided only to permit fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study. They are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
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Editorial: The experience and benefits of game playing
(Masaryk University, 2015)Now that video games have permeated daily life across the globe on computers, consoles and pocket devices, they call for a more comprehensive—and accurate—understanding of their role in society. Psychological research into ... -
Urban transformative potential in a changing climate
(Nature Publishing Group, 2018)The SDGs and CitiesIPCC offer an unprecedented opportunity for urban transformation, but bold, integrated action to address the constraints imposed by economic, cultural and political dynamics is needed. We move beyond a ... -
Creative restrictions in student filmmaking: the Lessons of Dogme 95
(Ames, 2018)How do we approach media education in the current political climate? How do we teach students the importance of critical thinking when examining the media? The rise of movements such as #Me Too and Time's Up make media one ... -
Embodied vibrations: Disastrous mobilities in relocation from the Christchurch earthquakes, Aotearoa New Zealand
(2017)This article contributes to debates that consider things (buildings) that have previously been assumed to be bounded and fixed. When thinking about how literally anything can become mobile, this article addresses how ... -
Telling “Us” in the “Days Destined to You: Response Life-Telling: Indigenous Oral Autobiography and the Performance of Relation
(University of Hawai'i Press, 2016)This “tau-utuutu” (responsive) protocol feels familiar to me.² My turn to speak, to respond, to share in a conversation with Warren Cariou’s stimulating essay on “Life-Telling,” Indigenous autobiography, and Dovie Thomason. ... -
New Zealand history is Maori history: Tikanga as the ethical foundation of historical scholarship In Aotearoa New Zealand
(University of Auckland, 2015)IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE TO FIND that New Zealand history is Māori history. In 1987 when Tipene O’Regan stated that the ‘the past belongs to all New Zealanders, but first it is ours’, he was drawing attention to New ... -
Nozick's experience machine thought experiment has many problems, but the freebie problem ain't one of ‘em
(2018)For at least 30 years, many have argued that Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment is the basis of a knockdown argument against mental state theories of wellbeing. In the last 10 years, a few objecting ... -
Wellbeing and public policy: Can New Zealand be a leading light for the ‘Wellbeing Approach’?
(2018)Delegates left the Third International Conference on Wellbeing and Public Policy with great expectations following three days of inspirational addresses by some of the world’s most prominent thinkers and policymakers. In ... -
Experience machine experiments: Testing the importance of relationships and individual differences
(2018)Recent experiments on experience machines reveal that living in reality doesn’t always dominate our prudential preferences. Felipe de Brigard (2010) and others have suggested that our preference for the status quo is a ... -
Is wellbeing and public policy on the same flight path as positive psychology?
(2018)In this talk, I outline the progress in wellbeing and public policy in New Zealand and discuss the potential roles for subjective measures of wellbeing. I will argue that subjective measures should be incorporated, including ... -
The politics and public policies I hope for
(2018)The Trump administration in the United States demonstrates the power that politics can have over public policy. The recent leadership struggles in Australian political parties, the personality-based nature of most popular ... -
Has the deceived businessman been deceiving philosophers?
(2017)In the deceived businessman thought experiment, we are asked to imagine the lives of two businessmen, equal in net pleasant experiences, but unequal in the amount of deception. Both lives are experienced as equally happy ... -
Against epistocracy
(2018)There has been a recent resurgence in epistocratic arguments against our democratic institutions. Jason Brennan (2009, 2011, 2016) is a popular representative of the approach. Here, I criticise Brennan’s account and offer ... -
The presence of the past: Maori history in contemporary reflection
(2016)This is the opening line of a famous saying in my tribe. For our people - Ngāti Porou - these words have become embedded in our tribal identity as important directives that we are encouraged to aspire to. In the “days ... -
The 'Jackson effect': The late 1990s to 2005
(Te Papa Press, 2011)This chapter describes Jackson's journey from New Zealand cult director to global film maker and examines what might be called the 'Jackson Effect': his singular influence on the state of New Zealand film making in the ... -
The importance of social skills for the future of work
(Human Resources Institute of New Zealand, 2016)Technological change and precarity has made social skills increasingly important in the workplace for both permanent and non-permanent staff throughout the labour market. This is especially true for those in precarious ... -
Gender minority stress: A critical review.
(2019)Past studies that compare cisgender to transgender (or trans) and gender diverse people have found a higher prevalence of mental health problems among the latter groups. This article uses Testa's gender minority stress ... -
“Just wrong,” “disgusting,” “grotesque,” “offensive”: How to deal with public rejection of new potentially life-saving technologies
(2018)New technologies can offer solutions to security concerns, such as preventing terrorist attacks. Many new technologies are criticised on moral grounds, leading some potentially life-saving technologies to be left on the ... -
Kava, the devil, and the snake: Pentecostal iconoclasm in contemporary Fiji
(2019)In his book, The Polynesian Iconoclasm, Jeff Sissons (2014) explains that within a short period of time during the early 1800’s a number of island societies in eastern Polynesia desecrated or destroyed many of their temples ... -
The social work professionalisation project before the 1990s in Aotearoa New Zealand: The dream
(Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers, 2016)INTRODUCTION: The meaning and purpose of social work has always been debated within the social work profession. The profession dreams of contributing towards a better, fairer, civil society locally and internationally. ...
