Suchergebnisse

Custody abductions and filicides-suicides are not every day occurrences and typically become 'media events'. Through an analysis of newspaper representations of two custody abductions and one filicide-suicide, this article examines the role played by fathers' rights discourse in the construction of the separated father in each case. It argues that fathers' rights discourse played a central role in the sympathetic portrayal of the two fathers involved in the custody abductions, but was less obviously present in the case of the filicide-suicide. These divergent representations indicate that news media representations are contingent on circumstances and also point to the limits of fathers' rights discourses in legitimating and neutralising the actions of fathers in pain over the loss of intimate personal relationships. However, the use of a forensic approach to reporting meant that each case remained decontextualised from the pattern of violence and coercive control that typically characterises conflictual separations and custody disputes.

This article contains an account of the author's childhood experiences of her mother's use of harsh corporal punishment. These childhood experiences, as well as other aspects of the author's family life, are largely conveyed to the reader through a combination of autoethnographic poems and prose. Through these writings the author reflects on the haunting power of childhood experiences of harsh corporal punishment.

Sozialwissenschaftler(innen) haben oft eine recht komplexe Beziehung zu psychotherapeutischer Forschung: von dort wurden – zumeist kritisch gegen deren individualisierende Tendenz – zahlreiche Konzepte entlehnt bei zugleich fortdauernder Nervosität, dass nicht Grenzlinien zwischen der Psychotherapie und den Sozialwissenschaften zu verschwommen würden. Im Unterschied hierzu vertrete ich eine pragmatische Position und finde es nützlich, verschiedene aus der Psychotherapie stammende Konzepte und Techniken für die eigenen, sozialwissenschaftlichen Belange hinzuziehen. Das ausführliche und persönliche Schreiben über wesentliche Aspekte des eigenen Lebens ist eine solche Technik, von der gezeigt werden konnte, dass sie positiv zur körperlichen und seelischen Gesundheit der Schreibenden beiträgt. Genau hier könnte der Nutzen liegen, solche Schreibtechniken als Untersuchungsmethode auch mit Forschungsteilnehmer(inne)n einzusetzen. Denn das Wissen, dass die Beforschten von qualitativer Forschung nicht beschädigt werden, sondern profitieren, ist insbesondere von Bedeutung, wenn Sozialwissenschaftler(innen) sich mit sensitiven und oder (potenziell) traumatisierenden Themen befassen. Hier kann Schreiben eine Technik sein, die sowohl den Beforschten als auch den Forschenden nutzt: es trägt zum Wohlbefinden der Untersuchungsteilnehmer(innen) bei und es produziert wertvolle qualitative Daten, wie ich in diesem Beitrag zu zeigen versuche.

This article is based on interviews with a small number of cohabitants who are critical of conventional marriage. It examines some of the ways in which the distinction between heterosexual cohabitation and marriage is rendered in the New Zealand context. Culturally available distinctions, like that between cohabitation and marriage, are used in the production of resistant counterdiscourses. However, difference can be rewritten as deviance and in this form is central to the exercise of disciplinary power. Contextual shifts in the assertion of a cohabitational self and a marital self contribute to the blurring of the distinction, further exposing the dilemmas of resistance based on difference.

In this article, we draw on Finch's (2007) concept of family display to examine how collectivist understandings of family intersect with gender to shape mothers' and fathers' post-separation displays of family life. Drawing on interviews with fifteen separated Pacific parents (ten mothers and five fathers), we explore how mothers and fathers navigate how, when, with and for whom they display family relationships and family life following separation. In pursuing this inquiry, we pay particular attention to how family imaginaries and norms in Pacific cultures affect participants' post-separation family displays. We found gender differences among our participants, with mothers displaying post-separation family connections in child-centred and collectivist ways, while the post-separation family displays by fathers were child-related and more individualistic.

This article extends discussions about the meaning of cohabitation for cohabitants by drawing on our qualitative interviews from New Zealand with long-term heterosexual and same-sex cohabitants. We show that for this particular group of cohabitants, living together was a dynamic and fluid phenomenon that was largely characterised by a shift from an ambiguous and contingent commitment to a more mutual commitment. The emergence of mutual commitment through living together laid the foundations for these cohabitants to contemplate marriage or civil union as the culturally sanctioned mechanism to signify commitment to a long-term, if not permanent, future together. The change in marital status had the effect of putting to an end any lingering doubts about the meaning of their partnerships, resulting in higher levels of security and better recognition from members of their social network.

For decades, sociologists have debated whether widespread cohabitation among opposite-sex and same-sex couples indicates the transformation of relationships or simply a new pathway to marriage. If it is the latter, what does this transition mean to couples who decide to marry? Using an interpretive framework, the article investigates why cohabiting couples legalise their relationships when there seem to be few legal or social advantages, and how they solemnise and celebrate this transition. Drawing on New Zealand interviews with celebrants and long-term cohabitants who have decided to legalise, we found widespread concern about traditional marriage and a desire to develop individualised pathways for couple relationships. Nevertheless, our participants eventually decided to make a public commitment and to celebrate their 'successful' relationships with family and friends. Furthermore, we found that wedding practices continue to be influenced by social pressures and cultural representations, and many couples incorporate traditional practices symbolising patriarchy and heterosexuality regardless of personal beliefs or sexual orientation. Although cohabitation rates are rising, our study concludes that weddings have retained much of their symbolic value as a cultural ideal, but have increasingly become subject to personalisation, as if to signify that couples are indeed the authors of their own biographies of love.

Since April 2005, both same-sex and oppositesex couples have been permitted to enter into civil unions in New Zealand, yet legal marriage is still reserved for heterosexuals. This paper explores the social differences between the two types of 'marriage' by drawing on official statistics and qualitative interviews with celebrants and long-term cohabitants who have legalized their unions or plan to do so in the near future. Using an interpretive framework, both sets of interviews revealed that civil unions are more likely than marriages to involve high levels of tension and conflict. Although opposite sex civil unions are rare, couples seem to use them to publicly oppose marriage. For same-sex civil unions, conflict is more related to negative perceptions about same-sex relationships, fears that the civil union would become a fractious second 'coming out', and debates within the gay/lesbian communities about the wisdom of two categories of 'marriage'. Despite legal change in New Zealand, this study suggests that the civil union option is still perceived by many as a second-class marriage.

In this article, we investigate the state's role in the reproduction of relations of male dominance between separated parents through custody law. We argue that three "logics" shape the current operation of family law—durability, gender neutrality and present/future temporality—such that custody law is not simply a mechanism of dispute resolution between parents; it is also a vehicle for the differential production, positioning, and regulation of mothers and fathers as postseparation parents. Drawing on interviews with 21 mothers, we show that the outcome of the state's governance of gender through custody law for women in dispute over care and contact arrangements is that nonresident fathers are able to engage in nonreciprocal exercises of power over resident mothers. The consequence for resident mothers is that nonresident fathers are able to legitimately use the law to threaten and coerce mothers, and to protect their interests and rights at the expense of mothers' needs for and rights to security and autonomy.

Since colonisation New Zealand has been mythologised as a land of milk and honey a promised land of natural abundance and endless opportunity. In the twenty first century the country has become literally a land of milk and honey as agricultural exports from such commodities dominate the national economy. But does New Zealand live up to its promise? In this introductory textbook for first year sociology students some of this countrys leading social scientists help us to make sense of contemporary New Zealand. In 21 chapters, the authors examine New Zealands political identity and constitution our Māori Pākehā Pacific and Asian peoples problems of class poverty and inequality gender and sexualities; and contemporary debates around ageing incarceration and the environment. The authors find a complex society where thirty years of neoliberal economics and globalising politics have exacerbated inequalities that are differentially experienced by class ethnicity gender sexuality and age. These social divides and problems are at the heart of this text. For sociology students and for a wider audience of New Zealanders A Land of Milk and Honey? is a lively introduction to where we have come from where we are now and where New Zealand society might be headed Back cover