Political Entrepreneurship in the Field of Māori Sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand

Individual actors have the potential to shape political outcomes through creative use of opportunities. Political entrepreneurship identifies how such actors recognise and exploit opportunities, for personal or collective gain. The existing literature focuses on individuals operating within institutional settings, with less attention paid to other types of actors. In this article, I argue for an expansion of the political entrepreneurship framework, by considering individuals in the electoral and protest arenas. An examination of the field of Māori sovereignty, or tino rangatiratanga, in Aotearoa New Zealand allows exploration of prominent actors’ innovative strategies and practices. The findings highlight the actors’ reliance on identity in mobilising support within the community, to press claims. Broadening the application of political entrepreneurship demonstrates the roles of social, cultural and political capital in influencing outcomes, by identifying opportunities available to individuals embedded in the community and according to the context of the arena

New Ways of Thinking about the Influence of Cultural Identity, Place and Spirituality on Child Development within Child Placement Practice

The policy and practice of family placement within the UK can be understood as the archetypal separation of a person from their physical environment, yet the inter section of ‘person with place’ – both past and present – has been argued to be crucial for identity formation. Indeed, intersectional analysts have called for alternative frame -works which challenge western models centering on the individual person disconnected from his or her community. An emerging body of work has drawn on Maori social work literature to explore the intersection of ‘person (identity) with place’ through an application to the concept of spirituality within western social work practice models. According to this perspective, people can have deep spiritual connections with the physical environment in which they live, creating a sense of belonging and attachment to that place. Victoria Sharley considers this Maori spiritual analysis in the context of family placement practice in the UK. In so doing, she offers a new way of thinking about the inter-relationship of cultural identity, place and spirituality as it affects the development of children separated from their birth families.<br/

Being pragmatic about healthcare complexity: our experiences applying complexity theory and pragmatism to health services research

Abstract Background The healthcare system has proved a challenging environment for innovation, especially in the area of health services management and research. This is often attributed to the complexity of the healthcare sector, characterized by intersecting biological, social and political systems spread across geographically disparate areas. To help make sense of this complexity, researchers are turning towards new methods and frameworks, including simulation modeling and complexity theory. Discussion Herein, we describe our experiences implementing and evaluating a health services innovation in the form of simulation modeling. We explore the strengths and limitations of complexity theory in evaluating health service interventions, using our experiences as examples. We then argue for the potential of pragmatism as an epistemic foundation for the methodological pluralism currently found in complexity research. We discuss the similarities between complexity theory and pragmatism, and close by revisiting our experiences putting pragmatic complexity theory into practice. Conclusion We found the commonalities between pragmatism and complexity theory to be striking. These included a sensitivity to research context, a focus on applied research, and the valuing of different forms of knowledge. We found that, in practice, a pragmatic complexity theory approach provided more flexibility to respond to the rapidly changing context of health services implementation and evaluation. However, this approach requires a redefinition of implementation success, away from pre-determined outcomes and process fidelity, to one that embraces the continual learning, evolution, and emergence that characterized our project