Matariki, commodity culture, and multiple identities

The event known as Matariki, the rising of the Pleiades in winter, which Māori take as the mark of the beginning of a new year, was not a strong feature of the wider public sphere for most of the 20th century. Since 2001, however, when Te Taura Whiri, the Māori Language Commission, published an explanatory booklet with the aim of reviving interest in Matariki as an aide to the maintenance of te reo, it has been promoted by several quasi-governmental institutions, especially the national museum, Te Papa, as a winter festival for all New Zealanders. Its main public presence to date has been through media products: posters, banners, websites, television programmes, newspaper features, calendars, some theatrical performances and physical commemoration ceremonies. The larger project, of which this paper represents an initial descriptive and positioning phase, is a continuation of the researcher's long-standing interest in the intersections of religiosity, culture, and media as they are active in the environment of Aotearoa New Zealand. It assumes, building on theorists such as Bellah and Lundby that the creation of such festivals is an act of 'civil religiosity' that attempts to create and strengthen national community around a set of numinous symbols. However, the development of an enterprise such as Matariki is pursued in a complex political field, where broad agreement across various factions is needed before the festival can take on an enduring material and symbolic existence. In investigating the factors that will determine the future of Matariki it is relevant to consider the interaction of three factors in particular: the ethno-political history of New Zealand; the characteristics of contemporary reflexive spirituality, which are intertwined with commodificatory tendencies and thirdly, the impacts of increasing globalisation on the parameters of identity-formation for citizens in late-modern societies

Reservoir hill and audiences for online interactive drama

This paper analyses the interactive experiences constructed for users of the New Zealand online interactive drama Reservoir Hill (2009, 2010), focusing both on the nature and levels of engagement which the series provided to users and the difficulties of audience research into this kind of media content. The series itself provided tightly prescribed forms of interactivity across multiple platforms, allowing forms of engagement that were greatly appreciated by its audience overall but actively explored only by a small proportion of users. The responses from members of the Reservoir Hill audience suggests that online users themselves are still learning the nature of, and constraints on, their engagements with various forms of online interactive media. This paper also engages with issue of how interactivity itself is defined, the difficulties of both connecting with audience members and securing timely access to online data, and the challenges of undertaking collaborative research with media producers in order to gain access to user data

Film, spirituality and heirophany: the contemporary search for meaning

Film is certainly a medium which can appear to revel in the vulgar and inconsequential, (Kracauer, 1960) but at its best, like music, it can guide the viewer by means of metaphor and emotion, past the meretricious, to the heart of something which really matters (Steiner, 1989) The question is – how might it do that? How can a technical medium which puts sounds and images on celluloid attempt to represent that which is unrepresentable by virtue of being both ineffable and invisible? (Schrader, 1972 p.6). What kind of relationship might the medium possibly have with the sacred, with that which is set aside and attributed with extraordinary value, or with the Transcendent, that which is beyond normal sense experience? (Schrader, 1972 p.5). Over the last century many people have addressed these queries. It seems pertinent to raise them again now since there has been a renaissance of 3 interest in both making films and writing about films which deal with matters of the spirit. At the same time there have been changes in the academic and cultural contexts in which film making is situated. This paper surveys the range of approaches that have been used to discuss religion and film in the past and asks which of them are still relevant today

Re-designing the national imaginary: The development of Matariki as a contemporary festival

This article considers the factors shaping the contemporary redevelopment in Aotearoa/ New Zealand of the indigenous commemoration of the rising of the constellation Matariki as a marker of seasonal change. Through interviews with producers of media materials celebrating Matariki, it examines the ideological, cultural, and economic factors determining the encoding of the materials, investigating in particular the ways in which Matariki can resource a marketplace for spiritual commodities

Framing audience prefigurations of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: The roles of fandom, politics and idealised intertexts

Audiences for blockbuster event-film sequels and adaptations often formulate highly developed expectations, motivations, understandings and opinions well before the films are released. A range of intertextual and paratextual influences inform these audience prefigurations, and are believed to frame subsequent audience engagement and response. In our study of prefigurative engagements with Peter Jackson’s 2012 film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, we used Q methodology to identify five distinct subjective orientations within the film’s global audience. As this paper illustrates, each group privileges a different set of extratextual referents – notably J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novels, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, highly localised political debates relating to the film’s production, and the previous associations of the film’s various stars. These interpretive frames, we suggest, competed for ascendancy within public and private discourse in the lead up to The Hobbit’s international debut, effectively fragmenting and indeed polarising the film’s prospective global audience

Editors’ Introduction: Approaching the online audience: new practices, new thinking

Convergence culture, participatory culture, user generated content, interactive media; these are all now familiar terms within contemporary media and communication studies that have risen to distinguish emergent content across digital platforms and particularly internet-based material (whether that is the worldwide web accessed through desktop/laptop machines or increasingly, internet content accessed through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets)

An institutionalist analysis of foreign investment in Poland: Wroclaw's second great transformation

This thesis examines the reintegration of localities in Poland through foreign investment in general and transnational corporations, in particular. The focus of the research is on the relationships and interplay between incoming foreign firms, the corporate strategy of individual companies and the role of institutions and local actors. The region which is the focus of the empirical work is Wroclaw, which is located in the South West of Poland, and regarded as a relatively successful example of transformation. The analytical framework is radical institutionalist in emphasising the socially and politically embedded nature of economic behaviour and the existence of differentiated interests and power. Four dimension of embeddedness, structural, cultural, cognitive and institutional are used to examine how far and in what ways recent changes in the corporate strategy of firms have influenced the nature of firms' quantitative and qualitative linkages in the locality. The main conclusions are that although the multiplier effects through supplier linkages were modest, a process of cumulative causation was evident through the demonstration effect of incoming firms and the stimulation of a range of business services. Ambiguous and embryonic structures of local governance Wroclaw meant that foreign investors were significant contributors to the building of formal institutions. The research findings emphasise the use of enabling myths by foreign investors in attempting to instill a set of values, beliefs and expectations viewed to be congruent with a market economy, in both the locality and the workplace, while displacing or circumventing what were regarded as the inappropriate institutional legacies of the previous regime. The overall conclusion is that there needs to be a radical break with the free market status quo and that change can only come from below in the workplaces and local communities through participatory systems of local governance

Effect of Iron Binding on the Ability of Crocidolite to Cause DNA Single-Strand Breaks

Fibrous carcinogens, such as crocidolite asbestos, are known to catalyze many of the same reactions as iron, namely 0_2 consumption, generation of reduced oxygen species, and damage to DNA, such as strand breaks, and modifications of bases. Upon inhalation, fibers are also known to become coated with an iron-rich material. The mechanism by which this iron is bound to fibers in the lung is not known, and the effect of this additional iron on the reactivity of the fibers is also not well understood. The studies described here were undertaken to elucidate the abilities of crocidolite asbestos, in its native, soaked, and iron depleted forms, as well as three varieties of silicon carbide whiskers, to acquire reactive iron on their surfaces. The aim has been to quantitate the amount of iron that can bind in short periods of time, and to measure any changes in biochemical reactivity toward DNA following binding of iron. All forms of the naturally occurring mineral fiber crocidolite, and the man-made mineral fibers (silicon carbide whiskers), were capable of acquiring iron, to varying degrees. Native crocidolite was able to bind up to 57 nmol Fe+ 2/mg crocidolite in one hour, while the iron-depleted form was capable of binding only 5. 5 nmol Fe+ 2/mg crocidolite, and the three varieties of silicon carbide whiskers bound from 2.9 to 29.0 nmol Fe+ 2/mg in the same time period. Following iron binding, the fibers were more capable of forming DNA single-strand breaks. The increase in the ability of the fibers to cause DNA strand breaks was greatest with the silicon carbide whiskers, less with iron depleted crocidolite, and the least with native crocidolite, which is likely because of the inherently high iron content of native crocidolite. Other investigation attempted to determine whether iron could be bound from more complex, physiologically relevant iron-containing solutions where potential iron chelators are abundant. Iron appeared to be acquired even from such complex mixtures as tissue culture media. Following incubation in media, the fibers were more active in catalyzing the formation of DNA strand breaks. An interesting correlation was noted between the abilities of the fibers to cause DNA strand breaks after incubation in tissue culture media and the cytotoxicity of crocidolite to A549 cells grown in the same media