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"Skilling, Peter"
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Lost kingdoms : Hindu-Buddhist sculpture of early Southeast Asia /
\"Numerous Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms flourished in Southeast Asia from the 5th to the 9th century, yet until recently few concrete details were known about them. Lost Kingdoms reveals newly discovered architectural and sculptural relics from this region, which provide key insights into the formerly mysterious kingdoms. The first publication to use sculpture as a lens to explore this period of Southeast Asian history, Lost Kingdoms offers a significant contribution and a fresh approach to the study of cultures in Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, and other countries\"--Distributor's website.
Book
Neoliberalism, public policy and public opinion
Neoliberalism is often presented in absolute terms: as an achieved fact that has saturated our identities and shaped our perceptions of reality. Against too-grand or too-simplistic claims of neoliberalism's omnipotence, Louise Humpage's (2014) study of policy change and public attitudes in New Zealand demonstrates the continuing resonance of competing norms and values. In this article I continue this exploration of the ways in which neoliberal ideas are powerful, even when they are not fully endorsed as a conscious, cognitive level. The article analyses participants' interactions in series of focus group exercises on income inequality and low-paid work. These interactions suggest that it is not so much that people have come to endorse neoliberal values as 'desirable', as that they have come to believe that alternatives are not 'possible'. The article operates both as a summary and review of Humpage's book, and also as a further development of some of the themes that the book develops.
Journal Article
Attitudes to inequality in 2014: Results from a 2014 survey
Economic inequality has been the subject of increasing public and political attention recently. In New Zealand and elsewhere, it has been the topic of books, websites, protest movements, online campaigns and political debate. Some have found the timing of this increased prominence slightly odd. As Brian Easton (2013: 19) pithily notes, if current levels of inequality constitute cause for concern, then that cause has existed 'for over two decades'. Others, such as Bill English (2014), John Key (2014) and Jamie Whyte (2014) argue that public concern over inequality is misguided. They point to official statistics (Perry, 2014:104-7) showing that income inequality in New Zealand has remained roughly stable over the past two decades. Why, despite no obvious recent increase in income inequality, does a large majority of the public perceive the gap between rich and poor to be both getting larger and a significant social problem? (UMR Research, 2014; Collins, 2014).
Journal Article
Egalitarian Myths in New Zealand: A review of public opinion data on inequality and redistribution
Economic inequality in developed western countries, including New Zealand, is a pressing social issue. Besides concerns of fairness, current high levels of inequality are associated with a range of socially damaging consequences. Drawing on new and existing data, this article presents a summary and an analysis of New Zealanders' beliefs about economic inequality and political redistribution. It explicates and explores some apparent puzzles and paradoxes within the data, including the divergence found between respondents' (declining, but still substantial) level of concern about economic inequality and their (much more limited) support for specific measures that would reduce that inequality. The article discusses some key factors that appear to influence opinion on inequality and redistribution, and it concludes with suggestions for future research to further explore some of the puzzles within the existing data.
Journal Article
Towards a tika political science: Restoring balance, reflecting our context
Restoration (like colonisation) is also a process, not an event, and it will require a change of mind and heart as much as a change of structure. There will of course be difficulties: such transformations must confront the implacability of a power unjustly taken. It will require courageous wisdom to change, and some will say it is impossible and unrealistic. But when the ancestors crossed Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, they overcame what seemed impossible and realised that courage is simply the deep breath you take before a new beginning. - Moana Jackson, \"Decolonisation and the Stories of the Land\" (Jackson, 2021)
Journal Article
Accounting for the “working poor”: analysing the living wage debate in Aotearoa New Zealand
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse justifications for, and accounting’s role in, arguments for and against the living wage.Design/methodology/approachA systematic content analysis of arguments made for and against the living wage in a range of secondary data sources is conducted. Boltanski and Thévenot’s typology of “orders of worth” provides the framework for analysis.FindingsArguments for a living wage are found to draw on a range of orders of worth. These arguments hold that while market signals have a valid role in informing wage decisions, such decisions should also take into account the civic order’s emphasis on collective outcomes, the industrial order’s emphasis on long-term organisational performance, and an emphasis on the inherent dignity of the human worker drawn from the domestic and inspired orders. Business arguments against a living wage hold that the current weight given to the tests and objectives of the market order is optimal and that a living wage would undermine firm competitiveness and, ultimately, collective well-being. Justifications of existing low-wage practices are shown to be reflected in, and naturalised by, accounting discourses and practices.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the emergent literature on the relationship between accounting and inequality. It elucidates accounting’s role in supporting the market order of worth and thus the stabilisation and perpetuation of income inequalities. Its analysis of the orders of worth invoked by those calling for a living wage contribute to the task of imagining and constructing an alternative, more equitable, accounting discourse and practice.
Journal Article
New Zealand's Fifth Labour Government (1999––2008): A New Partnership with Business and Society?
New Zealand's fifth Labour Government, in power from 1999 to 2008, offers a telling case study of a nominally social democratic party re-defining its relationship with business. On the basis that the government is, to a large extent, a linguistic activity, this article focuses on the Government's political discourse, contrasting it with those of the two previous Labour administrations (1972-75 and 1984-90). Drawing on a critical analysis of the three Governments'programmatic public statements, it describes how the fifth Labour Government addressed and constructed business interests in a new way. From 1999 to 2008, Labour presented economic globalisation as the fundamental challenge facing the country, and urged all New Zealanders to work together. Within a rhetoric of partnership, business was represented as a vital contributor towards a putatively shared national purpose in a way that denied the tensions between labour and capital allowed for under earlier local incarnations of social democracy.
Journal Article
Why can't we get what we want? Inequality and the early discursive practice of the sixth Labour government
Focus groups convened in New Zealand in 2014 confirmed a major finding of previous research: that while most people are concerned about existing levels of economic inequality, there is considerable uncertainty over whether and how a more equal distribution might be achieved. In asking why participants acquiesced to views that they did not like, the article suggests that they lacked a language in which to imagine or articulate their preferred alternative, partly because structural critiques of the status quo have become increasingly marginal within the wider public sphere. This observation sets the scene for an analysis of the discursive practice of Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party during the 2017 election campaign and in the November 2017 Speech from the Throne. The article asks whether this practice represents a departure from - and a challenge to - the discursive dominance of 'capitalist realism'. It finds signs of significant change relative to previous governments, particularly in the explicit articulation of values. At the same time, significant moments of ambivalence remain, especially on the question of how the new Government's social and environmental objectives might be achieved.
Journal Article
Another swing of the pendulum: Rhetoric and argument around the Employment Relations Amendment Act (2018)
2018's Employment Relations Amendment Act (ERAA) reversed many of the employment relations (ER) regulatory changes introduced by the preceding National-led administration. It, thus, continued the pattern of yo-yo policy-making that has held in New Zealand since 1991, where significant changes to the ER system have been made with each change of government. Regular pendulum swings in policy settings (where each government begins by reversing policy changes made by the previous administration) generate negative outcomes, including uncertainty and, most likely, a sub-optimal policy equilibrium. In order to understand and (hopefully) move past this impasse, this paper analyses the arguments made for and against this new Act. Texts drawn from parliamentary debates, the Select Committee process, and media coverage are analysed to show the linguistic and rhetorical means used by actors on either side of the debate to make their competing arguments appear legitimate and compelling.
The article notes the moments where the parties to this dispute failed or engage meaningfully with the arguments and evidence presented by the other side, and suggests that the \"talking past each other\" nature of the debate is related to the institutional forms and structures within which the debate took place. It concludes with suggestions for an institutional setting able to facilitate more constructive dialogue.
Journal Article
Minor parties and employment relations at the 2023 election
After three years of the first single-party majority government of the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) era, the 2023 general election in Aotearoa New Zealand will result in a return to the historical norm: a government containing a major party with one or more minor political parties in a formal coalition, or a minority government relying on minor parties for support. Thus, the employment relations policies, the priorities and the power of these minor parties becomes important for assessing the likely trajectory of employment relations policy (ER) in the coming three years. Indeed, recent polling suggests that minor parties will have an unusually large degree of influence. At the time of writing, opinion polls suggest that the combined support for the minor parties is at levels not seen since 2002, with support for the two major parties correspondingly low. This article analyses the positions of the various minor parties likely to be in parliament after the election and speculates on how these parties might seek to influence the employment relations agenda of the next government.
Journal Article