Ann Dupuis

Meanings of home for older home owners

Abstract The meaning of home has been the subject of much recent debate. The paper explores this debate and uses empirical data from New Zealand to demonstrate that the meaning of home reflects specific sets of historical and social circumstances and is multi‐dimensional. Key features include home as a cultural value, the investment potential of home and the impacts of gender on the meanings attached to home and home life. The paper explores the meanings of home amongst a group of older New Zealanders interviewed towards the end of 1993 and in early 1994, a time of considerable upheaval within state policy with respect to the elderly. For this group ‘home’ was synonymous with home ownership and reflected deeply held concerns with respect to security, family and continuity. These same concerns it is argued gave rise to the specific pattern of housing tenure, predominantly owner occupation, that developed within New Zealand. Out of these concerns for security and family continuity comes a focus upon bequeat...

Timelining: visualizing experience

This article discusses the uses and benefits of an innovative method of graphic elicitation; timelining. The method was developed in the context of a narrative-based research project on fatness and weight loss. Participants’ weight over time was plotted on a graph, informed and elaborated by a variety of material objects such as photographs, diaries, and medical records. The timeline provided a focus for participants and prompted their stories of weight loss experiences over time. While initially intended as a simple heuristic tool for eliciting talk, over the course of the research the process of timelining became a central feature of the project. Timelining is a subtle and malleable research method. While keeping time in view, timelining documents, records, extends and deepens understandings of participants’ past experiences. It encourages the construction of rich temporal narratives. It also provides opportunity for a deeper researcher-participant relationship to develop. This form of graphic elicitation has particular value for narrative forms of research.

Urban Intensification in Auckland, New Zealand: A Challenge for New Urbanism

Medium Density Housing (MDH) is a relatively new form of housing in New Zealand where the standalone house on a separate lot has traditionally been revered. This paper reports on the findings of a research project on Ambrico Place, a major MDH initiative in Waitakere City, one of four cities in the Auckland metropolitan area. This case study explores the development of a site that has been significantly influenced by new urbanist principles. The paper provides an overview of the historical and political context influencing the take up of MDH in Auckland. It briefly reviews theory and principles arising from new urbanist movements then describes the Ambrico Place Research Project. Next, it explores three interrelated issues, relevant to new urbanism, that arose from the research; the quality of the built environment, community and social interaction, and transport patterns of MDH residents. Implications for planning are identified. Finally, three problems are noted: the uncritical and incoherent implementation of new urbanist principles; the contradiction between the drives for both diversity and homogeneity in the built environment; and the tensions arising from the application of an environmental effects-based approach to planning in an urban setting.

Pluralisms in Qualitative Research: From Multiple Methods to Integrated Methods

Pluralism offers promising ways forward for qualitative research, invoking the use of multiple methods to investigate complex social questions. Drawing on two different research projects, we reflexively demonstrate, discuss, and illustrate our processes of working pluralistically. In various ways, we argue that multiple methods function smoothly if they are closely aligned with the broad assumptions underpinning the research, resulting in their fusion into an integrated research process. The incorporation of multiple methods encourages creativity and innovation, extends the scope and depth of data, demands time, forces reflexivity, deepens and intensifies relationships between researchers and participants, and raises issues for analysis and interpretation. Although a pluralistic approach to research is demanding, substantial benefits can be obtained through working this way.

Entrepreneurship: New Perspectives in a Global Age

Introduction - concepts and themes, Anne de Bruin, Ann Dupuis constrained entrepreneurship, Anne de Bruin, Ann Dupuis ethical entrepreneurship, Chris Moore, Anne de Bruin entrepreneurial capital, Patrick Firkin electronic entrepreneurship, Anne de Bruin familial entrepreneurship, Patrick Firkin, Ann Dupuis, Anne de Bruin community entrepreneurship, Ann Dupuis, Anne de Bruin municipal-community entrepreneurship, Ann Dupuis, Anne de Bruin, Rolf Cremer state entrepreneurship, Anne de Bruin indigenous entrepreneurship, Anne de Bruin, Peter Mataira elder entrepreneurship, Anne de Bruin, Patrick Firkin youth entrepreneurship, Kate Lewis, Claire Massey.

Gated Communities as Exemplars of ‘Forting Up’ Practices in a Risk Society

This article challenges existing ways of thinking about the proliferation of gated communities. The catalyst for the article was the observation that gated communities have appeared recently in New Zealand where many of the extreme conditions that have driven their emergence in other places are much less obvious. This counterfactual encouraged an exploration of an alternative explanation for the prevalence of gated communities to those of lifestyle, elitism, fear of crime and protection of property values. In this endeavour the emphasis shifts from gated communities as physical and spatial objects to the idea of ‘gatedness’, a mental construct that characterises the nature of existence in a risk society. It is argued that the proliferation of gated communities is one example of individualised ‘forting up’ practices that have become increasingly common as the trust in public institutions to manage the perceived increase in risk has declined. What ensues at the level of everyday life is greater attention to home security and concerns with bodily safety and travel. The article points to the need for empirical work to explore further the extent to which the mentality of gatedness shapes current social practices.

Intensification in Auckland: Issues and Policy Implications

This article identifies issues around the Auckland Regions strategy for urban intensification and discusses the ensuing policy implications. Medium density housing forms an important element of the strategy for growth management. Implications for its success are primarily drawn from research into a major housing development in Waitakere City. It is argued that for ideological, political and technical reasons the strategy could be easily undermined. The article also suggests that something of a paradigm shift is underway in urban planning.

The dynamics of New Zealand’s largest street market; the Otara flea market

Attempts to explore the complexities in the operation of the largest and best example of New Zealand’s approximation of street vending known as the Otara Flea Market. Aims to understand the way that less formalized economic activity operates as part of the coping strategies of people in communities caught by the domestic response to changes in the global economy. Uses participant observation to categorize the nature, size and general profile of the vendors, document analysis of legal and newspaper reports, together with in‐depth interviews with vendors.

Constrained Entrepreneurship: An Interdisciplinary Extension of Bounded Rationality

The intention of this paper is to extend critiques of rationality that have been developed across a range of disciplines and within a number of strands of feminism. Initially providing a brief review of rationality critiques, the paper then focuses on bounded rationality, the key behavioural assumption of transaction cost economics (TCE). It is shown that, to some extent, this notion of rationality erodes the atomistic model of economic activity central to the economic orthodoxy and is therefore an improvement on the neoclassical orthodox view of rationality. The paper then moves on to a more critical examination of bounded rationality through the development of the feminist slanted concept of ‘constrained entrepreneurship’. This new conceptualisation also provides a means of extending TCE through the incorporation of the Coasian insight that the development of TCE has tended to lose sight of the raison d’être of the firm, that of ‘running a business’ (Coase, 1988a). The concept of constrained entrepreneurship offers a useful, integrative, interdisciplinary framework in which to work and provides a focus for synthesising aspects of social network analysis (a central concern of the new economic sociology) and a feminist oriented perspective, with TCE, an important strand within new institutional economics.

Making Employability ‘Work’

Employability is a widely used term in the labour market lexicon. Yet there is no consensus on how the concept should be applied and a fog of ambiguity surrounds the term. Making employability ‘work’, however, is essential not only for younger people to access and sustain work but also for addressing skills shortages that plague many developed economies. This article positions the employability concept in relational terms and highlights the importance of effective information flows across the various labour market stakeholders. Employability is a shared outcome and responsibility even though individuals’ skills and knowledge is the foundation of employability. Empirical data from a major New Zealand labour market research programme is used to support contentions.