Hi all
It's SO exciting to have this dialogue going! It's quite easy to feel
remote and 'off the planet' here in New Zealand, where in many ways we
have the freedom to challenge orthodoxy, but in other ways are still quite
constrained by our training in traditional methods.
I have welcomed off-line comments from some (it would be good to see them
replicated on this list, so we can jointly take our inquiry forward) and
also to log on tonight and read Chris' and Robyn's comments. I read
Jack's last night. Jack, I remain overwhelmed and humbled by your
powerful theoretical analysis but at the same time hugely heartened by the
warmth and reciprocity I read in your comments. I feel that together we
(Robyn, Jack, Chris, whoever chooses to join us in this forum) can really
mount a challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy of what 'counts' in the
Academy.
Chris, the message you sent to Robyn, which was contained below her reply,
aptly picks up the kinds of issues that we are dealing with in our Maori
university. Today, for example, I found myself challenged again. Having
been entrusted with the job of building research culture within my wananga
(Maori university) I found myself and my two Maori colleagues being
questioned about why we have put in place a formal Ethics committee when
one group of our researchers tends to use 'kaumatua' (respected elders -
in this particular case, an adjunct professor with strong affiliations to
the local 'traditional' university) to get ethical approval for research
projects. We are asked why we put a 'pakeha' (non-Maori, predominantly
European) system in place. Yet we were commissioned by our wananga to do
this - to raise our game as a 'university' where we have to meet
predominantly pakeha quality standards to gain accreditation and funding
for our programmes. How to reply? Is there validity in the kaumatua
scrutiny as well as/instead of standard ethics committee practice? You
can see, in this current example, the tensions we face. We have to be
open to other ways of being and seeing, without throwing out the baby with
the bathwater. (But who determines what is baby, and what is bathwater?
the thot plickens...)
Enough for tonight, I may have lost you already! But let's keep this
dance going. I am so heartened by your responses.
With love
Pip
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