Humility, conversations, and critical theory in social change

At the Opening Seminar of the Center for Discourses in Transition, Professor Paul McIvinney brought together a group of scholars who I believe were connected together with their enphasis on interrogating neoliberalism and processes of social/cultural change. The talk today was opened by Professor Fairclough who walked us through a careful discourse analysis of the global economic discourse. Professor Fairclough's work clearly laid out the groundwork for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the ways in which CDA is tied to the interrogation of public discourses of neoliberalism played out in the articulations and arguments around the financial crisis and the economic benefits enjoyed by Bankers.

Professor Adam Jaworski offered yer abother entry point to engaging neoliberal privilege by interrogating the ways in which tourist guide discourses serve specific functions and occupy specific positions of privilege. Through his close reading of the micro data on the interactions at tourist sites, Professor Jaworski drew attention to the specific discursive processes through which the everyday affair is turned into spectacular events through the discourses of tourism.

I wrapped up the opening seminar with a talk about culture-centered processes of change, and the ways in which menaings/discourses fit into the intercations among culture, structure, and agency.

What was most interesting about the events of the day was the opportunity for me to simply be a student again and learn from scholars who define the terrains of critical discourse analysis. It was for instance incredibly gratifying to take notes about the ways in which CDA is conceptualized and conducted, and the intersections with CCA. What I was most impressed by today was the opportunity for cross-pollination that hopefully builds bridges for fruitful conversations.

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...

The Suit Walks the Corridor

The Suit Walks the Corridor At ten past nine on a Monday the corridor on the top floor of the administration building fills with the sound of expensive shoes. The carpet up here was laid in the last refurbishment and still gives slightly underfoot, the way a good hotel lobby does, and the doors along it close with the soft, well-engineered thud of a German car. Along this carpet, in the direction of the lift marked Executive, comes the suit. It comes in navy and in charcoal, in the odd daring pinstripe, in the female version too, a tailored jacket over a silk shell, and heels that announce themselves on the tile of the lift lobby a full three seconds before the person arrives. The suit carries a flat white from the good cafe, the one that closed the student cafe to open, and a lanyard that swings with the confidence of a thing that opens doors. The suit passes the framed founding professors, who were photographed in gowns and look, at this distance, like a row of disapproving pe...

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...

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