Papers by Kelly Dombroski
Post-quake Christchurch has seen a flourishing of alternative economic activities that work to di... more Post-quake Christchurch has seen a flourishing of alternative economic activities that work to directly support the wellbeing of residents, often through the volunteer and community sector. This project seeks to produce a database, conceptual map, and a literal map of the diverse economic activities contributing to both coping with change and the future renewal of Christchurch. This short paper will outline the project's goals and theoretical foundations, and will provide opportunities for community groups to register their interest in participating in this mapping project. Crisis has a way of altering horizons. From the global economic crisis of 2008 to the quakes that rocked Christchurch in 2010 and 2011, this city has faced more than its fair share of economic challenge and change in recent times. At the same time, Christchurch people are well aware of the ways in which crisis has helped to open new horizons, often by forcing people to find alternative ways to meet their wellbeing needs. Intiatives such as GapFiller, Greening the Rubble, the Food Resilience Network, Find it & Fix it, the Student Volunteer Army and more have risen to the challenge, working alongside previously existing organisations such as local churches, playcentres and community action groups. What these groups have in common is a grappling with hardship and a re-envisioning of economic activity as something which is meant to support communities, wellbeing and resilience. These organisations not only contribute to the informal economy, they are also experimenting with new ways of doing economics: prioritising ethical considerations over profit maximization, reorienting themselves towards equity, social and ecological sustainability, cooperation, democratic processes, and community-based development. There are exciting things going on, but they are often studied in isolation from each other -as little more than interesting case studies or fun examples of a vibrant local culture. They are not always taken seriously as real, important contributors of economic wellness. This results in a skewed view of the economy, where the focus is on state budgets, for-profit capitalist enterprises and the market economy -leading to the assumption that it is these things that promote economic growth and therefore will best help Christchurch get back on its feet.
Cities
In this paper, we investigate how infrastructure and care shape commoner subjectivities. In our r... more In this paper, we investigate how infrastructure and care shape commoner subjectivities. In our research into an urban youth farm in Aotearoa New Zealand, we heard and observed profound tales of growth and transformation among youth participants. Not only were our interviewees narrating stories of individual transformation (of themselves and others), but they also spoke of transformations in the way they engaged with the world around them, including the land and garden and its many species and ecological systems, the food system more generally, the wider community and their co-workers. Such transformations were both individual and collective, having more in common with the collective caring subject homines curans than the autonomous, rational workready subject of homo economicus. Using postcapitalist theory on commons, commoning and subjectivity, we argue that these socio-affective encounters with more-than-human commons enabled collective, caring commoner subjectivities to emerge and to be cultivated through collective care in place. We suggest that the commons can be thought of as an infrastructure of care for the counter-city, providing the conditions for the emergence and cultivation of collective caring urban subjects.
Diverse more‐than‐human approaches to climate change adaptation in Thai Binh, Vietnam
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Feb 16, 2022
The whole nine villages : Local-level development through mass tourism in Tibetan China
Long. In Xining: All the fabulous people who allowed me to follow them around or interview them. ... more Long. In Xining: All the fabulous people who allowed me to follow them around or interview them. Special thanks to those I cannot name but will always be grateful to. Also thanks to members of our house church and, later, of Xining International Fellowship. The Braun family for fun and friendship. Melinda, Mim, Greg, Xiao Ming, Claudia, the Chei family, and others for all kinds of assistance. The Lu family, the Ma family, and the Foggin family for inspiration. The White family, who were the best support crew ever. Rebecca Poh for feedback on Xining-related chapters. Thanks to OzNappyfree members for their participation. Pippa, Jennifer, and Lisa for hospitality. Special thanks to Marnie Holmes and the ec8ANZ group. Anna Spinaze for comments on early drafts. Mona-Lynn Courteau, for her editorial work.
Community economies in Aotearoa New Zealand
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Feb 6, 2020
Journal of Cultural Economy, Jan 29, 2018
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Jun 15, 2017
Journeying from "I" to "we": Assembling hybrid caring collectives of geography doctoral scholars ... more Journeying from "I" to "we": Assembling hybrid caring collectives of geography doctoral scholars Completing a PhD is difficult. Within a city and a university recovering from a major earthquake sequence, general stress levels are much higher, and caring for some of the non-academic needs of doctoral scholars becomes critically important to these scholars' success. Yet in the same situation, academic supervisors may be stretched to the limits of their capacity to care even just for doctoral scholars' research training needs, let alone their broader pastoral care. The question, then, is how do we increase capacity to provide care for doctoral scholars in this kind of environment? While it has been shown elsewhere that supportive and interactive department cultures are correlated with lower attrition rates (Lovitts & Nelson, 2000), little work has been done on how exactly departments might go about in creating these supportive environments: the focus is generally on the individual actions of supervisors, or the individual quality and independence of students admitted (Johnson, Lee, & Green, 2000). In this article, we suggest that a range of actors and contingencies are involved in journeying toward a more caring collective culture. We direct attention to the hybridity of a "caring collective" emerging in the Department of Geography at the University of Canterbury. Following Callon and Rabeharisoa (2003), our caring collective is hybrid because the actors assembled are not only "students" and "staff", but also bodies, technologies, objects, institutions and other nonhuman actors including tectonic plates and earthquakes. The concept of the hybrid caring collective is useful, we argue, as a way of understanding the distributed responsibility for the care of doctoral scholars, and as a way of stepping beyond the student/supervisor blame game.
Emotion, Space and Society, Feb 1, 2018
I am grateful also to the OzNappyfree group for participating in the original research that infor... more I am grateful also to the OzNappyfree group for participating in the original research that informed this article, and to the Community Economies Collective for ongoing intellectual engagement and support.
New Zealand
Encyclopedia of Motherhood, Oct 5, 2012
The Handbook of Diverse Economies
Geographical Review, May 3, 2021
Journal of Cultural Economy, Apr 25, 2016
In the Māori artform of karanga, female tribal elders or kuia will call visitors on to the marae ... more In the Māori artform of karanga, female tribal elders or kuia will call visitors on to the marae space in a ritualised and skilful performance of greeting, paying tribute to the dead, and laying out the reasons for the current engagement. The kaikaranga is answered with a similar skilful call by a kaiwhakautu, on behalf of the guests or manuhiri. Multiple women engage in this call and response until the manuhiri stop in front of the meeting house to continue with the rest of the pōwhiri welcome ceremony and subsequent meeting or hui. Like these guests, in this reflection on Miranda Joseph's book Debt to Society: Accounting for Life under Capitalism, I am called over a distance into Joseph's space. If Joseph's work is a skilful performance of the academic ritual of the monograph, I am the responding caller, and in this piece I record my iterative responses as I respectfully and slowly move closer to a meeting across difference and similarity. Call and response I: those that have gone before Joseph invites us to enter her world by first paying respect to those who have gone before us in the analysis and critique of capitalism and capitalist social forms: her introduction features Marx of course, but also Louis Althusser, Lauren Berlant, Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, and Mary Poovey. Joseph's intellectual world is haunted by the work of these and others, even as Joseph offers a more 'open' and 'diverse' account of the social and economic structures informing and informed by our particular moment in the history of debt. While critical of abstraction and quantification, Joseph is not dismissive of it; instead she explains how she seeks to 'instantiate' it, to show how statistical abstractions are 'lived particularly and concretely' (p. xx). I greet Miranda Joseph and hail her from the antipodes, where we have an awkward sort of relationship with the processes of accounting and debt in the USA. In some ways, Aotearoa New Zealand adopts particularities of neoliberalism with rapid and even excessive efficiency, perhaps due to our small population. But in other ways, we hold out against abstraction, maybe because we are likely to have only some two degrees of separation between us and any other person on the street. I also acknowledge Joseph's intellectual 'ancestors' and list some of my own: most relevant here is JK Gibson-Graham, whom I draw on as a member of the Community Economies Collective (CEC). We therefore share a Marxist, post-structuralist, feminist, and materialist 'ancestral' connection, despite our different geographical localities. While I appreciate the linkages that Joseph makes to what these shared intellectual ancestors have said about quantification, abstraction, and statistics, I found that their words sometimes amplified and sometimes interrupted Joseph's own voicein fact, in a way reminiscent of the karanga on which I have based my review structure. I add Xin Liu as another who has gone before us, in his work examining the socialities produced by statistics in China's recent history (Liu 2009). He had to work hard to convince his English-speaking audience of the global relevance of China's quantitative revolution. Situated as she is in North America, at this point in history, Joseph need make no particular arguments for global relevance. She writes about the USA, and those of us elsewhere devour it, just as our governments and businesses eagerly take up the
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, May 6, 2015
Postdevelopment thinkers and writers have critiqued development discourse for its role in perpetu... more Postdevelopment thinkers and writers have critiqued development discourse for its role in perpetuating inequality. In water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH) literature and interventions, the discourse used perpetuates inequality through classing anything other than private toilets as 'without sanitation'. This implies that the people who use forms of hygiene and sanitation relying on collective toilets and alternative strategies are somehow unhygienic. Yet residents of Xining (Qinghai Province, China) rely on hygiene assemblages that do not always include private toilets, but nonetheless still work to guard health for families with young children. In this paper, I develop a postdevelopment approach to hygiene and sanitation based on starting with the place-based hygiene realities already working to guard health in some way, then working to multiply possibilities for future discursive and material hygiene realities. In this approach, contemporary and future realities may look quite different from those based on private toilets.
Introduction to diverse economies: Inventory as ethical intervention
This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in The handbook of diverse economies edit... more This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in The handbook of diverse economies edited by edited by J.K. Gibson-Graham (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia), Kelly Dombroski (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), published in 2020, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-handbook-of-diverse-economies-9781788119955.html The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.
Past caring? Women, work and emotionBarbaraBrookes, JaneMcCabe and AngelaWanhalla (eds.). Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2019. 288 pp. 978‐1‐98‐853134‐2
New Zealand Geographer, Mar 9, 2020
Exploring the potential of mass tourism in the facilitation of community development : a case study of Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, Western China : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, New...
Biographical Note iv The Case Study Using indigenous measurements Wellbeing in Jiuzhaigou Livelih... more Biographical Note iv The Case Study Using indigenous measurements Wellbeing in Jiuzhaigou Livelihoods Choice Cultural and family identity The Hanification of Ngah Village? Wrestling with reconciliation Choice as part of cultural identity The choices made Lessons for culture change and empowerment References 11 This paper was presented in a draft form at the 2004 Devnet Conference at Auckland University.
Gender Place and Culture, Aug 22, 2019
Place, culture and time are significant in our gendered experiences as teachers and scholars of f... more Place, culture and time are significant in our gendered experiences as teachers and scholars of feminist geography. Our context is complex, situated, sometimes joyful and sometimes hurtful, but also intriguing and exciting. Aotearoa New Zealand is a nation of promise, potential and enigma: it was the first country in the world where women gained the vote in 1893 and now boasts the youngest woman world leader in 2017. It is also a postcolonial nation where structural racism, homophobia, and sexism persist, yet it also has given legal personhood to a river. During the 2017 national election a young Pākēha (New Zealander of European descent) woman lead her party to victory while a young Māori (Indigenous New Zealander) woman was ousted as head of her political party. The former secured the leadership of her party six weeks out from election day; the latter became a spokeswoman and advocate for those negotiating the intersections of poverty, motherhood and ethnicity. In this Country Report, we reflect on our current political and cultural context to highlight some of the common themes Aotearoa New Zealand-based feminist geographers have been exploring in research, teaching and praxis. We have published this piece as a network of feminist geographers, the Women and Gender Geographies Research Network (WGGRN), which is an alliance of people who learn, teach and research gender in geography and related disciplines throughout the country. We have embraced this acronym to express the collective nature of the knowledge making process. In writing this piece, our preference was to not italicise words from te reo Māori (the Māori language) that are
Case studies in the environment, Dec 31, 2019
Many scientific research projects carried out in developing countries gather data and fail to ret... more Many scientific research projects carried out in developing countries gather data and fail to return any summary of the findings to the community that provided the data. Residents from communities experiencing water issues are therefore deprived of effective participation in the use of findings, since communities might be seen as only a source of data. Indigenous writers have revealed the injustice of this reality and have suggested that this is typical of colonial or 'colonising' research methods. It is concerning because accessing research knowledge encourages communities to examine their issues and empowers them to formulate solutions. Inspired by decolonising methodologies, we explored different 'decolonising' approaches to returning research findings to participant communities using the results of a recent water research project conducted in Ndola, Copperbelt Province, Zambia. In this case study, we describe participant communities experience regarding access to research findings and conclude that face-to-face discussion is the preferred approach to returning water research findings in Ndola.