Given the strong links between food security and wellbeing, addressing the increasing lack of access to adequate, appropriate food is necessary to realise the current Aotearoa New Zealand government's wellbeing-related ambitions. This qualitative survey study engages with the experiences of over 600 food insecure people by analysing open-ended survey responses regarding their experiences of food insecurity and their goals and dreams for the future. Countering neoliberal narratives of the poor as lacking 'ambition', our data suggest that participants have extensive goals and dreams for the future, but systemic income inadequacy severely limits them in achieving their aspirations. Many participants aspire for appropriate and fulfilling employment, financial security, and to secure a good life for their whānau; yet current welfare policy settings undermine their aspirations and are at odds with the Government's own vision of wellbeing, as formalised in the Treasury's Living Standards Framework. This suggests the exclusion of food insecure people from our national shared vision of wellbeing. We conclude by highlighting the value of understanding and including the goals and dreams of those who are food insecure in the intention, design, and delivery of reforms needed to enhance food security in Aotearoa New Zealand.
<p>This thesis proposes that the moment of interaction between a person and a fungus is transformative of both subjects. Using new nature writing techniques in tandem with multispecies ethnography, this thesis seeks to present a rich, autoethnographic account of my encounters with fungi in the native forests of the West Coast of Aotearoa. Drawing on five days of ethnographic fieldwork spent at the Fungal Network of New Zealand (FUNNZ) annual Fungal Foray in the township of Moana, I explore the affective, emotional, sensory, intellectual, and corporeal experiences of interacting with fungi. Using new nature writing as an ethnographic medium, I suggest that narratives that pertain to the researcher’s experiences can render new understandings of nonhuman subjects. In doing so, I explore both the transformative potential of multispecies encounters for the researcher and the researched, and the literary potential of multispecies ethnography to illustrate the encounters themselves.</p>
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