Abstracts – Session Three

2:00 – 3:00 – 6EN – 414

Chair:  Briar O’Connor

Young Han: Intercultural couples’ experiences across life stages

As our world is becoming increasingly diverse from rapid changes in immigration, population mobility and technology, intimate intercultural relationships are becoming more common in many countries. Despite the notable increase in the number of intercultural couples around the world, little is known about how intercultural couples develop and nurture their relationships. Prior literature has predominantly focused on problems experienced by intercultural couples, from a deficit-based or pathological perspective. Sustaining positive intimate relationships is important as it contributes to general individual well-being and also significantly impacts on families and children, in turn impacting societal outcomes. This grounded theory study used semi-structured in-depth interviews with Korean individuals who are in intimate intercultural relationships and are living in New Zealand. This presentation will highlight preliminary findings on how culture plays a significant role in a mixed-culture family life cycle. It will give particular attention to the specific challenges of this intercultural family experience and the strategies couples use to manage cultural differences.

Anna Vasilyeva: Negotiating beauty norms: Young women and the media

This presentation discusses the results of research exploring young female university students’ perceptions of beauty and the concept of ideal and idealised beauty in the media. A significant body of research identifies that the notion of ideal beauty promoted by the media and advertising agencies is an artificial phenomenon. However, social norms today are highly influenced by the global circulation of images that promote commercialisation via an expanding range of media channels, including those created by young women themselves and by non-mainstream corporations. Thus, young women today must negotiate with a ‘barrage’ of images of idealised beauty. Drawing on body studies and feminist cultural studies, this qualitative study involved two in-depth individual interviews with 16 female participants attending New Zealand’s largest university. Today I discuss two key themes. The first is the absence of media literacy education in schools and universities, which limited their ability to recognise the artificial nature of images of ideal beauty. The second was the intersectional influence of factors such as ethnicity, culture, religion, family, and social environment in young women’s self-perceptions and behaviours in relation to ideal beauty.

Vibha Tirumalai: Deconstructing the (im)possibilities of sexuality among Indian immigrants in New Zealand

Talking about sexuality is uncomfortable for many people in India and has long been considered taboo (Das, 2014; Yip & Page, 2013). However, many Indian young people living in western contexts engage in sexuality education in schools, and this is the case in New Zealand, where this study is situated. This study focuses on understanding the nature of conversation and attitudes around learning about sexuality among second-generation Indian youth and their first-generation Indian parents in New Zealand. My doctoral research will employ Derridian deconstruction to question the underpinnings of understanding sexuality and the perceived importance of sexuality education and act as means of revealing the structures that give meaning to immigrant Indian understandings and embodiments of sexuality in Aotearoa New Zealand. Deconstruction demonstrates that what appears to be outside a given system is always already fully inside it (Caputo, 1997). For example, while sexuality is repressed, it is very much a part of the historical Indian culture because of its presence in the evident ancient Indian texts (Kamasutra), and in temple carvings. That which seems to be natural is historical. As Jackson & Mazzei (2011) contend, deconstruction happens in the event that participants produce the interpretation of sexuality (Youngblood and Mazzei, 2011). My analysis will focus on the ways in which immigration potentiates shifts in the boundaries that mark the sexual realities my participants exist within. Derrida (1992) described deconstruction as “the experience of the impossible” (cited in Caputo, 1997). My presentation will explore how my research will engage the limits of sexual (im)possibility among first generation Indian immigrants and their children; what these boundaries produce and what they potentiate, rather than what they are or what they mean.