Traversing the Plateaus of Knowledge[s] within the Rituals of Research Processes: How 'Mana' Helps to Determine Activity

In this paper, narrative experiences are used to explore issues and practices of mana within a M'ori New Zealand research context. On one level, mana is manifested through actions and behaviours of authority, prestige, influence, and power, and is rule-bound in traditional customs and protocol. However, in a taken-for-granted-world, where the different formal evocations of mana ought to be observed, we underestimate the extent to which the mundanity of our situations can allow for several discontinuities to occur. For example, the occupation of certain contexts allows mana to be determined through activity that undergoes processes of territorialisation, deterritorialisation and then re-territorialisation; through unexpected schemas and connections. But do these re-territorialised outcomes enhance the research space, or even the presence of mana? When Deleuze and Guattari (1987) used the term 'rhizome', they envisaged a network of multiple and branching roots, with no central axis, no unified point of origin, and no given direction of growth. The alignment of our experiences to rhizomatics then, is to openly share the ruptures, discontinuities, connections and interrelationships between phenomena, within the 'fluid nature' of ritualised research containment. The aim of this work is to present ideas for discussion about the ways that mana determines research activity through the juxtaposition of unfolding and unyielding ways of engagement.