Health geography in New Zealand and Australia: global integration or Antipodean exceptionalism?

This paper examines the hallmarks of an emergent and distinctive Australian and New Zealand health geography over the last 30 years. Building on an assessment of the early development of the sub‐discipline in the two countries, a review of published work reveals the co‐presence of local themes alongside connections to more global perspectives associated notably with health behaviour. Further common themes are the influence of year‐round exposure to outdoor spaces and the proximity of “blue spaces” to urban centres. However, there are divergences in the evolution of the sub‐discipline. A comparison of attendance at the biennial International Medical Geography Symposia (held since 1985) with publications in the journal Health & Place reveals differentially globalised characters. A steady flow of international visitors and appointments to New Zealand universities as well as more apparent connections to the wider discipline of geography contrast with more applied geospatial and public health connections in Australian health geography.     

Dealignment and demobilisation? Nonvoting in New Zealand 1938–1990

New Zealand has had a reputation for high voting participation, but age‐eligible turnout has declined since 1938 and, despite a brief recovery between 1975 and 1984, continued to fall subsequently. By 1990 it was far closer to the average turnout of Western democracies. Brief analysis of aggregate data since 1938 sets the scene for more specific study of individual‐level data from the 1963, 1981, and 1990 elections, which indicates effects which are minimal for institutional factors, small for social and demographic variables, and substantial for changes in public attitudes. In particular, dealignment of the party system and voter demobilisation are associated with declining interest in politics, political efficacy, and party identification. While also associated with extra‐parliamentary mass action to the partial detriment of voting among the university‐educated in 1981, a more general mobilisation of postmaterialist issues was probably responsible for the post‐1975 turnout recovery. After 1984 the longer‐term trend was reestablished.     

After Neoliberalism? Community Activism and Local Partnerships in Aotearoa New Zealand

In Aotearoa New Zealand, as elsewhere, partnership programmes overtly targeted to the strengthening of local communities are developing in a range of institutional sites. This development, it is claimed by some, moves social governance well beyond the narrow, market‐oriented, contractualism of earlier forms of neoliberalism, and into a new era of joined up, inclusive governance. Here we highlight the emergent role of "strategic brokers" who do the grounded joining up of governance in this new partnering ethos. Drawing on the findings of a large project on local partnerships in Aotearoa New Zealand, we show how community activists have played a distinctive historical role in shaping the form that local partnerships take. We then turn our attention to the current context, examining the rise of mandatory partnership working and the implications of this for community activists. We highlight key aspects of new forms of gendered professionalism, including the need to have both knowledge of and knowledge about communities. In outlining the historical development and current scope of strategic broker roles, we ask what we can learn about the nature of would‐be "post‐neoliberal" social governance.     

Social engineering and cultural policy – theoretical and empirical reflexions from Swedish cultural policy in a historical perspective

This article explores the influence of social engineering in various forms within Swedish cultural policy, seen in a historical perspective. In social engineering cultural policy measures, reforms and projects are justified by scientifically based research rather than party based ideological arguments. Karl Popper’s classification of the utopian and the step-by-step engineering make up the starting point, redefined as paternalistic engineering, welfare state engineering and utilitarian engineering in order to apply these ideas to cultural policy. Social engineering was predominant in Swedish cultural policy mainly during the post war period. In the 1950s as well as in the 1970s this engineering takes on a paternalistic character, in the struggle against injurious culture, such as video violence. Current practice of paternalistic engineering is directed at revealing and identifying invisibles structures in the field of cultural heritage. The welfare state engineering had its highlights in the planning era of the 1960s and the 1970s, and today culture as a beneficial factor for both citizens and society is labelled utilitarian engineering.     

A Community Issue? Rural Women's Feelings of Safety and Fear in New Zealand

Following previous geographies of gender and fear this article is stimulated by the dominance of urban accounts of women's experience of safety and fear in different ‘private’ and ‘public’ spaces1 This work is based on an article presented at the ‘Emotional Geographies’ conference (Lancaster University, September 2002). View all notes. We argue that rural and emotional geography perspectives on these issues provide new directions for both a feminist critique of the notion of ‘rural community’ and broadening of the emotional geographies literature. Communities have been studied at length in rural geography, yet the term itself can be problematic and its emotional potency has not been rigorously interrogated. Differing experiences of the rural community in relation to characteristics of, for example, class, gender, sexuality, age and ethnicity have led to a questioning of idyllic assumptions attached to rural life and the construction of ideas about the rural community. In this article we extend existing debates to argue that constructions of the rural community as an emotionally harmonious, safe and peaceful space may be challenged by women's experiences of fear in various rural spaces. We take the specific case of two contrasting Aotearoa/New Zealand communities and document how women negotiate personal feelings of safety and fear in their own areas. We highlight the absence of a binary of fear/safety, noting that women often live with and through these emotions in more complex ways. Finally, we close by placing this discussion within broader reflections on community as an emotionally charged term and as a rhetorical space of concern and/or responsibility in agency discourse and crime management.     

The policy roles of bureaucrats and politicians in New Zealand∗

This paper presents four case studies of policy‐making in New Zealand in an attempt, firstly, to examine the relative roles of bureaucratic and political policy actors and, secondly, to suggest some factors which might account for the variation found in both these and other observed cases. This is done on the basis of distinguishing between types of policy (as suggested by Theodore J. Lowi) according to their likelihood to engender conflict The findings are discussed in relation to the workings of other Westminster political systems (Britain, Canada, Australia). The conclusion is drawn that while politicians are sometimes involved in policy‐making to only a minimal extent, they should still be held responsible for what emerges from that process.     

New Zealand and Chile: partnership for the Pacific century?

The research note investigates the growing economic and political interaction between two important Pacific Rim players, Chile and New Zealand, and analyses the rationale for the Closer Economic Partnership that is currently under discussion. Having analysed the data on trade between the countries it suggests that a mixture of strategic and symbolic geopolitical/geo‐economic factors are driving the agreement rather than the desire to increase bilateral commodity exchange. As it is presently constructed, the agreement is likely to bestow disproportionate benefits on specific corporate actors in certain sectors. A research agenda for monitoring the broader impacts of the agreement is offered.     

Something Borrowed and Something New?: Welfare Reform and Social Science

William M. Epstein, Welfare in America : How Social Science Fails the Poor.
Herbert J. Gans, The War Against the Poor : The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy
Joel F. Handler, The Poverty of Welfare Reform     

From lockdown to rāhui and teddy bears in windows: Initial responses to Covid-19 in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Scholarly examinations of states of emergency frequently underscore how the crisis imaginary is employed to rapidly and unjustifiably expand state power. This line of analysis affords great insight into the misuse of state power. It also, however, tends to depict the citizenry as either weak and overwhelmed or at best, duped by the workings of the state, and thus ignores the possibility of democratic processes continuing within a state of emergency. Aotearoa/New Zealand’s response to Covid-19 reveals a collaborative dynamic in which the citizenry actively engaged in constituting the state of emergency, and suggests the need for a broader examination of how collective responsibility, care and blame are envisioned and enacted, not only by governments but by (neo-liberal) citizenries during times of national crisis.     

Masculinity,place and a binary discourse of ‘theory’ and ‘empirical investigation’ in the human geography of Aotearoa/New Zealand

This paper discusses a binary discourse of ‘theory’ and ‘empirical investigation’ in the human geography practised in Aotearoa (New Zealand)[1]. I attempt to illustrate the way in which such dichotomous thinking articulates with the social construction of a hegemonic masculinity to effect a specific geographic understanding of the world. I suggest that this theory/empirical investigation binary gives rise to at least three significant problems in geographic research: a gendered and hierarchical structuring of geographic thought, a devaluation of the feminised term in the binary, and unworkable ‘mobile positioning’ of the researcher.     

Colonial and Provincial Separation Movements in Australia and New Zealand, 1856–1865

This article examines separation movements in Britain’s Australasian colonies during the first decade of responsible government, 1856–65. Separation movements sought to carve new colonies from the territory of existing ones or, in the case of a number of New Zealand movements, to create new provinces within that colony’s quasi-federal system. Their demands rested upon assertions that a colonial or provincial government neglected large and prosperous hinterlands from which considerable revenue was collected. Only one colonial separation movement achieved its goal, but four provinces succeeded. I argue that responsible government played a major role in the success or failure of these movements. Responsibility concentrated authority in a remote capital; colonial separatists desired to exercise this privilege within a smaller new colony that they controlled, but its operation within the larger existing colony provided London with justification to reject most appeals. Further, it allowed New Zealand’s parliament to frame a mechanism that enabled discontented regions to become provinces without referral to local or imperial legislatures. Thus, I provide new insights into the formation of colonial polities and the influence of responsible government on settler political campaigns.     

Gender and daily mobility in a New Zealand city, 1920–1960

Although it is widely accepted that transport—like other social practices—is gendered, the concept of gender used in transport research is often one‐dimensional, with the focus on gendered variations in behaviour rather than on gendered meaning and identities. In this paper, I develop a more complex and multi‐stranded way of approaching the issue of gender and transport (or rather, daily mobility). A case study of a neighbourhood in the New Zealand city of Dunedin in the early decades of last century is presented to explore how the practices of daily mobility constituted gender. A three‐part concept of gender is developed as a basis for analysis: gender as a pattern of social relations, a cultural system of meaning and a component of personal identity. This is then used to analyse a collection of sixty oral histories. The period 1920–1960 is particularly interesting; in these decades extensive and widely used public transport systems (notably electric trams) shared urban streets with bicycles and pedestrians, and the emerging private modes of motorcycle and motor car. As new transport technologies were taken up, they offered the opportunity for new social practices to be formed around their use, for cultural meanings to be assigned to the technologies and for embodied individual subjectivities to be constructed. I argue that we can usefully interpret the shifting patterns of transport use through the lens of gender, and that we can come to understand the process by which gender is constructed by attention to everyday trip‐making and presence on the street.     

Ambiguous immigrants? Examining the changing status of the English in New Zealand

Drawing on a qualitative interview‐based study of English migrants in New Zealand, this article examines, if and how, overseas migration triggers national sentiments that were previously relatively amorphous in their country of origin. In those cases where this occurs, it analyses the diverse and contextual orientations migrants display, and discusses the empirical and analytic challenges posed when seeking to conceptualise a category of persons that have been described as ‘ambiguous immigrants’. The study concludes that research on this ambiguity contributes to debates about the relationship between dominant ethnicity and national identity while highlighting the simplicities of many concepts used to describe and analyse ‘the English’.     

Entitled to Health? Social Protection in Chile's Plan AUGE

In theory everyone has the right to health. However, in reality many low income households are unable to fully access health services and therefore cannot fully claim their rights. Recently, in an attempt to overcome these limitations, health reforms in Chile under the Plan AUGE have proposed a series of legal entitlements to health care that are available to everyone regardless of income level. While this is an important starting point in ensuring more universal access to health, the process has raised a number of important issues, particularly on how these entitlements have been defined and how far they will be able to transform (gender) inequalities within the health system. Looking at this from a gender perspective enables us to see that despite the shift from a health care system based on redistributive rights towards one based on the right of recognition, certain sectors of the population remain excluded. Decision‐making processes have remained technocratic, and women's groups have been marginalized from the debate around the reform. Moreover, health policy makers continue to ignore the role of the unpaid care economy in health care provision. The current reform has served to reinforce the gender roles around health care.     

Losing Control? Inequality and Social Divisions in Oslo

The debate on inequality and social divisions in Western cities has been dominated by three positions - the polarization thesis, the 'skills mismatch' thesis and a specific European approach emphasizing the significance of welfare state structures. These three positions are examined with data from Oslo, Norway. It is shown that although income inequality has increased, there is no consistent pattern of social divisions. The evidence provides support both for the polarization and the mismatch thesis, dependent on the unit of analysis and the group in question. It is difficult to spot influences of the welfare state in these data, and it is argued that rising inequality, contrary to service provision, poverty and segregation, approaches a 'closed process'. Increased earnings at the very top, however, may be explained in terms of social networks.