Point Chev boys and the landscapes of suburban memory: autobiographies of Auckland childhoods

This article uses a comparative analysis of two autobiographical texts to consider the ways in which the emotions and the imagination inform a sense of place. These autobiographies recount boyhoods in Point Chevalier, an Auckland suburb which embodies much that is emblematic of the mythology of early- to mid-twentieth-century childhoods in New Zealand. Both a modern suburb in a fast-growing city, and a richly particular coastal environment, it makes itself available as the setting for a childhood of the national imaginary. But as each of these narratives crosses the suburban terrain it produces a different understanding of what it meant to grow up as a male then, and there: in Halfway Round the Harbour Keith Sinclair never questions the fit between boy and place, or the certainty of his belonging and his identity; Peter Wells in Long Loop Home recalls a tumultuous boyhood increasingly marked by the threat of exclusion and intense family conflict. Between the two opposing trajectories of these texts, other possibilities are glimpsed. Place is created here by gender, sexuality and class; and masculinity is shaped and positioned differently for each of these boyhoods and the men who reflect on them. The affect of place marks the difference between these two Point Chevs.     

新时代边疆治理现代化研究:内涵、价值与路向

边疆治理现代化,不仅构成了国家治理这一循环链条赖以持续运转的物质性基石,也是国家治理之治理追求在价值层面得以存立的要素补充。实现边疆治理的逻辑更新,将边疆由一“边缘性”话语进位为一个蕴含生机与创造活力的前沿领域,使其实现“本体性”价值的复归与实践路径的“整体性”嵌合,是新时代边疆治理现代化的应有之义。推进边疆治理现代化,要坚持正确的政治导向,深化问题导向意识,注重梳理“知识性”内容,在“以人民为中心”的价值指引下持续夯实基础性资源。     

Geography and representation: introduction

Simulation games have a long history in education and are well suited to learning about negotiation, power, relationships and uncertain outcomes. This paper reflects on the experience of using a semester-long simulation game to introduce postgraduate students to development policy. It focuses on three issues identified in the literature—realism, the role of staff and assessment—and maintains that the risks and uncertainties associated with simulation games are beneficial in ensuring effective learning about policy.     

New Zealand’s “arc of influence”: the “clean,blue, green” country

Over the last 50 years, the area of New Zealand has been expanded to include territorial seas, an Exclusive Economic Zone, marine protected areas, an extended continental shelf, the Ross Sea, and a wedge of the Antarctic continent. While New Zealand’s territory is now significantly more marine rather than terrestrial, the country is often imagined as a series of isolated islands floating adrift in the Pacific. In this paper, we consider how the space of the nation-state can be reimagined to create a more relevant sense of place and identity. We argue that the perception of New Zealand as “100% pure” and “clean green” can be developed into a “clean, blue, green” image that better reflects the country’s expansive and diverse “arc of influence” through conservation values. We focus on the role of mapping within this issue; critiquing existing maps of New Zealand’s marine territory while also presenting our own speculative maps.     

Status Rivalry and the Politics of Biculturalism in Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand

Could it be that despite a huge literature spanning decades from many disciplines, a corpus of writing that examines seemingly every twist and turn of a complex situation, we still are missing something basic and fundamental to a proper understanding of contemporary cultural politics in Aotearoa New Zealand? A thing so obvious and omnipresent, that it was characterized long ago in the anthropological literature as the fundamental dynamic of Polynesian culture, and acknowledged even further back by Maori in their ancestral sayings? He tauranga uta, he toka tu moana (a resting place ashore, a firm rock at sea). ‘This metaphor describes the chief whose influence is unchallenged in his territory which extends from the land to the sea’ (Mead and Grove 2003:125). But surely real chiefs, those solid anchoring points, no longer exist as they did before the coming of the Pakeha. Be that as it may, the elements of social organization and associated cultural values of chiefly status continue to resonate in contemporary society. This paper argues that Goldman's concept of status rivalry is that crucial overlooked aspect of cultural politics necessary to a full understanding of what is happening today in the Waitangi Tribunal, Parliament, and so many other places where biculturalism and multiculturalism are debated and discussed, and that it is an aspect of Polynesian culture that has been part of the interrelationship between the Crown and te tangata whenua (the indigenous people) since their first encounters.     

Silent Voices,Hidden Lives: Archaeology,Class and Gender in the CMS Missions,Bay of Islands,New Zealand, 1814–1845

This paper explores the themes and tensions of class and propriety at one of New Zealand’s early European settlements, a Church Missionary Society mission in the Bay of Islands. Archaeological investigations at the site of the Te Puna mission house revealed a cellar containing, among other articles, items connected with domesticity and feminine concerns, demonstrating the presence of women and their daily activities. The interweaving of the archaeological and historical record sheds light upon the replication of class and culture through themes such as the “cult of domesticity” at this remote location, a decade prior to British colonization.     

The origins of New Zealand’s first government house

SUMMARY: In 1842 the former first government house located at Okiato, New Zealand, burnt to the ground and the site was abandoned. A well on the site was excavated in 1994–95, revealing a base layer of burnt timbers, a Maori digging stick and ceramic sherds with an estimated manufacture date range of 1823–41. We argue that this deposit is derived from the 1842 destruction of the Okiato government house building. An analysis of the wood identified kauri (Agathis australis) and kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), confirming that the building was not a prefabricated imported structure, but rather was constructed on site from locally available timber.     

Exhibiting enterprise: how New Zealand museums generate revenue

Museums in New Zealand are not a homogeneous group in terms of their level of incomegenerating activity or the nature of those activities. The gap of knowledge consequent on this situation led to the National Services unit of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, commissioning primary research into the revenue‐generation activities of the sector. This paper presents the results of that research, specifically the data gathered through a questionnaire. The results provide a profile of respondents in relation to their operating contexts, the sources of financial and non‐financial support they received (from the local community, local authorities and central government), and the types of income‐generating activities they undertook. The results contribute to a better understanding of both how organisations within the sector generate income (from traditional sources and new, more innovative activities) and what factors influence their ability to do so.     

The role of labrid fish in prehistoric economics in New Zealand

Labrids are one of the most common types of fish to occur in inshore rocky marine habitats in New Zealand. There are major discontinuities in their relative abundance in archaeological sites from different regions of New Zealand, and these are difficult to reconcile with known distributional patterns. A number of possible explanations are examined such as changes in fishing technology and various ecological factors. It is concluded that the reasons for these observed fluctuations may vary considerably from one case to another, but where large numbers were caught by prehistoric people who had access to alternative fish resources, unreliability of some major aspect of the economy may be inferred. A combination of poor sea conditions and marginal horticulture is likely to increase the importance of labrid fish.     

The corporeal,the social and space/place: exploring intersections from a midwifery perspective in New Zealand

This article explores the interrelations between the corporeal, the social and the spatial as they operate to shape the discursive and material realities of childbirth in the obstetric hospital setting. It draws on interviews conducted with midwives throughout New Zealand and embodies key insights derived from the work of Michel Foucault and Elizabeth Grosz. The obstetric hospital is theorised as a product of particular socio-political relations that privilege biomedical constructions of the body and childbirth. Midwives, however, proffer an alternative construction of childbirth and the space/place it is enacted. It is one that requires a woman to actively engage with a variety of birth spaces and take up a range of subject positions that enable her to be a more active agent in the process of parturition. The limited and limiting spatial and discursive arrangements of the obstetric hospital, it is argued, shape the behaviour, subjectivity and corporeality of the maternal body confined within it and therefore the practises of midwives. Unfortunately, and as this article demonstrates, the opportunity to take up such an alternative is limited in the obstetric hospital despite some recent cosmetic attempts to render it more welcoming.