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Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies - New Scholarship in New Zealand and Pacific Studies Part 1, Jun 2021

New Scholarship in New Zealand and Pacific Studies Part 1

New Scholarship in New Zealand and Pacific Studies Part 1, Jun 2021

Language: English
  • Articles

      • The price we pay for land: The political economy of Pukekohe’s development

        https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00045_1

        Like many other rapidly growing urban centres across the world, Auckland City finds itself caught between the unending demand for land to accommodate new residential and commercial developments, and the need to preserve the agricultural institutions that support dense urban populations. Land at the periphery of Auckland’s urban expansion has become significantly more lucrative when developed for housing and commercial interests than when used to grow food. The question of what farmers, residents, property developers and Council planners value land for is now crucial to preserving Auckland’s food security and food sovereignty in the near future. This article takes Pukekohe – an agricultural powerhouse and soon-to-be new satellite town at the southern periphery of urban Auckland – as a case study for this phenomenon. I first present a discourse analysis of development in government planning documents, demonstrating that discourses of flexible planning and economic opportunity enable the unchecked loss of productive land to ad hoc urban sprawl. I then turn to media interviews and statements from prominent Pukekohe stakeholders and relate their positions to Stephen Gudeman’s theory of the five spheres of economic abstraction, arguing that one’s working relationship to land defines the value it holds for them. Lastly, I take the conclusions drawn from these two approaches to discuss the political economy of Pukekohe’s urban development, detailing the ways in which the patterns of Auckland’s urban growth privilege the short-term generation of revenue over the substantial foundations of our existence. This contradiction has been faced by cities across the planet for much of the course of human history, yet it has never been more relevant than it is today, as the world’s urban population significantly increases and the realities of climate change force us to reconsider the future of global food production.

    • The homeland and the city: Rural and urban decolonization in Patricia Grace’s

      https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00046_1

      Over the last decade, studies from multiple academic disciplines have started to examine the city’s role as a place of decolonization for Māori people in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article uses those multidisciplinary findings as a basis for literary criticism by re-examining the role of the city in Patricia Grace’s second novel (1986). Indigenous urbanites are generally deemed impossible and ‘unnatural’ within the inherited colonial ideology. And even though the novel foregrounds a Māori family’s return to their ancestral land, this article argues that the very success of this return is based on the interrelation between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ strategies of decolonization. While the colonial urban–rural binary often seems reinforced, the novel inverts the power positions between colonizer and colonized, thereby promoting decolonization. At the same time, some characters become unconsciously entrapped in a romanticized pre-migration idyll, which the harsh reality of agricultural working life cannot satisfy. In order to assess the effectiveness of the different decolonizing strategies employed by the characters, my analysis utilizes the postcolonial key concepts of binary opposition, the liminal, the interstice, ambivalence, double consciousness and cultural appropriation, and examines the degree to which inherited binary oppositions are either maintained or defied by Pākehā and Māori within the novel.

    • Manufacturing urban identities: The emergence of Auckland’s and Wellington’s ‘character’ in New Zealand tourism film

      https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00047_1

      Since its inception, New Zealand film production has often been characterized by a strong focus on the promotion and marketing of local scenic locations. However, over the last few decades and simultaneously with New Zealand’s rapidly increasing urbanization rates, urban narratives have gained prominence in the cinematic representation of the country, gradually becoming important aspects of national tourism marketing campaigns. This article first provides an overview of New Zealand tourism film’s dynamics of production and recurring themes and narratives from the early twentieth century to the 1960s. It then focuses on and – tourism films produced by the government-led New Zealand National Film Unit and released respectively in 1967 and 1966 – and identifies a turning point in the manufacturing of local urban narratives and in New Zealand urban tourism marketing. My critical and textual analysis of these two case studies notably relies on the examination of archival documents related to their production and on an interview with ’s director Hugh Macdonald. It ultimately shows how the emergence of ‘cities with a character’ as a tourism marketing tool was in fact a carefully planned, articulated and years-long government-driven strategy.

    • A novel to influence public policy? The role of New Zealand in climate migration and the occupation of Antarctica

      https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00048_1

      In recent years, the notion of ‘climate change fiction’ (‘cli-fi’) has passed into common parlance to denote a strand of fictionalized narratives foregrounding the dynamics and consequences of climate change on Earth. While the acceptance criteria for such a category are flexible at best, the role of policy-making and of New Zealand as a political actor and geographical setting to the global eco-catastrophe remain marginal features in such contemporary stories. Jeff Murray’s 2019 novel entitled crucially bridges fiction and public policy, in a move to put the Pacific, New Zealand and Antarctica at the forefront of climate change debates. As the near future sees Antarctica melting, the novel particularly focuses on the sociopolitical and infrastructural challenge that millions of climate change refugees will represent to wealthy and relatively spared nations, such as New Zealand. Correlated issues in sustainable management, economic inequality, intercultural relations and geopolitics are further evoked. In its attempt to alert New Zealand policy-makers and the general public to these long-term questions, importantly invites reflection on the potentiality of narrative to inspire action taking. This article takes the form of an interdisciplinary discussion between Murray, a first-time novelist with a professional background in strategy policy, and literary and cultural studies scholar Jessica Maufort.

  • Research Report

      • at the time of COVID-19: When an aspect of research unexpectedly turns into lived experience and practice

        https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00049_7

        In 2019, the Moana–Pacific Spaces research group at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) began to investigate how core Moana and Māori values can be translated from onsite, embodied engagements into digital environments. This was prompted by our wish to provide access to all those who could not travel to attend a conference in late 2021 for our Marsden-funded research project, ‘ Moana: Space and relationality in Pacific thought and identity’ (2019–22). The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally reframed this premise, as providing offsite access was no longer simply a ‘nice option’. The crisis challenged us to find out how virtual participation in events can uphold values of tikanga (correct procedure, custom) and (nurturing relational space). In particular, our research examines practices foregrounding as the attachment to and feeling for place, as well as relatedness between people and other entities. We have observed an emerging conceptual deployment of as relational space and a mode of belonging, especially in diasporic constellations oriented by a cosmopolitan understanding of . Due to this focus, we noticed early on that simply moving meetings online is unlikely to create a supportive environment for Indigenous researchers in diaspora, who share principal values and a commitment to a kaupapa (agenda, initiative). This realization led us to interrogate how research collaboration and circulation are influenced by the distinct features of physical and online contexts, protocols and connectivity. To develop the alternative kind of we envisaged – together with strategies to sustain it through our online practices – thus became a much larger project in the times of rapid change under COVID-19. This is a very brief, initial report on our experiences.

  • Review Article

      • , Cilla McQueen (2016)

        https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00051_5

        Review of: , Cilla McQueen (2016)

        Dunedin: Otago University Press, 134 pp.,

        ISBN 978 1 87757 871 7 (hbk), NZ$35

        / , Tusiata Avia (2016)

        Wellington: Victoria University Press, 84 pp.,

        ISBN 978 1 77656 064 6 (pbk), NZ$25

        , Michele Leggott (2017)

        Auckland: Auckland University Press, 132 pp.,

        ISBN 978 1 86940 874 9 (pbk), NZ$27.99

        , Selina Tusitala Marsh (2017)

        Auckland: Auckland University Press, 112 pp.,

        ISBN 978 1 86940 872 5 (pbk), NZ$27.99

        , Elizabeth Smither (2017)

        Auckland: Auckland University Press, 80 pp.,

        ISBN 978 1 86940 870 1 (pbk), NZ$24.99

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