'Environment and Nature in Asia' Research Symposium
Saturday 2 September, 9.30am - 5.30pm, St Margaret's CollegeThis special one-day symposium explored aspects of Asia’s environmental history as well as Asia’s relationship to Australasia. Scholars of environmental history, garden history, literature, and history of science presented papers. Topics included European perceptions of Central Asia, hunting in Australasia and India, the Asiatic Black Bear in Japan, the poet Yang Lian, Japanese gardens in New Zealand, Chinese gardens in New Zealand. A Special Edition of the New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies in June 2007 will be devoted to selected papers from this symposium, as well as those by invited contributors. Speakers
Sponsorship Thanks to the following for their financial support: Thanks also to the Department of History and the Department of Music for their support. Abstracts
Nineteenth Century Animal Networks: Asia and AustralasiaClaire Brennan, James Cook University This paper will explore both the introduction of Asian species and breeds of livestock into the Australasian colonies and the establishment of networks of exchange between Asia and Australasia. While vessels of the First Fleet picked up livestock from the Cape Colony on their way to creating the first European settlement in Australasia, later voyages often called into the European port of Batavia to collect livestock. These animals became an important part of the colonizing process in both Australia and New Zealand. The provenance of such animals, both species and individuals, reflects aspirations about the type of colony being created, in addition to more pragmatic influences. In contrast, sporting ties based on animal flesh often lacked actual substance. Attempts to reproduce the hunt based on large and charismatic species well known to imperialists in India were thwarted by the New Zealand environment, and fared little better in Australia. Indeed such attempts would be very difficult to identify at all were it not for the ubiquity of the Indian sport of pig sticking among antipodean settlers associated in any way with the sub-continent. By examining both types of animal ties this paper will look at the interactions between ideas and environments in the animal networks that linked Australia and New Zealand to Asia in the nineteenth century.
Shifting Sands and Sweeping Steppes: Representations of Central Asian Environments in British Literature during the “Great Game” Era c. 1830-1914Geoff Watson, Massey University This paper explores the ways in which representations of Central Asian environments evolved during the so-called “Great Game” era between 1830 and 1914. It will be argued that environmental allusions were often embedded within much of the literature on Central Asia and were used as metaphors for its perceived religious recalcitrance, political instability and intrigue. During the nineteenth century obtaining information on Central Asia’s physical environment became a matter of strategic importance for the British Government and the Government of India. Geographical exploration, complemented by traveller’s accounts and missionary endeavours saw previously speculative knowledge of Central Asian environments become increasingly superseded by scientific data. Despite these changes in scientific knowledge, however, the dominant representations of Central Asia and its peoples remained essentially unchanged. Indeed, environmental and climactic explanations were advanced by some, such as Samuel Huntington, as explaining previously subjective assessments of Central Asia and its peoples. The exploration and mapping of Central Asian environments fundamentally altered the “knowing” of Central Asia and paved the way for significant transformation of its landscapes.
The Science of Nature and the Nature of Science in the Nineteenth Century PhilippinesGreg Bankoff, School of Asian Studies, University of Auckland and Visiting Professor of Disaster Management, Coventry University When Americans occupied the Philippines in 1899, they began the propagation of a second leyenda negra about their colonial predecessors. Rather than depicting the conquest of the New World in lurid and exaggerated details that stressed Spanish brutality, this second black legend was a more measured, scientifically couched denunciation that dwelt on the backwardness, elemental and irrational nature of Iberian culture. Actually Spanish science in the Philippines was not nearly as rudimentary as it is frequently made out to be and was partly based on different schools of thought. Twentieth century natural science has been so dominated by Darwinian concepts about the evolution of life that those who have held alternative notions are deemed unutterably backward. Only now are alternative notions based more on ecological concepts about the environment that stress commensality and the transformative power of the environment rather than species competition regaining some scientific respectability. Such alternative notions, however, were very much current in the intellectual tradition of the nineteenth century especially in Southern Europe. The late nineteenth century Philippines pose an interesting case where different notions about the environment vie for state and public acceptance. This paper examines ideas about the science of nature and the nature of science in relation to forestry, botany, meteorology and animal breeding. Far from demonstrating an unsophisticated or uninformed dialogue about the environment, the evidence shows a surprisingly rich fusion of European debates and discourses. It was primarily only in the eyes of the self-assured and self-righteous proponents of the new American imperium that all was darkness and ignorance.
Yang Lian's Auckland: A Psychogeographic PoeticsJacob Edmond, University of Otago Chinese poet Yang Lian became well known in the 1980s for his large-scale poetic works situated in geographically, historically and mythically significant Chinese landscapes from the Tibetan waterfall Norlang to the archaeological site of Banpo. In 1989, Yang moved to New Zealand where he was based until late 1992. During this almost four year period, Yang wrote a number of poems and prose works that directly address the Auckland environment in which he lived. This paper argues that through these works Yang creates a "psychogeographic" map of central Auckland, in which particular locations take on symbolic roles that parallel those played by features of the Chinese environment in his earlier works. Moreover, the contrast between the Chinese and New Zealand environments emerges as a central poetic motif, so that geographic difference comes to function symbolically as an index of psychological rupture and trauma.
“King of the Forest”, or “Fugitive of the Forest”? The Japanese relationship with the bear: past, present and future.Catherine Knight, University of Canterbury These are translations of the titles of two recent Japanese books about the Asiatic black bear of Japan. They neatly represent two contrasting images of the bear in Japan — one traditional, and the other contemporary. Whereas the relationship of the indigenous Ainu people with the brown bear of Hokkaido has been well documented, particularly by anthropologists and ethnologists, the relationship of the Japanese with the Asiatic black bear has not attracted much scholarly interest. Perhaps this is because it does not fit neatly with common preconceptions of what constitutes “Japanese nature”, which tend to conjure up images of a more delicate and graceful beauty. Nevertheless, the bear is a part of Japan’s nature, and one that is increasingly difficult to ignore. This once elusive creature is becoming a frequent visitor to Japan’s upland villages and towns, where it damages crops, breaks into chicken coups, and occasionally injures or kills people. In 2004 and 2005, the “bear-problem” led to unprecedented media coverage and countless symposia, as people grappled for answers to the recent upsurge in bear incidents. The bear is also part of Japan’s cultural heritage, but in ways which are equally elusive. The bear rarely features in the visual or literary arts. However, it was pivotal both to the economic and spiritual life of the matagi, the mountain hunters of the Tohoku region. Furthermore, it inhabits the forested mountainsides — a geographical and cultural realm known to the Japanese as “yama”. The yama is a mysterious and frightening place, inhabited by spirits, gods and monsters, and traditionally associated with death and the “other world”. This exploration of the Japanese relationship with the bear aims to elucidate the Japanese relationship — both historically and in contemporary society — with this more inscrutable and unpredictable realm of nature. At the same time, it examines the Japanese approach to human–wildlife conflict, a problem facing many societies in the world today.
Nature and Culture of the Ogasawara IslandsNanyan Guo, University of Otago Japan’s Ogasawara Islands have been dubbed “the Galapagos of the East.” These oceanic islands, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, are 1,000 km away from Tokyo, and have numerous native fauna and flora which are at the brink of extinction, mainly caused by construction projects. Among them, the plan of building an airport was most controversial. Although the airport plan was temporarily withdrawn by the Tokyo Municipal Government in 2002, the native species are still facing various dangers, including introduced foreign species, public works, and the development of tourism. However, the Islands were recently designated by the Japanese Government as the next applicant from Japan for World Heritage Status in 2008. If the Islands gain this status, the current situation of conservation will certainly change. My presentation will focus on three aspects of the Islands: (1) the tension between native species’ protection and modern life-style, (2) the relation between tourism and conservation, and (3) the evolution of the Islands’ culture.
Japanese Gardens in New Zealand, 1890-1950James Beattie, University of Otago In the last third of the nineteenth century Japan gripped the Western imagination. Japanese artworks, philosophies and artefacts became all the rage, and were widely imported as well as imitated. Nowhere were the twin processes of importation and imitation more apparent than in the vogue for “Japanese” gardens that quickly followed the introduction of many species from this island previously unknown to Western science. Fanciful and faithful reproductions of Japanese gardens utilized these plants, as well as showcasing new design features, most notably with the rock garden. Whimsical reproductions prevailed, as a discussion of “Japanese” plants and design influences in New Zealand demonstrates. Central to the argument of this paper is the idea of transculturation, the process whereby foreign materials were imported, incorporated and re-configured in novel ways in host environments. This process, as we shall show, applied equally to Japanese garden designs and the introduction of Japanese plants. In showing these aspects our paper highlights the complexity of cultural production. We show that Japanese ideas were most commonly modified and introduced into New Zealand via intermediary countries such as Britain or Australia and, in the process, often removed from the context in which they were originally introduced.
Growing Chinese Influences in New Zealand: Chinese Gardens, Identity and Meaning in Dunedin, New Plymouth and WellingtonJames Beattie, University of Otago The profile of both China and New Zealand’s Chinese community has risen rapidly in recent years in this country. In part, this has been due to the growing importance of China as a world economic power, the highly-publicised arrival of Asian migrants in the 1990s and heightened public pride among New Zealand’s Chinese and non-Chinese community of the incredible contribution of Chinese to New Zealand. Three different communities – in Dunedin, Wellington and New Plymouth – want to, or have already, established Chinese gardens. This talk explores the motives, garden designs and implications for this blooming of interest in Chinese gardens. It investigates their symbolism and significance as translocated centres of culture, as bridges of friendship and celebrations of present and past cultural ties. It explores the ways in which gardens’ meanings change in relation to their design and physical location and in response to the ways in which people have
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