Landscape/Community
Perspectives from New Zealand History

Edited by Tony Ballantyne and Judith A. Bennett

New Zealanders have a strong affinity with the land and firm connections are drawn between the land and cultural identity in the economy, in politics and in art. Histories of migration, settlement and environmental adaptation ensure the subject of communities and landscapes is increasingly important in New Zealand studies.

Maori are 'Tangata Whenua' (people of the land) and stress the significance of their relationship with the land. In recent times government agencies have sought to change many placenames from English back to the Maori original in order to signify intellectual decolonisation, e.g. 'Murderers' Beach' to 'Whareakeake'. The debate this has caused demonstrates strong feelings that the names of the land and the land itself are tied into ideas of identity in diverse communities.

This collection of essays explores these complex relationships in different parts of the country and at different times. Environment versus settler society has been a longstanding theme and three essays look at aspects of this. Land ownership and the families that make communities are the subjects of two further essays. The next two contributors look at rural society, in search of the itinerant worker and harvest festivities. Two final essays deal with more recent subjects: the challenge to a major government hydro-electricity project and New Zealanders abroad in the world.

Contents

Preface
Introduction
1 'Doomed Timber': Towards an Environmental History of Seaward Forest
2 State Forest Conservation and the New Zealand Landscape: Origins and Influences, 1850-1914
3 W.L. Lindsay, Scottish Environmentalism and the 'Improvement' of Nineteenth Century New Zealand
4 Communities in Conflict: The Government and the Eastern Districts, 1842-1845
5 The Geography of Intermarriage at Maitapapa, Otago, 1830s-1920s
6 The Untraceables: Recovering Those Lost from the Historical Landscape
7 Communities Celebrating Landscapes: Harvest Festivities in Nineteenth Century Otago
8 Dams Dividing Democracy: Conflict on the Clutha River
9 Kiwis in Khumbu: Negotiating Landscape and Community at Khunde Hospital
Notes

About the Editors

Tony Ballantyne lectures in History at the University of Otago. He is the author of Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Palgrave Macmillan 2002).

Judith A. Bennett is Associate Professor in History at the University of Otago and is the author of Pacific Forest: A history of resource control and contest in Solomon Islands 1800-1997 (Brill Academic Publishers 2000).

Publication details

1 877372 06 4, paperback, 230 x 150 mm, 192 pages, $39.95
Otago History Series
Release: June 2005