Social Sciences

A City Possessed

Originally published in 2001, A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Crèche Case is the harrowing account of one of New Zealand’s most high-profile criminal cases – a story of child sexual abuse allegations, gender politics and the law. A penetrating analysis of the social and legal processes by which the conviction of Peter Ellis was obtained, and repeatedly upheld, raises major issues for our justice system and the way we see ourselves.

A Fine Pen

Shifen Gong selects and introduces twenty texts about Mansfield and her work, translated into English for the first time.

A Gift of Stories

The life stories in this book are by people who, at some point in their lives, have been diagnosed with a mental illness which they have learned to deal with. They have found the courage to speak publicly about their experience in a world which is still prejudiced against people with mental illness.

A Global Feast

More than a recipe book, this colourful collection arose from a unique community project and invites us to explore the dishes and food lore of 26 people from Asia, Africa, the Pacific, South America, Europe and The Middle East.

A Great New Zealand Prime Minister?

One of New Zealand’s longest-serving Prime Ministers, his political legacy has not always been treated kindly. However, recent work by historians suggests that a reappraisal of Bill Massey – which this book provides – is overdue.

Advocating for Children

Advocating for Children: International perspectives on children's rights

Aftermaths

Aftermaths explores the life-changing intergenerational effects of colonial violence in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. Ranging from Ōrākau pā in the Waikato to the Kimberleys in northwest Australia, from orphanages in Fiji to the ancestral lands of the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California, this collection of illustrated essays reveals the living legacy of historical events, showing how they have been remembered (and misremembered) within families and communities into the present day.

An Accidental Utopia?

An Accidental Utopia? investigates a more egalitarian past at a time when New Zealand ranked fourth in the developed world for social inequality.

Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand

Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand presents thought-provoking new research on New Zealand’s fastest-growing demographic – the geographically, nationally and historically diverse Asian communities.

Being a Doctor

Sometimes caring for patients can leave clinicians feeling overwhelmed with the daily tasks of doctoring. As an antidote, this book explores principles and assumptions of modern medicine seldom taught in medical school. Starting with the meaning of suffering and how the ‘science’ of medicine has evolved, the authors use many clinical stories to provide a fresh perspective on the work and roles of the modern doctor.

Beyond the Scene

What contribution does landscape make to our sense of identity? For Beyond the Scene the editors asked eleven writers to choose a landscape that was important to them and to write it from the perspective of their life experience and knowledge. From farmer to art historian and film critic, geographer and planner to lawyer, from landscape architect to poet and environmentalist – these are diverse voices.

Bitter Sweet: Indigenous women in the Pacific

Pacific women’s multiple engagements with work and with sovereignty politics, as well as with their portrayal in film, poetry and tourism, are at the heart of this book. The contributors address the interesting, ongoing questions of representation and identity, as well as their place in the shifting politics of the contemporary Pacific.

Body Trade

A compelling collection of essays on the ‘traffic’ in human bodies in the Pacific from the eighteenth century until today.

Borderland Practices

Defining what is 'orthodox' and what is 'alternative' in primary health care therapies and practice is a difficult task these days. Some alternative therapies may be practiced by general practitioners as well as by alternative therapists, and some therapies are no longer 'alternative'. Kevin Dew argues that terms such as 'science', 'unorthodoxy' and 'incompetence' have tended to change in meaning over time.

British Capital, Antipodean Labour

British Capital, Antipodean Labour is the first book to look at the processes of work on the waterfront. The author focuses on three ports: Auckland, Wellington and Lyttelton, revealing how the work of loading and unloading ships was done, and the conditions in which the 'wharfies' worked.

Building God's Own Country

Although New Zealand historians have tended to pay little attention to the role of religions in this country's past, the essays in this collection show that religious beliefs have had an important historical influence on our society.

Childhoods

Some of the worst levels of child poverty and poor health in the OECD, as well as exceptionally high child suicide rates, exist in Aotearoa New Zealand today. More than a quarter of children are experiencing a childhood of hardship and deprivation in a context of high levels of inequality. Maori children face particular challenges. In a country that characterises itself as ‘a good place to bring up children’, this is of major concern. The essays in this book are by leading researchers from several disciplines and focus on all of our children and young people, exploring such topics as the environment (economic, social and natural), social justice, children’s voices and rights, the identity issues they experience and the impact of rapid societal change.

Children as Citizens?

This book reports on research with children and young people in Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine and South Africa. There were ideas they held in common – obeying the law, respecting and helping others, working hard – but it was also found that the features of different nations, whether inequality in Brazil, migration and multiculturalism in Australia and New Zealand, or conflict and occupation in Palestine, were reflected in how the children interpreted their rights, responsibilities and citizenship.

Children of Rogernomics

From 2003 to 2007 Nairn, Higgins and Sligo investigated what life was like for ninety-three young people coming to adulthood in the wake of Rogernomics. The authors bring the lives, places and hopes of these young people into sharp focus. Their stories reveal the powerful psychic and material impacts of the discourses of neoliberalism, which obscure the structural basis of inequalities and insist that failure to achieve standard transitions is the result of personal inadequacy.

Class and Occupation

Class and Occupation is the first systematic attempt to identify New Zealand's actual occupational structure from 1893 to 1938, using the information gathered by the Census. The six essays consider how best to construct an occupational structure for both the whole country and for regions/localities within it. Identification of changes in occupational structure occurring across the period casts light on social change in New Zealand and, significantly, women's participation in the paid non-agricultural workforce.

Class, Gender and the Vote

With the rise of the study of social history in the second half of the twentieth century, the focus of many historians shifted from politics, high culture and foreign policy to new areas, including health, demographics, families, crime, women and immigration. But with this new historical work came a problem that threatened coherence in the field: how to deal with the detail of so many different pasts amongst the people of New Zealand?

Communication and Context

Communication and Context is designed specifically for students of Communications English. It examines the social and cultural factors which affect language use and understanding, and provides tools for thinking about language use and language behaviour.

Communities of Women

The sense of belonging to a community is real but communities are also necessarily, imagined by the people who belong to them. Communities of Women: Historical Perspectives examines how women have perceived and lived in communities. Communities of Women provides insights on how women's lives have been shaped by communities in vastly different times and places. A series of essays by international contributors range from medieval Swabia to twentieth century Australasia.

Continuity amid Chaos

Since 1989 there have been four different structures for the New Zealand health sector. The country can now claim to have the 'most restructured' of any of the world's health systems and has captured the attention of researchers and policy-makers worldwide as a result. To review what has been happening and how providers have responded to the successive reforms, Robin Gauld has brought together this volume of essays by people managing and delivering health care.

Coping with 'Morning' Sickness

'Morning' sickness can occur at any time of the day or night and recur for months. For many women it is not the small nuisance of early pregnancy that society in general perceives it to be.

Creature Comforts

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world – in 2011, 68 per cent of all Kiwi households had at least one pet: almost half had a cat and nearly a third had a dog. Yet until now no book has explored how pets came to be such an integral part of the New Zealand way of life. Creature Comforts does just this. By chronicling the major events and ideas that have shaped pet keeping in New Zealand, this fascinating and entertaining book explains the strong relationship we have with our animal friends, and how this has changed over time.

Dangerous Enthusiasms: E-government, computer failure and information system development

This book is written for a general audience and takes a critical look at policies, problems and prospects for e-government in a series of case studies. Why have ICT failures in the public sector occurred and what lessons do they provide for the future?

Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920

Using confiscated mail as a starting point, Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920 reveals the remarkable stories of people caught in the web of wartime surveillance.

Decolonizing Methodologies

This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth'. Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonisation of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Democratic Governance and Health

This book traces the development of New Zealand’s elected health boards, from the 1930s to the present District Health Board structure, analysing the history of democratic governance of health care, how boards have functioned, the politics surrounding their reform, and the idea of local democracy in health care decision-making. Based on extensive primary research, it assesses the capacity of elected boards to effectively govern the allocation of public expenditure on behalf of taxpayers and patients. Are there alternatives to the existing District Health Board model? How might the electoral model be improved upon? The concluding chapter provides some suggestions.

Detours

Summer, 1981. A youngish Neville Peat set out from Cape Reinga on his imported 10-speed bike ‘Blue’, aiming to cycle through small-town New Zealand from north to south, all the way to Stewart Island. The week before Easter, he reached his destination. He wrote a book about it, Detours: A journey through small-town New Zealand, which sold lots of copies and was broadcast on radio. Many times in the intervening years, usually on anniversaries of the journey – ten years, fifteen years, twenty years – he wished to try a repeat journey, but life held other challenges. Now, as a leading author and in the age of the personal computer and cell phone, a very different world, he has revisited many of the towns and regions, not on a bicycle, but by car. In Detours – A generation on, he reflects once again on how small-town New Zealand is doing.

Ecosanctuaries

Over the past 10 years many communities around the country have launched ambitious projects to bring New Zealand’s native ecologies back to the mainland. By building predatorproof fences around big areas of land the aim is to protect native flora and fauna from introduced predators such as possums, mice, rats and stoats. These projects have faced a difficult balancing act as they try to build and sustain the social and economic support needed.

Far from 'Home'

For almost 200 years, the English have been one of the largest migrant streams to New Zealand (they have been on the move globally since around 1600). Yet relatively little has been written about their experiences in New Zealand, compared with their Irish, Scottish, Indian, Chinese and Pacific counterparts. This book brings together leading international scholars and prominent local researchers to explore a wide range of topics and issues at the very heart of research into human mobility. Why did English-born people decide to emigrate? What factors shaped their migration and adaptation? How might we best describe and explain their experiences? This collection of essays will interest anyone interested in migration and/or family history.

Flying Kiwis

Leaving home to see the world is something that succeeding generations of young New Zealanders have done in ever-increasing numbers. ‘Overseas experience’ or the ‘OE’ has been the topic of countless individual travel accounts, and has provided the subject matter for plays, films and novels. Until now, there hasn’t been a history of the OE. Based on the oral accounts of several hundred travellers, across all seven decades of the OE, this vibrant history shows how the OE has changed over time.

Folding Back the Shadows

From anorexia to healing, from psychotropic drugs to psychotherapy, this book brings together a wide range of writings on different aspects of women's mental health. Folding Back the Shadows: A Perspective on Women's Mental Health is a collection of current writings by a broad spectrum of people - from researchers, through mental health professionals, to women with personal histories of mental disorder. The book is a synthesis of recent research and commentary, pulling together the biological and psycho-social aspects of womens' lives.

From Alba to Aotearoa

Scots made up nearly 20 per cent of the immigrant population of New Zealand to 1920, yet until the past few years the exact origins of New Zealand’s Scots migrants have remained blurred. From Alba to Aotearoa establishes for the first time key characteristics of the Scottish migrants arriving between 1840 and 1920, addressing five core questions: From where in Scotland did they come? Who came? When? In what numbers? and Where did they settle? In addition, this important study addresses, through statistical analysis, issues of internal migration within Scotland, individual and generational occupational mobility, migration among Shetland migrants, and return migration. From Alba to Aotearoa offers context to the increasing body of studies of the social and cultural history of New Zealand’s Scots, their networks, cultural transfers and identity.

From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen

In the past two decades, cuisine and culinary history have attracted increasing attention, with both popular and academic books reflecting the growth of interest. Recipes are both sensitive markers of the socioeconomic conditions of their times and written representations of a culture's culinary repertoire yet, despite the vast number of cookbooks that survive, they have not been the primary focus of research projects. Acknowledgement of their potential contribution to our understanding of culinary history has been slow. This book is a first in its field.

Histories of Hate

Histories of Hate explores radical intolerance and extremism in Aotearoa New Zealand, bringing together a wealth of historians, sociologists, political scientists, kaupapa Māori scholars, and experts in religious and media studies to explore the origins of the New Zealand radical right in the late nineteenth century to the present day.

In Stormy Seas

A detailed look at the New Zealand economy in the twentieth century, and in particular its course since World War II. This is not just a history but a 'narrative about a problem', defining, analysing and 'hopefully contributing to an understanding that will aid in its solutions'.

In the Paddock and On the Run

The prominence of the rural world in New Zealand’s social, cultural and economic history is long established and undisputed. For decades, the country was termed ‘Britain’s overseas farm’ or ‘the Empire’s dairy farm’. This is the first book to explore the rich heritage of language the rural sector has generated.

Indigenous Identity and Resistance

Indigenous Identity and Resistance brings together the work of Indigenous Studies scholars working in Canada, New Zealand and the Pacific in research conversations that transcend the imperial boundaries of the colonial nations in which they are located. Their lucid, accessible, and thought-provoking essays provide a critical understanding of the ways in which Indigenous peoples are rearticulating their histories, knowledges, and the Indigenous self.

Kate Edger

In 1877, Kate Edger became the first woman to graduate from a New Zealand university. The New Zealand Herald enthusiastically hailed her achievement as ‘the first rays of the rising sun of female intellectual advancement’.

Kitchens

This engrossing history of the domestic kitchen covers 10 decades that saw our culinary traditions accommodate extraordinary changes in technology and the irresistible process of globalisation. Each chapter surveys the external influences on households and their kitchens, samples the dishes prepared during the decade, and discusses the structure of meals. A study of kitchen equipment and design then closes each chapter, cumulatively revealing more innovation in these aspects than in what we ate.

Landscape/Community

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.

Living Space

This book was one of the first to explore the concept of sustainability and its application to New Zealand settlements. Upon their arrival in New Zealand from the UK, the editors of this volume noted that the concept of sustainability and its application to the built environment had been relatively underdeveloped in New Zealand's academic environment. By bringing together eleven theoretic and pragmatic contributions from those who have been working on the issue, they hope to jump-start the debate in the island country.

Living Together

In this book experts in community planning review some of the challenges, strategies and solutions, using New Zealand case studies. The needs of specific groups - whether migrant, the young, elderly or indigenous - and community ties with local and central government are explored. The Treaty of Waitangi, the influence of feminism and the development of online communities are other aspects that are considered.

Mad or Bad?

Amy Bock's life has been the inspiration for plays, books, a TV programme, music, poems, an exhibition and more, but Mad or Bad? is the first comprehensive biography. And while Amy gained notoriety as a daring, duplicitous and talked-about con artist who impersonated a man and married an unsuspecting woman, in this book the author shows how her story was not a straightforward case of fraud and misrepresentation.

Making a New Land

Making a New Land presents an interdisciplinary perspective on one of the most rapid and extensive transformations in human history: that which followed Maori and then European colonisation of New Zealand's temperate islands. This is a new edition of Environmental Histories of New Zealand, first published in 2002, brimming with new content and fresh insights into the causes and nature of this transformation, and the new landscapes and places that it produced.

Making Our Place

Fascination with the interplay of people and place inspired the editors to bring together New Zealanders from differing backgrounds and disciplines to explore some of the stories and sites of conflict and change to be found amongst our sacred, historic, rural, urban and coastal landscapes. All engage with the underlying question: are there better ways to reconcile the tensions inherent in our struggles with the land and each other?

Malaria Letters

New cases of malaria affect more than one hundred million people each year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. But with global warming the distribution of mosquito vectors is changing and whole populations are at increasing risk.

Money Makes You Crazy

The Solomons are a group of islands in the west Pacific where most villages have no road access and no electricity and the modern material world has not fully arrived. In the travel book with a difference, the author visits five communities and listens to people's stories of how they are responding to the temptations of the money from logging, fishing and tourism contracts. In a microcosm, their experience represents the ways in which Western business is affecting traditional ways of life worldwide.

More than Law and Order

Immediately after the Second World War, the New Zealand Police were in a sorry state: short on resources, antiquated in their systems and with too many elderly and infirm staff. The period covered by this book saw major change and modernisation. The author explores the ways in which the police have overhauled their management structure repeatedly since the 1940s and shows how they have often struggled to position themselves within the modern public sector. These issues lift the history into the wider context of government and management in the second half of the twentieth century.

Murder that Wasn't

This book tells the story of the case of George Gwaze, twice charged and twice acquitted of the rape and murder of his ten-year-old adopted niece, Charlene Makaza. When Charlene is found unconscious one morning, gasping for breath, with a high fever and lying in a pool of diarrhoea, her family rush her to the Christchurch 24-hour clinic. She is treated for overwhelming sepsis and transferred to hospital. Sadly her life cannot be saved and at 1.00am she dies. During the course of Charlene’s short illness the diagnosis shifts from infection to sexual assault and homicide, and her grieving family find themselves publicly engulfed in a criminal investigation. What unfolds next is a surreal set of events so improbable that they seem fictitious. Murder that Wasn’t meticulously explores the facts surrounding this case, based on scientific, medical and court records and individual interviews, to tell this family’s extraordinary story.

My Body, My Business

In My Body, My Business, 11 former and current New Zealand sex workers speak frankly, in their own voices, about their lives in and out of the sex industry. Their stories are by turns eye-opening, poignant, heartening, disturbing and compelling.

New Zealanders at Home

A visual history of New Zealand domestic interiors, as seen through contemporary photographs, drawings and paintings. The book is divided into four periods, taking the reader from the interior of a whare through the homes of missionaries and settlers to the turn-of-the-century villas of Auckland and twentieth-century bungalows of suburban Christchurch.

Ngā Kete Mātauranga

In this beautiful and transformative book, 24 Māori academics share their personal journeys, revealing what being Māori has meant for them in their work. Their perspectives provide insight for all New Zealanders into how mātauranga is positively influencing the Western-dominated disciplines of knowledge in the research sector.

Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns

Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns focuses on how Pacific Island peoples – Oceanians – think about a range of journeys near and far: their meanings, motives and implications. In addition to addressing human mobility in various island locales, these essays deal with the interconnections of culture, identity and academic research among indigenous Pacific peoples that have emerged from the contributors’ personal observations and fieldwork encounters. Firmly grounded in the human experience, this edited work offers insights into the development of new knowledge in and of the Pacific. More than half the authors are themselves Oceanians and five of twelve essays are by island women.

Outspoken

Outspoken presents the narratives of eleven people who have come out in the Anglican Church in New Zealand, including two ordained church members. The author has written a general introduction, plus an introduction to each individual story and reflections on it. The book closes with a Postscript that discusses truth and the Church; community, belonging and rejection; ideas about hell and damnation; the theology of denial; and the implications and ramifications of the 'Don't ask, don't tell' approach.

Past Caring? Women, work and emotion

Past Caring? Women, work and emotion Edited by Barbara Brookes, Jane McCabe and Angela Wanhalla Otago University Press. Are women past caring? Care is essential to social relationships and individual well-being. It is woven into New Zealand’s key social institutions, such as the family, and is also embedded in societal expectations around state provision of health and welfare. Care is so vital, in fact, that it is often taken for granted and goes unnoticed and unrewarded.

Politics in the Playground (updated edition)

Freshly updated in 2019, the third edition of Politics in the Playground: The world of early childhood in Aotearoa New Zealand is a lively history of early childhood education and care\nin Aotearoa New Zealand in the postwar era.

Promoting Health in Aotearoa New Zealand

'Promoting Health in Aotearoa New Zealand' provides a rich scan of the health promotion landscape in New Zealand. It explores ways in which Māori, and other, perspectives have been melded with Western ideas to produce distinctly New Zealand approaches. In doing so it addresses the need for locally written material for use in teaching and practice, and provides direction for all those wanting to solve complex public health problems.

Psychology and Family Law

The essays in this book bring together research from the social sciences (psychology in particular) that bears upon the trends contributing to family law policy and practice as it is now in New Zealand. Anyone interested in theses areas will find the book useful. It will be especially valuable for judges hearing and deciding cases, for counsel representing children, for professionals who work with children, and for those formulating government policy.

Quarantine!

Every day, all over the world, quarantine officials screen international passengers and cargo and every week a border protection story is in the news. As a group of islands for which biosecurity is vital, New Zealand provides an ideal focus for this book, the world's first national history of quarantine.

Queer Objects

Queer lives give rise to a vast array of objects: the things we fill our houses with the gifts we share with our friends, the commodities we consume at work and at play, the clothes and accessories we wear, various reminders of state power, as well as the analogue and digital technologies we use to communicate with one another. But what makes an object queer?

Refuge New Zealand

Unlike people who choose to migrate in search of new opportunities, refugees are compelled to leave their homeland. Typically, they are escaping war and persecution because of their ethnicity, their religion or their political beliefs. Since 1840, New Zealand has given refuge to thousands of people from Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Refuge New Zealand examines New Zealand's response to refugees and asylum seekers in an historical context. Which groups and categories have been chosen, and why? Who has been kept out and why? How has public policy governing refugee immigration changed over time?

Ruling Passions

'Culture’ is often seen as somehow elevated above daily life (set in a rarefied realm) or set apart from it (e.g. the anthropological study of cultures other than our own). But for contemporary sociologists and media theorists, culture is better seen as the matter-of-fact practice and taken-for-granted nature of everyday life. Culture is inherent to how the world is made to mean something, how knowledge is produced and how society functions. As a result, we need to interrogate what we take as ‘given’.

Sanctuary

Sanctuary: The discovery of wonder is an engaging and moving book full of spiritual insight, wisdom and warmth. It is the result of a decade of exploration and contemplation of the concept of sanctuary by Julie Leibrich, a poet and writer, formerly a research psychologist and Mental Health Commissioner. Sanctuary is written in a way that happily combines reason and imagination, poetry and critical thinking, knowledge and originality, producing a highly readable and rewarding book. Sanctuary cuts across genres: at once a spiritual memoir; a collection of personal journal entries and brief discourses; and a window into the views of influential writers, thinkers and poets, and of the author’s friends and acquaintances. Julie Leibrich’s life journey has led her to discover through ‘wondering, wandering and wonderment’ the elements of the world and self that are most sacred.

Secular Sermons

Discursive, entertaining and provocative, Secular Sermons contains fourteen essays by celebrated philosopher Professor Alan Musgrave, examining the basic assumptions of science, religion and mathematics. Can we decide what to believe? Why do scientists do experiments and wat can their experiments show? Is evolution a scientific theory? Such apparently simple questions are brilliantly investigated by Musgrave in order to interrogate the worldviews we inhabit – and their consequences. He brings to these questions an expansive historical knowledge, provoking his readers to enter the now-discredited belief-systems of earlier ages in order to compare these with their own.

Sexual Cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand Education

Aotearoa New Zealand was recently rated by the Lonely Planet travel guide as the second most ‘gay friendly’ country in the world, with some of the most advanced human rights legislation. Research suggests, however, that New Zealand’s relatively ‘inclusive’ social climate is not always reflected in our educational settings. This book explores how the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm operates in education, and the discriminatory effects of this for teachers, for students, and for parents, in early childhood education, schools, tertiary and alternative settings. How can education settings become more socially just sites of inclusion for sexual and gender diversity? Contributors from a wide range of sectors discuss their research and invite others to join them in resisting the many injustices perpetuated by the unchecked discriminatory discourses that have shaped New Zealand education historically, and which continue to do so today.

Sexuality Down Under

The study of sexuality is both important and controversial. It permeates most aspects of everyday life and is both a hot topic and a taboo subject at the same time. The 'Virgin in a condom' art work that attracted protests wherever it was exhibited features in the book's final essay and many more mundane aspects of sexualtity are also covered: teenage motherhood, sexuality in advertising, sexuality and Pacific peoples, homosexual law reform, the difference between sex and rape, prostitution, the impact of viagra, and lesbian doctors.

She Dared to Speak

This is the story of a spirited and courageous woman who was driven by a concern for the welfare of ordinary people. Written by her daughter, it has a liveliness and immediacy which would be difficult for an outsider to achieve. Connie Birchfield grew up in Lancashire – working in a cotton mill from the age of thirteen – and emigrated to New Zealand in the 1920s. She became involved in unions and the Labour Party as a hotel worker, and joined the Communist Party as an unemployed worker in the 1930s.

Shifting Centres

New Zealand is an immigrant society, but little has been written about the diverse migrant experiences of women to and within New Zealand. Shifting Centres: Women and Migration in New Zealand History, edited by Lyndon Fraser and Katie Pickles, links the lives of very different women through their experiences of migration. This is a multicultural study. It includes migration from north to south, from country to country and from rural areas to town. Much of the material is from the twentieth century. Subjects range from Maori urban migration, to refugees from Nazism, and recent Chinese migration. Some of the essays are life stories.

Stewart Island Rakiura National Park

Revised and Updated 2019 Edition. Stewart Island is an increasingly popular holiday destination for eco-tourism and outdoor recreation, with many bush walks and a wealth of natural features to enjoy. Neville Peat introduces the attractions of the island – what to see and do, its walks and tramps, its national park, wildlife, history and magnificent scenery.

Studying New Zealand

Who made Lane's Emulsion? Where should we look to find out? No matter how obscure your question, if it's about a New Zealand topic, there's a new book to help you find the answers.

The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals

The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals is the only definitive reference on all the land-breeding mammals recorded in the New Zealand region (including the New Zealand sector of Antarctica).

The Hong Kong Health Sector

Since the 1990s, the Hong Kong public health sector has been under constant review: there has been increasing emphasis on the need for major changes in its structure and funding, and traditional Chinese medicine has received formal recognition. This book covers the period from British colonisation of Hong Kong in 1841 through to the present day. It looks at the way in which the health sector developed, the structural arrangements that resulted, and the manner in which the heath system functions today. For those involved in the sector, this will be essential reading. With the system's colonial origins, and the presence of complementary therapies, the book makes an interesting case study for anyone working in public health.

The Law of Research

Responding to a growing need for legal advice for researchers, this book provides a guide to the law of research. It will be useful to anyone working in New Zealand's research community, whether in public sector research organisations, administering reserach enterprises or working with human research subjects.

The Life of Brian

The notion of masculinity is universal but its embodiment is specific to the culture and historical moment to which it belongs. Experiences of masculinity are intersected and defined by class, ethnicity, race and sexualities, and are therefore diverse. The concept exists only in contrast to 'femininity': there is nothing inherent to 'what it is to be a man'. If this quality of masculinity means that we cannot speak or assume a universal experience of being male in New Zealand, the much-loved idea of the 'Kiwi bloke' is really a construction of ideals based on nostalgia. It is unrealistic, out-of-date and limiting. The contributors to this book explore ideas about and experiences of being masculine in the twenty-first century, and their implications for men's health and sexuality.

The Liverworts of New Zealand, Browse our books, Otago University Press

A look at Liverworts in New Zealand

The Pavlova Story

While Australians and New Zealanders have long debated which country invented the pavlova (a large meringue dessert cake said to emulate the lightness of the famous ballerina, Anna Pavlova), the real story of the ballerina’s visit to the Antipodes and the emergence of three different pavlovas was neglected.

The Politics and Government of New Zealand

The Politics and Government of New Zealand: Robust, Innovative and Challenged is an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the New Zealand political system. This book is a useful source for understanding current political controversies, such as the role of the Treaty of Waitangi, republicanism and coalition politics.

The Politics of Indigeneity:

The period 1995 to 2004 was the UN's International Decade of World Indigenous Peoples. This reflected the increasing organisation of indigenous peoples around a commonality of concerns, needs and ambitions. In both New Zealand and Canada, these politics challenge the colonial structures that social and political systems are built upon.

The Ship of Dreams

Notoriously self-contained and private, Kiwi men are often reluctant to talk about their personal feelings and embarrassed at the thought that any private emotional difficulties could be exposed to critical examination. One must go to their imaginative literature to make contact with the reality that underlies the (often calculatedly deceptive) surface. In his investigation of these issues, Fox demonstrates the crucial importance of Pakeha and Maori cultural predispositions influencing masculine identity in this country – often at the cost of great psychic pain for the men involved.

The Twelve Cakes of Christmas: An evolutionary history, with recipes

Festive cakes have been made in December for at least two thousand years. Using archaeological evidence and ancient books, the authors define the key ingredients of the cakes that would eventually be served on Twelfth Night, at the end of the Christmas season.

The World's Din

The arrival of radical new audio technology from overseas in the late 19th century led to a 'sonic revolution' that changed New Zealanders lives forever, says author Peter Hoar.

Touchy Subject

An interesting and disturbing cultural shift is at work in the relationship between children and their teachers. 'Teachers touching children' has become the site of a new social taboo, one about which there is much confusion and anxiety amongst teachers, as well as parents and children. The authors of this book are from several countries including the UK, US, Samoa, Australia and New Zealand. They share a research interest in the effects of the anxieties about child abuse now commonplace in Western countries.

Understanding Health Inequalities in Aotearoa New Zealand

Quick-fix solutions to health inequalities are unlikely to be found in complex modern societies. Class or socio-economic status, gender, ethnicity and physical location all play their part in determining our chances of maintaining good health and securing good health care. This book uses a variety of approaches from different disciplines to explore the issues in four sections: Ethnic and Socio-economic Inequalities in Health, Understanding Inequalities, Intervention Strategies, and Intervention Experiences.

Unpacking the Kists

Historians have suggested that Scottish influences are more pervasive in New Zealand than in any other country outside Scotland, yet curiously New Zealand’s Scots migrants have previously attracted only limited attention. A thorough and interdisciplinary work, Unpacking the Kists is the first in-depth study of New Zealand’s Scots migrants and their impact on an evolving settler society.

When the Farm Gates Opened

The economic reforms launched by the 1984 David Lange-led Labour government changed New Zealand forever. Agriculture bore the brunt of those changes and Rogernomics, the name by which the era came to be known, became an historical reference point for the primary sector: a defining and pivotal moment when financial subsidies abruptly ended and farming learned to live without government influence, interference or protection.

Women Mean Business

New Zealand’s nineteenth-century towns were full of entrepreneurial women. A surprising number ran their own businesses.

Working on the Edge

The two-drawer dishwasher, a revolution in graphic modelling of yacht races and other sports events on television, collectable dolls that are sought after worldwide, specialised engineering products – Dunedin has a long list of international business success stories.