Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library
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Comrade: Bill Anderson: A Communist, Working-Class Life
Get PDFIn 2011, Nick Salvatore reflected on the ‘intimate relationship’ between biography and social history. Challenging the suggestions made by some historians that biography was outside the ‘discipline of history’, Salvatore argued that the recent turn to biography in labour and social history was a welcome development. It opened the possibility of a broader understanding of ‘the interplay between an individual and social forces beyond one’s ability to control’. Such biography, he continued, could shed light far beyond any individual, even if it does not always reach into every corner of social life’. Like any historical work, however, it demanded a ‘disciplinary rigor and thorough research effort that treats equally seriously both the subject and the context that shapes that life’. In his excellent biography, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist, Salvatore referred to the book as a ‘social biography’, one that ‘intended to explore both the individual and the broader social context’
Gifted and “Possessed”: Reading and Writing the Adaptable Frame
Get PDFThis article explores Patrick Evans’s neglected novel Gifted, arguing that Evans, as novelist, wilfully forges, inhabits and defends the same authorial ground his criticism of the work of Janet Frame assailed for decades. Positioning Gifted as part penance, part reparation, part justification for Evans’s literary criticism, this essay negotiates the dynamics of equivocal blend that characterise Evans’s “gifted” relationship with Frame and finds, within Gifted, an enactment of the continuum between paratext and adaptation.  
Don Binney: Flight Path
Get PDFOne of the joys of reviewing is that every so often a book comes along that is elegantly written, persuasively argued and beautifully produced. The result is something special that is both wonderful to look at and a joy to read. Congratulations, then, to editor Sam Elworthy and his team, especially book designer Keely O’Shannessy; I have never reviewed anything quite so visually stunning as Don Binney: Flight Path. Gregory O’Brien’s balanced and insightful text is illustrated on every few pages by high quality reproductions of this talented artist’s paintings. Most readers would expect many images of birds, given Binney’s earlier paintings, but he also painted landscapes in New Zealand and other parts of the globe, including Mexico, Africa, Britain and Australia. Binney was skilled too at painting still lifes, creating spectacular montages and occasionally venturing into challenging surreal images of human forms. Despite Binney’s somewhat flamboyant personality and occasional carping about trends in the broader New Zealand art scene, O’Brien confirms that he was an effective environmentalist with genuine sympathy for, and understanding of, the Māori view of nature and spirituality
The Rise, Fall and Re-Rise Of Deliberative Democracy In New Zealand
Get PDFIn New Zealand the last few years have seen a re-emergence of interest in processes that build on the theory of deliberative democracy. Commentary on this trend, which typically positions deliberative democracy as a novel development in New Zealand politics, ignores several decades of public agencies’ democratic experimentation. In this article we describe three of the 15 identified processes displaying the critical elements of deliberative democracy: the Capital Power citizens’ jury (1996); Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council’s public deliberation on pre-birth testing (2007–08), and the citizens’ advisory panel on the Newtown–Berhampore cycleway (2014). We analyse the reasons for their ostensible failure and identify lessons that current policymakers interested in deliberative democracy should draw from these historical cases
No free love: the dearth of media output from the Architectural Centre in the swinging sixties
Get PDFThe Architectural Centre, having made a powerful impact on the design profession in New Zealand in the '40s and '50s, appears to have taken a back seat in the 1960s. Were the drug-crazed psychedelic sixties to blame, or was there still signs of life behind the closed doors? No longer publishing Design Review, the Centre continued to work on projects, mainly behind the scenes, such as the campaign for better town planning in Wellington. The effort that went into this campaign may have led to the Centre having "sucked its bottle dry" and an almost stagnation at times during the 1960s, but in the end achieved its aim with the publication by Wellington's Council of a Town Plan, and the creation of a Town Planning department within the Council. This paper follows the actions of the Centre throughout its "mute" decade, and exposes its continuing influence on the City, on subject matter that is still being discussed today, via the publication of a special supplement in the Dominion, a publishing coup that is unparalleled today
A Farewell to Fragility: Critical Notice of Gillian K. Russell, Barriers to Entailment
Get PDFThis is a critical notice of Gillian Russell, Barriers to Entailmen
Assessing Aotearoa's latest 'war on nature' or 'Goodbye Freddy'
Get PDFSince taking office in late November 2023, the National/ACT/New Zealand First coalition government in Aotearoa New Zealand has made rapid, comprehensive and far-reaching changes to environmental laws, regulations and policies. Further significant policy reforms are pending. This article outlines the main policy changes and summarises the many concerns that they have generated.It then discusses the coalition’s apparent rationale for the changes, focusing particularly on resource management reform. Followingthis, the article outlines the ecological values and principles that ought to inform environmental policy. It concludes with brief reflections on the longer-term implications of the coalition’s approach to environmental governance and management and the wider global failure to tackle the current ecological crises
Supporting justice in Local Government: Climate Response in Aotearoa New Zealand
No full textWhile climate justice concerns are increasingly incorporated into policy at international scales, there is less research on climate justice and policy at local scales. Recognising how structural inequalities intersect with climate change influences how rights, responsibilities, distribution of resources and procedures for adaptation are understood and implemented. We describe how some local governments in Aotearoa New Zealand are using recognition practices to improve their understanding of the impacts of climate change, and re-allocating resourcing so mana whenua and communities are better able to participate in climate adaptation procedures. We suggest national policy and legislative changes that could support local governments’ climate justice recognition practices
In the mix: managing policy complexity in climate change mitigation
Get PDFThe policy mix is an analytical framework for understanding the elements, processes, dimensions and characteristics of complex policy systems. This article applies this framework to Aotearoa New Zealand’s policy mix for climate mitigation, both to understand why we have the policies we have, and also to stimulate ideas about how to improve outcomes. Instead of a comprehensive analysis, the article focuses on the mix of policy instruments, the evaluative principles that guide policy appraisal, the challenge of harmonising multiple principles, and the influence of economic principles on the scope and intent of policy mixes
"the need for beauty": New Zealand Interior and Landscape Architecture in the 1940s
No full textAt the 1948 Arbor Day ceremony at Taita North School, Mr Polson "impressed upon the children the need for beauty in the world after the destruction and desolation of the recent war.ʺ As such he proposed that we could proactively make the world a better place. This decade in New Zealandʹs history of interior and landscape architectures was widely understood as a period of change and a desire to improve the world. Bill Toomath has described it as a time of "restrained transitional work,ʺ while Philippa Mein Smith refers to "a sequence of symbolic moves [that] indicated that the Dominion had become a nation.
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