scholarly journals The “Hidden Depression” that never really went away

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-40
Author(s):  
Anaru Eketone
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Serious Disease

Covid-19 is a unique conjunction of a serious disease pandemic coupled with a serious economic crisis. I took the opportunity during level four lockdown to catch up on some reading. Two books in particular discussed the previous two named depressions that Aotearoa New Zealand went through. Children of the Poor by John A. Lee (1973) dealt with poverty in Dunedin following the “Long Depression” of the late 19th century and The Slump by Tony Simpson (1990) looked at the lead-up to the “Great Depression”, its effects and its lasting legacy.

scholarly journals Growing Up during the Great Depression in Aotearoa New Zealand. A Comparative Study of Shonagh Koea’s The Kindness of Strangers (2007) and Renée’s These Two Hands (2017)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marine Berthiot
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The Uk

New Zealand writers Shonagh Koea (1939 - ) and Renée (1929 - ) grew up during the Great Depression and its aftermath. Their memoirs challenge the official rewriting of New Zealand history when both authors claim that they belong to the working class. Indeed, New Zealand has long constructed itself as a class-free nation, contrary to the UK. The traumatic experiences which occurred when the writers were young affect them on two levels. They impact them personally, but also culturally. Not only has the working class often seen its history erased and silenced, but Renée also testifies to the part played by colonisation and segregation in the cultural trauma of the Māori community.

Sāmoa’s Gethsemane (1930)

Tautai ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Business Operations ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the immediate aftermath of the Black Saturday Massacre through the experiences of Ta’isi. Though New Zealand forces tried to stop the Mau through exiling Ta’isi and then the killing Tupua Tamasese (which may have been intended or not) the Mau continued to disrupt New Zealand’s rule. The Women’s Mau, in which Rosabel played a prominent role, also came to the fore in 1930. Administrator Allen enraged these women, Ta’isi and Sāmoans generally, when he wrote in the annual report to the League of Nations that these women were of ‘light moral character’. The crisis of the Great Depression began to impact Sāmoa and for Ta’isi personally; his enforced absence from Sāmoa began to bite into his business operations. This chapter explores the New Zealand’s part in continuing attempts to publically damage Ta’isi’s status amongst Sāmoans. It also explores the impact on Ta’isi and the Mau with the death of Sir Māui Pōmare, who had been Samoa’s staunchest supporter.

“It Ain’t Hardly Worth the Trouble to Go on Living”

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-90
Author(s):  
Justin Mellette
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Erskine Caldwell ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Tenant Farming

Chapter 2 focuses on Erskine Caldwell and seeks to complicate understandings of his best-known works Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre. Though often derided for mocking the poor and using them as comic relief, Caldwell works to instil a sense of anger in readers as he reveals the economic plight of tenant farming during the Great Depression. In addition, the chapter looks at Caldwell's nonfiction work, including his phototext You Have Seen Their Faces, written with photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and contrasts its cultural context with the comparatively better known Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In addition, the chapter considers Caldwell's journalism, which originally raised national attention to the plight of the farmers he later immortalized in his fiction. Finally, the chapter closes by considering Caldwell’s later career and fall from critical favour.

Unemployment and fraud during the Great Depression in New Zealand

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radiah Othman ◽  
Rashid Ameer
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Extreme Condition ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The People ◽  
Financial Crimes ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
New Zealanders

Purpose This paper aims to provide a historical understanding of the unemployment context experienced by the New Zealand population during the Great Depression, which might have caused people to commit financial crimes, such as fraud, to survive. Design/methodology/approach The main source of information is narratives from newspaper articles published by 42 newspapers from 1931 to 1950 that explore New Zealanders’ experiences during declined economic conditions. Findings During the period studied, New Zealanders suffered because of various challenges, mainly unemployment. The government’s response was criticised by the people who used the newspapers as a medium to unleash their frustration about the fairness of unemployment relief for the unemployed and taxation of those who were employed. Some people who struggled in between jobs, as well as some who found themselves being disadvantaged, turned to deviant behaviour such as fraud. The fraudsters might be thought of as the victims of the day, committing a crime of survival, not a crime of choice. Research limitations/implications This research promotes more historical studies to enrich fraud-auditing literature. The lack of detailed information reported in the newspapers during this period limits making specific links to individual circumstances. Originality/value Fraudsters have always been perceived as responsible for their destinies, but a wider social and political context is rarely examined in fraud cases. The period chosen for this paper represents the extreme condition in which the elements of motive, opportunity and rationalisation are all interwoven into one.

Elusive equalities and the Great Recession: restoration, retrenchment and redistribution

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-441
Author(s):  
Janine Brodie
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Crisis Responses

AbstractThe 2008 global financial meltdown, commonly called the ‘Great Recession’, was the most serious crisis in capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and a fundamental repudiation of neoliberal governing assumptions. This paper focuses on the contexts that informed two governmental responses to this economic crisis — restoration and retrenchment through public austerity. It explains that these responses were contingent, experimental, inequitable and, in the end, unsuccessful. Restoration and retrenchment, however, were entirely consistent with previous neoliberal crisis-responses and the abiding ambitions of this governing project. As the economic crisis crawled into the second half of a decade, the idea of inequality was increasingly identified as an underlying cause of crisis and its amelioration as a necessary part of rebuilding economies and communities in a post-crisis era. The paper tracks the case for the revival of equality politics and policies in the early twenty-first century.

Consumer Co-operation and Economic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the Nordic ‘Middle Way’

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARY HILSON
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Model Region

AbstractIn the wake of the Great Depression, Sweden and the other Nordic countries were widely perceived as a model region, a successful example of the ‘middle way’ between socialism and capitalism. Central to this idea were the Nordic co-operative movements, which became the focus of President Roosevelt's Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise in Europe, conducted in 1936–7. Drawing mainly on the records of the Inquiry, the article explores the construction of the ‘middle way’ idea and examines the role of the Nordic co-operators in shaping international perceptions of the region, while also shedding new light on differences within the international co-operative movement during the same period.

The Workplace and Economic Crisis: Canadian Textile Firms, 1929–1935

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 498-528
Author(s):  
Robert Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Product Line ◽  
Scientific Management ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Managerial Authority ◽  
The Face ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
Industrial State

The devastating conditions of the Great Depression forced manufacturers to rethink their approach to workplace control, economic policy, and production practices. Although we know a great deal about how industries responded to the depression, we know very little about the changes implemented by firms. This is unfortunate as firms in the same industry face quite different problems, possess dissimilar work cultures, construct an array of production formats, and have access to a range of financial resources. Based on a literature that documents the variety of strategies devised by industries and firms, this paper shows how four Canadian textile firms—two cotton and two hosiery and knitting—reacted to the economic crisis of the Great Depression. In the face of a different array of conditions, each firm devised different restructuring strategies. The large cotton corporations responded by combining mechanization, product line change, and a new division of labor. The smaller, more competitive hosiery and knitting firms, on the other hand, imposed either a harsh regime of scientific management or conservative, piecemeal changes. In the midst of restructuring the workplace, manufacturers reasserted their prerogatives of managerial authority, selectively took advantage of the opportunities opened up by economic crisis, and created a new regime of industrial-state regulations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document