Editorial

2017 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Peter Hoar
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Editorial Team ◽  
Local Market ◽  
Design History ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
New Zealanders

Kia ora and welcome to the second issue of BackStory. The members of the Backstory Editorial Team were gratified by the encouraging response to the first issue of the journal. We hope that our currentreaders enjoy our new issue and that it will bring others to share our interest in and enjoyment of the surprisingly varied backstories of New Zealand’s art, media, and design history. This issue takes in a wide variety of topics. Imogen Van Pierce explores the controversy around the Hundertwasser Art Centre and Wairau Māori Art Gallery to be developed in Whangarei. This project has generated debate about the role of the arts and civic architecture at both the local and national levels. This is about how much New Zealanders are prepared to invest in the arts. The value of the artist in New Zealand is also examined by Mark Stocker in his article about the sculptor Margaret Butler and the local reception of her work during the late 1930s. The cultural cringe has a long genealogy. New Zealand has been photographed since the 1840s. Alan Cocker analyses the many roles that photography played in the development of local tourism during the nineteenth century. These images challenged notions of the ‘real’ and the ‘artificial’ and how new technologies mediated the world of lived experience. Recorded sound was another such technology that changed how humans experienced the world. The rise of recorded sound from the 1890s affected lives in many ways and Lewis Tennant’s contribution captures a significant tipping point in this medium’s history in New Zealand as the transition from analogue to digital sound transformed social, commercial and acoustic worlds. The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly celebrates its 85th anniversary this year but when it was launched in 1932 it seemed tohave very little chance of success. Its rival, the Mirror, had dominated the local market since its launch in 1922. Gavin Ellis investigates the Depression-era context of the Woman’s Weekly and how its founders identified a gap in the market that the Mirror was failing to fill. The work of the photographer Marti Friedlander (1908-2016) is familiar to most New Zealanders. Friedlander’s 50 year career and huge range of subjects defy easy summary. She captured New Zealanders, their lives, and their surroundings across all social and cultural borders. In the journal’s profile commentary Linda Yang celebrates Freidlander’s remarkable life and work. Linda also discusses some recent images by Friedlander and connects these with themes present in the photographer’s work from the 1960s and 1970s. The Backstory editors hope that our readers enjoy this stimulating and varied collection of work that illuminate some not so well known aspects of New Zealand’s art, media, and design history. There are many such stories yet to be told and we look forward to bringing them to you.

New Zealand School Journals, 1960s-70s

2018 ◽  
pp. 41-47
Author(s):  
Tina White
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Consciousness ◽  
The World ◽  
School Journal ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Serial Publication ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Zealanders

In this commentary, Tina White draws on her collection of the New Zealand School Journal to illustrate how by the 1960s and 1970s the Journal commissioned content from some of the country’s best writers, illustrators and photographers. Founded in 1907 with the high-minded aim to develop among New Zealand schoolchildren an “appreciation of the higher literature”, it is believed to be the longest running serial publication for children in the world with around 750,000 copies published annually in four parts. Athol McCredie, who writes on the New Zealand photobook in this issue, once described the New Zealand School Journal as an element of New Zealanders’ cultural consciousness – “remembered as evocatively as the smell of stale school milk, the feel of chalk and finger paint, and the steamy atmosphere of a classroom of wet bodies on a rainy day”.

New Zealand: Troubles in Paradise

Worldview ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
David Finkelstein
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The State ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
New Zealanders

Lulled by a serene exterior and enchanted by exquisite scenery, visitors to New Zealand continue to look upon it as “God's own country.” Roughly the size of Japan or the state of Colorado and populated by ten million cows, seventy million sheep, and a mere three million people, how could it be otherwise? Even the venerable James Reston has swallowed the line that New Zealanders are free of the problems that vex the rest of the world. “Otherwise, all is as silent here as the sheep in the fields,” he wrote after a visit to the Antipodes several years ago, “and this may be their most serious dilemma. For they make no trouble and therefore make no news.” No news, perhaps, but like most places throughout the world, New Zealand has its troubles.For the past decade New Zealand has been having increasingly serious economic difficulties; and since the country is generally twelve to eighteen months behind major international economic movements, predictions are that conditions will continue to deteriorate, at least through 1983.

scholarly journals Opening a Discourse on Race Relations in New Zealand: The Fern and the Tiki Revisited

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry A. Kersey
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Intellectual Legacy ◽  
New Zealanders

This article discusses the intellectual legacy of David P. Ausubel in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Some forty years after the American academic's provocative work The Fern and the Tiki first appeared in print it still evokes strong and mixed reactions from Pakeha and Maori alike. It certainly had a searing impact among a generation of New Zealanders who were in universities during the tumultuous civil rights dominated era of the 1960s and 1970s. Even those who have never read the book recognize the title, can name its author, and generally accord it some deference as a seminal work that should be read or reread.

scholarly journals Politics and Sport don’t mix – or do they? National Identity and New Zealand’s Participation in the Olympic Games

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Micheal Warren
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Olympic Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Benedict Anderson ◽  
The Olympic Games ◽  
New Zealanders

<p>Sports matter. Today sport is one of the most enduring social events that humans from across the world participate in, no matter their race, religion or gender. Moreover, the biggest of all those sporting events is the Olympic Games, which is held every four years. The modern version of the Games was founded by Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin and first took place in Athens in 1896. New Zealand first competed alongside Australia as Australasia in London 1908 and Stockholm 1912. Following the games of 1916 which were cancelled due to World War I, New Zealand has competed as a sovereign nation since Antwerp 1920. Since 1908, over 1200 New Zealanders have competed at the Olympic Games, winning more than 100 medals. That performance in itself makes New Zealand one of the most successful nations in Olympic history on a per capita basis. That statistic alone underscores the relationship between the Olympics and national identity, as an embodiment of New Zealanders believing they ‘punch above their weight’ on the world stage.  Benedict Anderson wrote about the imagined community, where the nation is imagined because it is impossible for every citizen to know each other.¹ This research has found that sporting teams like the All Blacks and the New Zealand Olympic Team are perfect avenues to help create this imagined community. New Zealand’s national identity is not fixed, it has evolved, but the one mainstay of that identity is the sense of being an underdog on the world stage.  The research has found that over the past three decades New Zealand governments have increasingly woken up to the importance of high-performance sport and following the disappointment of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, funding was increased, which has led to better results and more medals. Today New Zealand athletes are funded on a per-capita basis just as well as many other nations we would compare ourselves with. New Zealand politicians have been quick to associate themselves alongside sportsmen and women and often speak about the close link that exists between sport and identity in New Zealand. However, unlike Australia, New Zealand does not have a national sports museum, and also unlike Australia, and the United Kingdom, New Zealand legislation does not allow for free-to-air television coverage of games of national significance. New Zealand does not adequately showcase its sporting history, and this has the potential to negatively affect the importance New Zealanders place on sport and the Olympic Movement as an important part of its national identity.  Ultimately this research has found that the New Zealand Olympic Team epitomises what it means to be a New Zealander and has found that across multiple levels of analysis, the Olympic Movement has significantly contributed to the development of New Zealand’s national identity. More broadly, the Olympic Games have become a key avenue in which that national identity can be projected to the world.  ¹ Benedict Anderson, ‘Imagined Communities,’ (London: Verso, 2006), pp.6-7.</p>

scholarly journals Editorial

2016 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Alan Cocker
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Editorial Team ◽  
Design History ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
University Of Technology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Design Production ◽  
The University

It is a pleasure to be able to introduce the first issue of BackStory. The idea behind this journal is to provide a medium for those interested in ‘looking back’ at New Zealand’s art, media and design history. These are the stories that lie behind current media, art and design production and practice in this country. It is envisaged that this new journal will provide an opportunity to explore our rich heritage in these fields. In part the motivation to launch a new journal is to meet a perceived need. The country presently does not have a journal which has the focus envisaged for BackStory. The Journal of New Zealand Art History (JoNZAH) was last published in 2012/13 and its absence has meant that those interested in reading and writing about this aspect of our cultural history lost a valued publication. The editorial team has approached the Hocken Library who provided editorial and production input for the JoNZAH and gained their support for the BackStory initiative. It is acknowledged that the new journal is not a re-launch or continuation of the JoNZAH. Instead, BackStory: Journal of New Zealand Art, Media and Design History, seeks to broaden the scope of its predecessor to include media and design history. The editorial teamhope that those who valued the JoNZAH will find value in this journal as a worthy successor.The initial editorial team for BackStory is drawn from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and an Editorial Advisory Board has been established. The establishing editorial team are Minna Pesonen (Designer), Rosemary Brewer, Alan Cocker and Peter Hoar from the School of Communication Studies, Peter Gilderdale from the School of Art & Design and Simon Mowatt from the Faculty of Business. It is the hope of this team that BackStory has an appeal beyond academia and will inspire contributions from those working in this country’s libraries, galleries and museums as well as others who have an interest in the history of New Zealand art, design, photography and media. We are pleased that this first issue contains contributions from curators at the Auckland Museum and Te Papa, and that there is a wide representation of different material drawn from across the target disciplines. Our hope is that the quality of the research and writing, and the common New Zealand focus will entice readers into crossdisciplinary explorations. All submissions except commentaries will be blind peer reviewed by two reviewers to conform to university research publication standards but we are seeking contributions that will have an appealbeyond the university. In the so-called online age the decision to publish a printed form is deliberate. The editorial team are seeking the highest print production standards conscious of the artifact value of this journal.

scholarly journals Editorial

2018 ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Alan Cocker
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Editorial Team ◽  
Design History ◽  
Broad Field ◽  
Personal Reflections

As we stated in our first issue of BackStory in December 2016, the editorial team has sought to produce a journal with an appeal beyond the academy to those working in the broad field of New Zealand art, media and design history. We have reached out to those working in the country’s libraries, galleries and museums for contributions and we have also provided space for commentaries and personal reflections on particular aspects of our cultural history.

Antievolutionism in the Antipodes: from protesting evolution to promoting creationism in New Zealand

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
RONALD L. NUMBERS ◽  
JOHN STENHOUSE
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Creation Science ◽  
Stephen Jay Gould ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Creationism ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
New Zealanders

Like other English-speaking peoples around the world, New Zealanders began debating Darwinism in the early 1860s, shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Despite the opposition of some religious and political leaders – and even the odd scientist – biological evolution made deep inroads in a culture that increasingly identified itself as secular. The introduction of pro-evolution curricula and radio broadcasts provoked occasional antievolution outbursts, but creationism remained more an object of ridicule than a threat until the last decades of the twentieth century, when first American and then Australian creationists began fomenting antievolutionism among New Zealanders. Although Stephen Jay Gould assured them in 1986 that they had little to fear from so-called scientific creationism, because it was a ‘peculiarly American’ phenomenon, scientific creationism by the mid-1990s had captured the allegiance of an estimated five per cent of the country and proved especially attractive to Maori and Pacific Islanders. In 1992 New Zealand creationists formed their own antievolution society, Creation Science (NZ).

scholarly journals Towards a Sound New Zealand Intellectual Property Law

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susy Frankel
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Intellectual Property Law ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
International Commitments ◽  
The Arts ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
Use Of Knowledge ◽  
New Zealanders

This article discusses aspects of New Zealand's intellectual property law and policy. The author examines New Zealand's existing laws and international obligations.  The author proposes that New Zealand develop a sound law of intellectual property that honours the Treaty of Waitangi and is of benefit to New Zealanders. She considers a number of aspects of New Zealand's international obligations and demonstrates how New Zealand can develop laws that assist New Zealanders in the fields of science and technology, business and the arts and not contravene our international commitments. The article concludes that New Zealand's intellectual property law should be founded on policies that enhance the development and use of knowledge based assets for New Zealanders. 

scholarly journals Forgotten Taonga Māori in Russia: The 1820 Visit of the Bellingshausen-Lazarev Expedition to Queen Charlotte Sound

Te Kaharoa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Suvorova
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
The South ◽  
Russian Territory ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World ◽  
New Zealanders

Russia is a country of extensive and unique collections of all kinds from the Pacific. Over many centuries Russian travellers, explorers and avid private collectors were bringing and exchanging rarities and antiques. The stunning cultural treasures, taonga Māori, preserved and kept on the vast Russian territory are of ultimate importance and enduring value to the world, and especially to New Zealanders as they bear sacred significance and are considered to be ancestors. This article opens the discussion of the urgent need to thoroughly record and study Māori heritage in Russia. It reflects on a particular collection from Queen Charlotte Sound in the South Island of New Zealand brought to Russia by the Bellingshausen-Lazarev expedition two centuries ago. The study also provides a description of previously unstudied taonga in Russia recently attributed to this expedition.

scholarly journals Harmful digital communications in New Zealand: Annual Population Survey 2017

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edgar Pacheco ◽  
Neil Melhuish
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Digital Communications ◽  
Potential Harm ◽  
Representative Study ◽  
Annual Population ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
New Zealanders

While new technologies offer a number of benefits and opportunities, their use is accompanied by challenges and potential risks. This includes the different forms of abuse and intimidation that the Act seeks to address. As part of its functions as the Approved Agency, Netsafe has conducted the first in a series of Annual Population Surveys (APS). The objective of the APS is to gauge attitudes and behaviours and to start monitoring national trends regarding potentially harmful digital communications in Aotearoa-New Zealand. This report presents the main findings of the 2017 APS. The APS is the first nationally representative study that looks at adult New Zealanders and digital communications in the context of the Act. Key aspects of the Act - such as the communication principles - and key internet safety concepts have informed the development of the research instrument and the analysis of its findings.The study was planned and administered by Netsafe between February and September 2017. An online survey was conducted with a representative sample of 1,018 adult New Zealanders (aged 18 ) between 30 May and 30 June 2017. Data collection was conducted by Colmar Brunton. The maximum margin of error for the whole population is ±3.1% at the 95% confidence level.The study provides insights regarding New Zealanders’ access to and use of digital technologies. It also explores people’s level of awareness of the Act. A key focus of the study is to measure participants’ experiences of digital communications, including perceptions and experiences of harm and distress in the last 12 months. Finally, the study presents relevant insights regarding New Zealanders’ personal responses, and access to services and resources to deal with unwanted digital communications as well as potential harm and distress.As research on adult New Zealanders and their experiences with digital communications is limited, the APS provides first-hand research evidence on this subject to government agencies, online content and service providers, law enforcement, the research community, and the general public. However, considering the evolving nature of new technologies and how people engage with digital tools, new online challenges and risks are likely to emerge. Thus, the study of the nature and impact of digital communications, including potential harm and distress, will remain a relevant but challenging area of research, analysis, and policy intervention.

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