This thesis examines the relationship of labour mobility and socioeconomic transformation in the Solomon Islands, and proposes that one cannot be understood in isolation from the other. Explanation is pursued both at the levels of structure and of agency, and integration of these levels is attempted in some places. This is discussed in the first part of the thesis, within a general discussion of issues of theory and method. The second part of the thesis deals with the structural parameters of labour mobility. Through the twentieth century, the institutions of government, mission and capitalist enterprise have been central in shaping the Solomon Islands social formation. The roles of these formal institutions with implications for labour mobility have ranged from purveyors of ideology to employers of labour. Another major element in the social formation is an original Melanesian mode of production which influences labour mobility through village-level institutions such as the land tenure system, kinship, and household operation. Labour circulation is a major factor in linking village and non-village institutions, and more abstractly in articulating two different modes of production. The third part of the thesis considers the ways in which individual agency operates within structure. The data base are life histories and related information from the Mbambatana language group on the island of Choiseul. This is integrated with national, regional and village-level structural information. Education is important in the way it 'selects' individuals for certain kinds of employment. This selection process occurs within the wage economy generally, but is further refined within institutions of employment. This results in labour mobility 'streams' which have identifiable characteristics related to gender, education, and employment type. Movements within each 'stream' have typical temporal and spatial characteristics. Patterns of labour mobility, especially sequence, are affected by gender and life cycle factors. For men and women the most critical changes take place in the 20s age span, but individual behaviour varies according to marriage and childrearing patterns. From a village perspective, labour circulation is a logical response to the necessity of operating within two different economic systems typified by different modes of production. This process of articulation is manifest in other ways as well, and households or families may adopt different strategies in operating within two different systems. The particular strategy adopted depends on the labour power available, degree of access to land, and employment possibilities of individual members.

For a century the development of power resources has contributed much to the geography of New Zealand. Today, more than ever before, the direct significance of energy production is seen, at the mine or dam site, on the road or railway, and indirectly in the home, the farm, and the factory. Nor is the situation static. Large dams and associated villages stand in areas which only a decade ago were remote and uninhabited, lakes are being drained and swamps reclaimed in the search for coal, and a man-made thermal area has been created, as spectacular as any natural one. Plans are made and changed, and before one large power development is completed another has been commenced. Energy is outstandingly important in the daily lives of New Zealanders yet only meagre information is available on New Zealand power resources and still less on the geography of those areas characterised by power resources and their exploitation.

Throughout the history of mankind there have been migrations of groups of people for economic, political, social, cultural and various other reasons. Geographically speaking, migration results in the transplantation of a group of people to a new physical, social, cultural and economic environment. The migrants affect, and are effected by, the milieu of the new country. Considered from this point of view, the Asian immigrants in New Zealand are to be seen as an element in the total geographical context of the country. A study of Asian immigrants in New Zealand not only reveals their contributions to, and their distinctiveness in, the new environment, but also brings to light factors that influence both the environment and the immigrants.

The daily journey to work has become one of the most important and conspicuous charactaristics of the urban community. Each work day, as regularly as clockwork between the hours of 7 and 9 in the morning, thousands of commuters travel to their places of work. Just as regularly, between 4 and 6 in the afte:rnoon 5 they return en masse to their homes. In fact, in cities where trro1sport surveys have been made, it has been revealed that journeys to work account for between one-sixth and one-third of all vehicular trips. In Metropolitan Aucland (Map I)? work trips comprise some 24 per cent of the trips recorded by a comprehensive transport survey. In Auckland, as in other cities of the western world, only trips to home are more numerous than those to work.

This dissertation considers the images and appraisals of New Zealand in the period 1839 to 1855. The expectations of British emigrants were examined in terms of the information available about New Zealand, the nature, accessibility and dissemination of information, and the images about the new environment created in the accessible sources of information. These expectations, largely drawn from the images, are compared with the appraisals made by the emigrants after arrival and settlement. The dissertation was developed at three levels: as an historical geography using a cognitive-behavioural approach, being concerned with the relationships between information, images, and appraisals, and examining a specific process - emigration to New Zealand from 1839 to 1855. In light of the recent anxiety and pessimism over the future and direction of historical geography, the use of new concepts and methodologies has been regarded as a necessity. While there are many problems and complexities inherent in the use of a cognitive-behavioural approach to historical geography, the concepts of perception, image, and appraisal offer much to the understanding of how man evaluated and behaved in the world of the past. It is suggested that the use of relevant cognitive-behavioural ideas broadens the areas for research by offering a new perspective to the past and by encouraging the use of much previously unused material. The second concern was the relationship between information and image and between image and appraisal. The role of information was found to be most important in the development of images about the new environment. The appraisals also reflected the information contained within the images. It was suggested that it is impossible to reconstruct images of the environment in their totality but that it is possible to reconstruct simpler sub-images of specific features in the environment. It is in this manner that the historical geographer can make a major contribution to the understanding of man’s behaviour, in relation to the geography of past times. The third concern was with the process of emigration to New Zealand in the period 1839 to 1855. Although much information about New Zealand was available, the intending emigrants had access only to limited sources of information, much of which was promotional in nature. The images of the physical environment were largely drawn from these sources. These images appear to have been the basis of the expectations of most of the emigrants. The later appraisals made of the physical environment showed a close relationship to the images, although several discrepancies occurred. These discrepancies reflected the distortion of information, the role of imagination and the personal evaluations of different sources of information. Emigration to New Zealand in the period 1839 to 1855 was, therefore, examined in terms of the images and appraisals made of the new environment. While general satisfaction with the new homeland was expressed, few of the emigrants considered New Zealand to be an ‘Eden of the South Seas’.

Rural population growth has emerged in the 1970s as an important trend in many developed countries, including New Zealand. Increasing emphasis is also currently being accorded to the consideration of institutions and institutional factors in geographical research. This thesis develops the themes of population growth and institutions in rural areas and isolates institutional response as a relevant component in the overall growth process. Analysis of rural population growth in the study area of Thames-Coromandel provides the background context to the investigation of response by health, education and statutory planning institutions. The analysis itself reveals the dominance of inward migration in the growth process, the nucleated nature of much of the growth and major explanations relating to retirement and recreation development together with agricultural intensification and alternative lifestyle and craft industry development. Institutional response by the Hamilton Education Board and Thames Hospital Board is shown to be embedded in a complex web of constraints and determinants. However a definite expansion of services and facilities is clearly evident in the context of the demonstrated growth. Conversely the statutory planning response by the Thames-Coromandel District Council has tended to display a general lack of adequacy to date in the proper management of growth and development in the study area. Overall, the study provides both theoretical and practical insights into population growth and institutional response in rural areas and presents a basis for further research in this contemporary field of geographical study.

This study examines the influence of an extension agency, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Advisory Services Division, in stimulating the diffusion of innovations among farmers in New Zealand. Consideration of the Farm Advisory Officers’ objectives and the rationale for their extension strategies provides a background for investigating and accounting for their use of different techniques. The effectiveness of these techniques is examined, within the framework of an adoption-stimulation model. The use of information sources, knowledge of a promoted innovation, attitudes to the need for the innovation, and adoption behaviour among farmers in the northern King Country are explored, to identify the relationships between these stages in the adoption process and Farm Advisory Officers’ extension efforts. At a broader scale, a simple multiplier model is used to evaluate the effects of the distribution of extension efforts on the spread of information and innovations, especially among those farmers not directly influenced by advisers.

Rural landuse has recently emerged as an issue of major concern in New Zealand. This thesis identifies some of the processes of decision-making about rural landuse and in particular explains the cultural context of those decisions. Comparisons are made between the practise and statutes of landuse planning and the observed behaviour of rural landuse allocation. These themes are explored in the setting of the Taupo region in the central part of the North Island. The distinctive mix of rural landuses in this area: wilderness, exotic forest, and pastoral agriculture, along with the recency of development and intimate involvement of the Crown in that development, provide insights into the way in which land is allocated to uses, and material for examining the concepts advanced, while contributing to knowledge of this important rural area.

This thesis contributes to the debates over the conceptualisation of enterprises involved in agriculture, the industrialisation of agriculture and the reproduction and subsumption of family farms. In making this contribution, a framework is developed for the examination of work relations and forms of production in apple orcharding and dairy farming in New Zealand. It is argued that many of the intense debates in the literature result from the research perspectives which are used - principally Marxist perspectives. While sympathetic to Marxist theory, a realist perspective is adopted to lessen these problems. Middle-order theory is developed to fill the gap between high political economy and the concrete world of agricultural production. The theory suggested here is tangible in the world of experience. Three themes, all of which are undervalued in the literature, guide the theoretical discussions - work relations, the biophysical basis of agricultural production and the concept of different forms of production. Flexibility is the concept used to integrate these themes. In the first stage of theoretical development and integration, two types of conceptually different workers are theorised: wage workers and self-employed workers have different motivations for work and different flexibilities in doing their work. From this basis, a functional typology of work relations in agriculture is developed, which differentiates all workers and enterprises. In the second stage, the flexibility of workers is matched with the labour demands of hypothetical production systems which are based to differing extents on biophysical resources. Some of these production systems are able to be controlled and consequently made more amenable to wage labour than are others. The third theme argues that two conceptually different forms of production exist – simple commodity production and capitalist production. The generalised exchange relations of capitalism are held to be a necessary condition for the emergence of simple commodity production. The power of these conceptualisations is tested by extending the concept of simple commodity production to include sharecropping. It is argued that non-ownership of the farm is the only criteria by which sharecroppers can be excluded from being classified as simple commodity producers, and this is less important than the ownership of the share contract. Apple orcharding and dairy farming in New Zealand are the focus of the empirical part of this research. First, the production system for each industry is established in relation to their dependence on biophysical systems. Then secondary data, and the information from postal questionnaires and interviews with key informants are used to examine the social relations of production in core regions of production, and in regions where each industry has expanded substantially during the 1980 to 1994 period. The production system for apples features two distinct demands for labour which are related to the biophysical inputs. One is a relatively small, permanent work force which must be flexible to attend to the capricious nature of the biophysical resource, and the other is relatively large, lumpy demands for labour, especially at the harvest. These lumpy demands for labour can be met only by accessing external labour markets. The forms of production in the apple industry are distinguishable as either simple commodity producers or capitalist producers. The family enterprises are categorised as simple commodity producers, despite, in some cases, a relatively low contribution of labour by family workers to the enterprise. The three large, fully-capitalist apple producers have reduced their exposure to apples, an indication that the prospects for regular sustainable profits by capitalist producers from apple production are not sufficient. The milk production system is characterised by a demand for high levels of permanent numerical flexibility and high contributions of family labour. Its pastoral basis imposes limits on the scale of individual farms, and these farms are ideally suited to family-based enterprises – simple commodity producers. Sharemilking is an integral part of the industry. Despite the lack of farm ownership, these sharecroppers can be classified as simple commodity producers. That the large-scale capitalist dairy farmers use mostly 50/50 sharemilkers to operate the majority of their farms supports the contention that sharemilking is the most efficient way for capitalist farmers to organise production. The apple industry is more amenable to the capitalist form of production than pastoral dairy farming because of the higher seasonal demands for labour external to the family, the lower levels of labour flexibility required by the production system and the limits of scale which are part of pastoral dairy farming do not exist in apple orcharding. Yet simple commodity producers are likely to persist in apple orcharding because of their inherent characteristics as a form of production. While capitalist producers must make a certain profit to maintain their presence in any industry, the motivation of simple commodity producers revolves around the duality of household and enterprise, and its reproduction Key words: Work relations, Flexibility, Biophysical conditions of production, Simple commodity production, Capitalist production, Sharecropping, Sharemilking, Subsumption, Apple orcharding, Dairy farming, New Zealand.

This thesis examines the relationship of labour mobility and socioeconomic transformation in the Solomon Islands, and proposes that one cannot be understood in isolation from the other. Explanation is pursued both at the levels of structure and of agency, and integration of these levels is attempted in some places. This is discussed in the first part of the thesis, within a general discussion of issues of theory and method. The second part of the thesis deals with the structural parameters of labour mobility. Through the twentieth century, the institutions of government, mission and capitalist enterprise have been central in shaping the Solomon Islands social formation. The roles of these formal institutions with implications for labour mobility have ranged from purveyors of ideology to employers of labour. Another major element in the social formation is an original Melanesian mode of production which influences labour mobility through village-level institutions such as the land tenure system, kinship, and household operation. Labour circulation is a major factor in linking village and non-village institutions, and more abstractly in articulating two different modes of production. The third part of the thesis considers the ways in which individual agency operates within structure. The data base are life histories and related information from the Mbambatana language group on the island of Choiseul. This is integrated with national, regional and village-level structural information. Education is important in the way it 'selects' individuals for certain kinds of employment. This selection process occurs within the wage economy generally, but is further refined within institutions of employment. This results in labour mobility 'streams' which have identifiable characteristics related to gender, education, and employment type. Movements within each 'stream' have typical temporal and spatial characteristics. Patterns of labour mobility, especially sequence, are affected by gender and life cycle factors. For men and women the most critical changes take place in the 20s age span, but individual behaviour varies according to marriage and childrearing patterns. From a village perspective, labour circulation is a logical response to the necessity of operating within two different economic systems typified by different modes of production. This process of articulation is manifest in other ways as well, and households or families may adopt different strategies in operating within two different systems. The particular strategy adopted depends on the labour power available, degree of access to land, and employment possibilities of individual members.