This thesis explores the nature of ambivalence in Maori political thought as expressed during John Ballance's tour of seven Maori districts in 1885. A microhistorical study of Maori speeches recorded during the tour, undertaken by Ballance as minister of Native Affairs, reveals three overlapping points regarding Maori political thought in the late nineteenth century. Firstly, despite a lack of power in processes of government and the effects of numerous land laws, Maori remained optimistic at the possibility of gaining equality, an optimism generated by the very act of Ballance's visit to Maori communities. Secondly, optimism was grounded in a pragmatic approach to state power, one that acknowledged the realities of the colonial government's positionin the New Zealand political system. Thirdly, a strongly held desire for equality, in combination with a pragmatic approach to state power, explains why Maori continued to seek solutions through the colonial government in the late nineteenth century. These three implicit positions can be seen in the greetings, criticisms and requests made by Maori leaders during the twelve hui that constituted Ballance's tour. In combination, these points suggest an ambivalence in the conceptual bases of Maori political thought in the late nineteenth century. This argument challenges existing interpretations of late nineteenth century Maori political activity, particularly the idea that Maori increasingly sought 'autonomy' in their own sphere. By adopting the approach of the microhistorian, this thesis opens a brief and unique window onto a period between the New Zealand wars and the resurgent protest movements of the 1890s, one that historians have yet to capture.

This comparative study examines trends in the representation of the environment in Malaysian and New Zealand newspapers over an eight year period. By comparing the two media contexts, it explored the role of journalism’s occupational norms, of the relationship between journalists and sources and of media ownership in determining the quality of news coverage of the environment. The sample was made up of eight mainstream newspapers which were selected based on biggest circulation figures, sampled in 1996, 2000 and 2004. The four Malaysian newspapers, all nationally distributed, were the English-language papers The New Straits Times and The Star, and the Malay-language papers Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia. The four New Zealand newspapers, all regionally distributed, were The Press, The Dominion Post, The New Zealand Herald and The Otago Daily Times. The study employed content analysis as the prime method to observe trends in environmental news; while in-depth interviews with 40 respondents were used to verify from subjects’ experiences the various forces that might cause the trends. Major content analysis findings were that environmental news is underrepresented in both countries and that the news patterns in the two countries are quite similar. The study raised questions about the quality of the news, with much of the coverage being conflict-framed, one-source event stories, with high dependency on government officials. These problems were less acute in New Zealand. Trends were largely stable across the three years. The most significant change in Malaysian coverage was an increase in the use of the public and scientists as sources over time. Interviews revealed some differences between New Zealand and Malaysia in journalists’ awareness of organizational determinants of news, editorial policies towards the environment, sources criticisms of journalists’ laziness, but also many common problems, including journalists’ lack of knowledge about environmental issues and science. In Malaysia, government control of the news and editors’ self-censorship of sensitive news was identified as a problem. The study concludes that newspapers in both countries do not operate as information providers or educators, but most of the time are reactive towards environmental issues.

This thesis investigates predictions of an exemplar account of syntax, by testing whether manipulating socially salient phonetic detail can alter the grammaticality judgements given to morpho-syntactic constructions in New Zealand English (NZE). Three experiments are were conducted as part of this thesis. The first tested the social saliency of different phonetic variables in NZE, and found phrase final /t/, which can be realised with or without a release, to be strongest. In the second experiment, phrase final /t/ was tested further, and manipulating the release significantly altered both the age and class ratings given to speakers. The way in which it did this reflected the patterns documented in production. In the third experiment, participants were asked to rate the grammaticality of the same sentences. When the results of the previous experiment were included in the statistical model, an effect of the variant came out as significant. The more participants had rated a speaker as older with the released variant in the previous experiment, the less they rated the sentence as grammatical with the released variant. That is, only the most socially salient realisations were able to alter perceived grammaticality. Overall, the results of this thesis suggest that speaker information and pho- netic detail can affect grammaticality judgements. This supports an exemplar model of syntax. Regardless of the theoretical implications of the findings however, the methodological ones are clear. If speakers and realisations of certain phonetic variables can alter grammaticality judgements, then they must be controlled for in the presentation of stimuli to participants.

This thesis examines the political attitudes and behaviour of young principled non-voters in New Zealand and explores the potential influence of postmaterialist theory on their decision not to vote in general elections. This research is primarily conducted through in-depth interviews with young principled non-voters with the goal of understanding their political motivations through their own words. Democratic theory, postmaterialist theory, leading voting theories and research relating to young people and New Zealand are all focused on to place the findings from the in-depth interviews in the context of wider literature and research. The findings of this research suggest that, while postmaterialist theory is a potential influence on some of the young principled non-voters interviewed, the relationship between principled non-voters and postmaterialism is not as strong as expected. However, the findings did show consistently low levels support for the current systems of political representation and participation in New Zealand amongst those interviewed. This, as well as their support for alternative methods of participation, places the participants in line many of the current concerns for the health of representative democracies and traditional political practices. These principled non-voters also highlight the need for greater research into young non-voters in New Zealand, as they do not fit within traditional expectations of young apathetic non-voters.

Although much has been written on the 1930s as a period of ferment and innovation in New Zealand’s literary culture, the immediate post-war period has remained largely unexamined. As an outcome, literary histories have tended to downplay the significance of the Centennial publications and overlooked the impact made by the literary-cultural periodical to the post-war literary economy. The formulation of a conversation within the pages of the journals and the associated creation of the culture-critic were central to the cultural nationalism of the period 1947-61. It is argued in this thesis that the ‘long fifties’, the years from the cessation of the Second World War through to the early sixties, were a discrete moment in New Zealand’s literary history. To understand the success of the journals as a form of intervention their founding needs to be traced not only to Phoenix and Tomorrow – journals of the thirties – but also to the programme of publishing that was part of the 1940 Centennial celebrations. Under the leadership of J. C. Beaglehole and E. H. McCormick, the Centennial publications contested the existing structures of cultural authority that lay with the amateur historian and the literary criticism of the ‘bookmen’. Beaglehole and McCormick professionalised the discourse of history writing and literary criticism through the introduction of academic practice, and, significantly, a rigorously critical engagement with the formation of national identity. Their critical engagement acted as an encouragement to the founding of the literary-cultural journal during the late 1940s: Landfall begun publishing in 1947 and Here & Now followed in 1949. This thesis argues, however, that alongside these two independent journals there needs to be placed the Listener under the editorship of M. H. Holcroft, and that these three publications created sites where the imaginative could sit next to the critical, and that this development was based on the belief that the absence of a critical undertaking would stunt the growth of the culture’s imaginative and creative undertaking. During the period 1947-61 the development of a specific form of intervention in the writing of the culture-critic can be detected. The culture-critics sought to actively engage the reading public in a conversation; therefore, they wrote for the periodicals in a style that was accessible but discriminating; they understood that they had a specific function within society. Furthermore, the primacy attached to the cultural authority of Brasch and Landfall is contested, and it is instead claimed that an exclusive focus on Landfall distorts the overall temper of the post-war years. Landfall was but one site where the developing national consciousness was published and assessed; it was a disputatious time.

It is commonly thought that New Zealand writers before World War II suffered from a "dual exile". In New Zealand, they were exiled far from the publishing opportunities and cultural stimulus of metropolitan centres. To succeed as writers they were forced to go overseas, where they endured a second kind of spiritual exile, far from home. They were required to give up their "New Zealandness" in order to achieve literary success, yet never completely belonged in the metropolitan centres to which they had gone. They thus became permanent exiles. This thesis aims to discover the true prevalence of "dual exile" amongst early twentieth-century New Zealand writers. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, it argues that the hypothesis of "dual exile" is a myth propagated since the 1930s by New Zealand‘s cultural nationalist tradition. New Zealand writers were not exiles because of the existence of the "colonial writing world"—a system of cultural diffusion, literary networks and personal interactions that gave writers access to all the cultural capital of Britain through lines of communication established by colonial expansion. Those who went to Britain remained connected to New Zealand through these same networks. The existence of the colonial writing world meant that the physical location of the writer, whether in New Zealand or overseas, had far less impact on literary success than the cultural nationalists assumed.

This thesis examines the relationship between utopianism and nationalism in New Zealand literature between 1817 and 1973. My research utilises the definition of both the utopia and the nation as “imagined” or “imaginary” communities (to use Benedict Anderson and Phillip Wegner’s terms), in demonstrating how they function as interdependent concepts in colonial New Zealand literature. Specifically, my research focuses on how a dominant discourse of Pākehā nationalism is influenced by the desires of colonial settlement. There is an identifiable tradition in which New Zealand is imagined as a utopian space with an ambivalence towards modernity. The settler nation is defined subjectively by different authors, retaining, however, a tradition of excluding groups which are not compatible with the authors’ utopian projections. This exclusion may be based on race, gender, class, political views or other categorisations. I view this tradition as a dialectic of changing desires and utopian visions, based on changing historical contexts, but always engaged with the central attempt to speculate the possibilities that New Zealand holds as a utopia for Anglocentric settlement. The thesis is divided into four chapters, each based on the comparison of two texts from a certain period. The first chapter compares two texts of early nineteenth century British settlement, J.L. Nicholas’ Narrative of Voyage to New Zealand (1817) and E.J. Wakefield’s Adventure in New Zealand (1845). The second chapter examines Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) and Julius Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000 (1889). The third chapter focuses on Robin Hyde’s Wednesday’s Children (1936) and John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939). My final chapter argues that the end of this mode of writing is signalled by Smith’s Dream (1971 rev. 1973) by C.K. Stead and Intensive Care (1970) by Janet Frame, which demonstrate a changing approach to the tradition. After this point, other postcolonial voices emerge and the attempted homogeneity of settler utopianism is disrupted.

Many Pakeha beliefs are embodied in the value and meanings they have ascribed to the New Zealand landscape. These mythologies of physical space have functioned to help Pakeha construct a collective identity and to make sense of their place in the world. Painting the landscape in the cultural imagination in a number of diverse ways, from Arcadia to harsh wasteland, has functioned to help justify and explain the place of Pakeha in Maori homeland: imagining New Zealand as home meant that these myths fostered a feeling of belonging. Consequently, cultural criticism has revealed the hypocritical, sentimental and destructive nature of such myths, particularly with regards to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. However, the deconstruction of myth cannot provide a foundation for future cultural criticism to engage with. The cynicism fostered by demolishing collective mythologies requires a new form of critique. This means that a return to sincere belief is called for in the post-secular moment: a form of atheistic belief in the most radically creative aspects of Pakeha landscape mythology is thus crucial to the critique of its most totalitarian and destructive ones.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of wineries’ attitudes towards wine tourism in New Zealand from the supply-side perspective. It is based on a survey of New Zealand national wineries’ conducted in 2010, and follows up to two previous New Zealand National Wineries’ surveys conducted by Hall and Johnson (1997) and Christensen et al. (2004). This research benchmarks changes which have taken place in the New Zealand wine industry with respect to wine tourism since 2003, as well as examining new elements of the contemporary wine tourism environment with respect to winery attitudes towards innovation, the environment, biosecurity and sustainability. The incorporation of questions from previous New Zealand National Wineries’ Surveys allows for longitudinal information to be presented between the 2010, 2003 and 1997 surveys. This comparative analysis of the survey time series provides value to the existing New Zealand wine tourism research by illustrating how wineries in New Zealand have used tourism as part of their business strategy. The findings reveal that there are many significant gaps in what is known about the character of the New Zealand wine tourist, and also of the industry itself. Biosecurity and sustainability issues are examined, and for the first time in wine tourism research anywhere in the world a section dedicated to innovation within the context of wine tourism is also included. Though the nature of wine tourism in New Zealand appears to fluctuate, the generally positive attitude of the wine industry towards tourism indicated in this study suggests that there is still unrealised potential within the industry, provided that it is both safeguarded against external threats, and is also promoted correctly through the appropriate channels in order to assure future growth.

The overall objective of this thesis is to compare and contrast alternative measures of wellbeing in New Zealand during the 19th -early 20th centuries from a spatial perspective by collecting, collating and analyzing new economic, social and anthropometric data. Provincial data was collected from the Statistics New Zealand Annual Reports and New Zealand Census. Anthropometric data was derived from the personnel records of New Zealanders serving in WWI, which only became available to the public in 2005. Time-series tests for convergence and causality have been applied to analyze New Zealand’s economic history, where appropriate. The last quarter of the 19th century in New Zealand was a period of rapid change both in terms of economic and demographic indicators. Prior to the universal convergence of the existing monetary-based measures of wellbeing across Provinces, there were some apparent disparities in the commodity price and real wage series, as well as urban-rural differences in occupation-specific real wages and infant mortality trends. There was also no single pattern of stature decline across provinces during 1871-1898, or between urban and rural areas, where disparities were particularly apparent. The traditional view of the healthy and wealthy New Zealand could only be established at an aggregate level, during a certain time period and for a certain ethnic group (New Zealand European only). Using Provincial data for the period 1874-1919 I have been able to show that improvements in real wages and a decrease in education inequality (between females and males) corresponded to lower infant deaths and thus better health outcomes, while increased dwelling density created unfavorable conditions for infants’ chances of survival. Anthropometric data was used in conjunction with socio-economic provincial data to establish the relationship between stature, urbanization, real wages and infant mortality. The results showed that dwelling density (overcrowding) and general economic conditions were both important in determining stature outcomes during 1870-1900, while the effect of infant mortality on stature was negligible. Most importantly, it has been demonstrated that in New Zealand stature represents a much more robust measure of living standards than real wages or health indicators on their own, at least during the 1870-1900 period.