Eric Pawson

Children's Access to Local Environments: A case-study of Christchurch, New Zealand

This article provides a case-study of variability in childrens independent access to their local environments in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. It is based on research with children in middle childhood, parents and teachers in four schools in Christchurch, each selected on the basis of variables hypothesised to impact on childrens access to their local areas. The paper outlines why such independent access is of value, not only for children, but also for adults responsible for their safety, for the wider environment and for the local community. Variability within Christchurch is related to the socio-spatial nature of local environments. International comparisons are also made, drawing out the implications of differing cultural contexts for the pursuit of child-friendly cities. The article explores the role of social traps in impeding the creation of a more sustainable, child-friendly city.

Problem-Based Learning in Geography: Towards a Critical Assessment of Its Purposes, Benefits and Risks.

This paper makes a critical assessment of problem-based learning (PBL) in geography. It assesses what PBL is, in terms of the range of definitions in use and in light of its origins in specific disciplines such as medicine. It considers experiences of PBL from the standpoint of students, instructors and managers (e.g. deans), and asks how well suited this method of learning is for use in geography curricula, courses and assignments. It identifies some ‘best practices in PBL’, as well as some useful sources for those seeking to adopt PBL in geography. It concludes that PBL is not a teaching and learning method to be adopted lightly, and that if the chances of successful implementation are to be maximized, careful attention to course preparation and scenario design is essential. More needs to be known about the circumstances in which applications of PBL have not worked well and also about the nature of the inputs needed from students, teachers and others to reap its benefits.

Student Employability and its Implications for Geography Curricula and Learning Practices

The nature and mission of universities have changed over the past two decades. The move towards mass education with decreased levels of state support has come with greater levels of accountability to stakeholders, including students, employers and the state itself. Graduates are expected to exhibit greater degrees of employability: that is they are more likely to gain and maintain employment, and to progress in workplaces and build careers. In this paper, we discuss the varying mixes of geographical knowledge, technical competencies and personal attributes that graduates require, before examining the implications on the design of geography curricula and learning practices.

Memorial Trees and Treescape Memories

The interconnections between trees and memorialisation are explored at three particular sites in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. Memorial trees have been used as a seemingly blank canvas, to be coloured by the paintbox of memory. The ability of such trees to carry significant memories of past events into the present involves myriad slippages and all kinds of untidiness: the settings in which memorial trees are asked to perform are subject to significant and often transformative cultural change; the trees themselves are active organic components in the changing coconstitution of place and place meanings; and tree places can afford emotional responses and serve as spaces of much more immediate and prereflexive practice and performance. These dynamics suggest rather different connections between trees and memorialisation, which we term treescape memories.

From agricultural science to “biological economies"?

HugH Campbell1 Rob buRToN2 maRk CoopeR1 maTTHew HeNRy3 eReNa le HeRoN4 RiCHaRd le HeRoN4 NiCk lewiS4 eRiC pawSoN5 HaRvey peRkiNS6 mike RoCHe3 CHRiS RoSiN1 ToNi wHiTe7 1university of otago Centre for the Study of agriculture, Food and the environment (CSaFe) po box 56 dunedin 9054, New Zealand 2agResearch ltd invermay agricultural Centre private bag 50034 mosgiel 9053, New Zealand 3massey university private bag 11222 palmerston North 4442, New Zealand 4The university of auckland private bag 92019 auckland 1142, New Zealand New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 2009, Vol. 52: XXX 0028–8233/09/5201–00

Local Development Initiatives And Unemployment In New Zealand

In New Zealand, the national and local incidence of unemployment rose sharply with the drive to adopt neo‐liberal modes of regulation from the mid 1980s. This paper focuses on the local impacts of nationally formulated measures to combat unemployment, and in particular on the West Coast of the South Island. This is a region long regarded as problematic in terms of the provision of work given its history as a resource frontier. The measures can be divided into those that fall on a ‘business development’ path and those that come under the umbrella of ‘community development’. Although there is some overlap between both paths, the schemes promoted under each are distinctive and open to assessment. Such assessment shows the very limited contribution made by measures under either path to their targeted objective of reducing unemployment.

The regional consequences of economic restructuring: the West Coast, New Zealand (1984–1991)

Abstract This paper focuses on the local implications of the states response to crisis under global capitalism. New Zealand, one of a small number of European settler, primary producer economies, performed relatively poorly through the post-war long boom. A new government in 1984 sought to rectify this through an intensive programme of deregulation and state sector restructuring. This, however, was carried out without consideration of the impacts of policy on people in places, whose interests were assumed to coincide with the ‘national interest’. The local effects of the restructuring of both state and private sector capital are traced through a study of the West Coast of the South Island, a remote rural region, formerly dependent on extractive activity and state sector employment. The importance of understanding the interaction of local, national and global forces in assessing the outcome of restructuring is shown, and the need to understand the specificity of place in accounting for peoples reactions to restructuring is underlined. The state is now reliant on a model of ‘enterprise’ to counter continued disinvestment, the validity of which requires ongoing research.

Reworking the Geography of the Long Boom; The Small Town Experience of Restructuring in Reefton, New Zealand

During the postwar long boom, the economic, political, and cultural configurations adopted to regulate the crisis tendencies of capitalism in New Zealand were broadly those of social democracy. Key features of social democratic policy in this period were the assistance of primary production through subsidies, the protection of domestic industry, a well-developed welfare state, and the promotion of economic development in marginal places and regions. These regulatory arrangements found expression as a distinctive geography of the long boom. In small towns this was typified by clusters of agencies associated with the states intervention in production and its provision of infrastructure. Local employment was often concentrated in these agencies. We examine the nature of such a geography during the long boom in Reefton, a small town on the West Coast of the South Island, and its subsequent reworking during the restructuring of the 1980s. This reworking is explored through a focus on the major state and private sector workplaces within the towns economic base and their employees. As key influences upon the newly emerging geography of the town, the forms of local governance that are being adopted in order to attract the spending and investment lost during restructuring are examined.

Land rights in historical and contemporary context

Abstract The contemporary context of land rights in Canada, Australia and New Zealand is introduced by comparing European and indigenous perceptions of land and natural resources and by examining the processes of land acquisition and settlement by the colonial power. During the nineteenth century indigenous people lost land, became marginalized in economic and social terms and suffered serious demographic decline. Policies of assimilation were introduced by governments in all three countries but were rejected by indigenous people in the second half of the twentieth century. The cross-links between cultural resurgence, land claims, the recovery of traditional economic bases and moves to exercise self determination are explored in this context.

Silences of Grass: Retrieving the Role of Pasture Plants in the Development of New Zealand and the British Empire

This article discusses the role of grasslands and their products in the development of empire between 1850 and 1930. It explores the paradox that, despite the significance of introduced grasslands in terms of environmental transformation and imperial trade, most contemporary observers ignored this or took it for granted as, generally, have todays historians of empire. The article charts relations between grassland development, improvement and empire building, and examines how retrieval of this neglected story might encourage reconceptualisation of empire relationships, focusing particularly on those between New Zealand and Britain.