Matthew Henry

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

Assembling meteorology: balloons, leaking gas, and colonial relations in the making of new atmospheres

ABSTRACT Meteorology has been defined by its struggles to assemble systems to measure and inscribe the atmosphere as a three dimensional volume. This short communication examines the aerological observations made at the Apia Observatory in Western Samoa during the early 1920s. It focuses on the largely unknown work of the meteorologist Andrew Thomson. In sketching his work with weather balloons the paper argues that we need to take greater account of the non-human actors and materials enrolled to make scientific work possible, and of the largely invisible work of creating and maintaining the heterogeneous relationships between scientists and the other actors enrolled in the practice of science.

Australasian Airspace: Meteorology, and the Practical Geopolitics of Australasian Airspace, 1935–1940

In late December 1937, New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, played host to a unique aeronautical confluence. On December 26, after 31 hours flying, the Pan American Airways’ (PAA) flying boat Samoan Clipper touched down on the Waitemata Harbour. The Samoan Clipper’s arrival from Honolulu into Auckland marked a much hoped-for inauguration of a commercial service carrying cargo and mail from San Francisco to Auckland. The following day, as the Samoan Clipper lay moored at Mechanics’ Bay, the Imperial Airways flying boat Centaurus, on the last leg of a survey flight from Southampton, arrived from Sydney. Both flying boat crews were feted by local dignitaries (see Figure 12.1). Reflecting on the event, the editor of Auckland’s morning newspaper The New Zealand Herald prophesied a rosy aeronautical future, one of advantage “not only to New Zealand but also to Australia, more particularly when the Empire route is continued across the Tasman.”1 However, amid the celebrations there were quiet reminders of the ongoing political and technical difficulties in establishing and maintaining links across the Pacific and to the United Kingdom. PAA’s representative F. Walton had earlier hinted that broader geopolitical issues were at stake.2 Geopolitics aside, the very act of regular oceanic flight required the fashioning of a still fragile techno-scientific infrastructure. In this context, the importance of meteorological information was stressed by J. W. Burgess, the New Zealand-born captain of the Centaurus.

Epilogue: Future Research Directions

In addition to offering new and stimulating perspectives on climate, science, and colonization, we hope this book will inspire new research and approaches on these themes and topics. We hope, for instance, that the chapters in this collection might serve as starting points for developing stronger comparisons of different climatic understandings in and beyond Australia and New Zealand. Such comparative work is important because much of the historiography on Australian and New Zealand climates has been dominated by an implicit methodological orientation that positions the nation-state as the privileged frame for environmental stories. As work within the evolving realm of transnational history has shown us, and as the volume’s contributors have demonstrated, a focus on localities and networks renders problematic the framing of environments within take-for-granted political boundaries by highlighting the intricate, albeit uneven, intersections of climate variability, environmental learning and everyday practice that have taken place across New Zealand and Australia. As this book illustrates, just as the climatic processes that have shaped Australia and New Zealand cross political boundaries, so too have ideas and learning moved between the two countries and flowed to the rest of the world. For example, Kirsty Douglas (chapter 5) has demonstrated the fruitfulness of international comparative research between Australia and the United States, while Matt Henry (chapter 12) has highlighted how geopolitical considerations shaped the ways in which weather forecasts were understood, recorded and circulated.

Protecting a National Military Body: Territorialising New Zealand's Border Spaces, November 1915

On the 5 August 1914 New Zealands governor, Lord Liverpool, mounted the parliaments steps in Wellington and to an audience of approximately 15,000 people announced the outbreak of war. During August further proclamations quickly sundered relations between New Zealand and the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires: trading with these enemy states was banned, the exportation of scheduled goods was banned, financial relations were banned, and German shipping was given a period of grace to leave New Zealands ports.1 Concomitant proclamations called for New Zealands Army Reserve, Special Army Reserve, and elements of the Territorial Force to report for permanent service.2 Through these proclamations we may begin to glimpse the gathering reorientation of the New Zealand state to meet the demands of war, processes involving both programs intended to transform the New Zealand state and strategies designed to help produce a socio-economic war system. In contrast to a growing body of work which examines the importance of the First World War (and especially the Anzac experience) in defining a sense of New Zealand nationhood, very little has been written which traces the administration of New Zealands domestic war effort and its postwar implications. There are, however, glimpses of conversations. In the volumes that comprise New Zealands First World War history there is some discussion, for example, of the national register and the work of the Board of Trade.3 The establishment of the latter which signalled, wrote

Creating Mundane Networks: Modulating New Zealand's Passport System

This article begins by highlighting Mayells (2004) call for geographers to examine New Zealands geopolitical interests and apparatus. However, the manner in which Mayell frames his call is argued to unnecessarily limit the scope of such an examination. In supporting this claim the article draws on an exchange of letters between two officials working in New Zealands Department of Internal Affairs and Australias Department of the Interior concerning the administration of their respective countries passport systems. Drawing on a combination of ideas taken from critical geopolitics and Actor-Network Theory, the article argues for recognition of the mundane practice, and objects, of geopolitics as important constitutive fields in their own right.