Darwinism in New Zealand, 1859–1900

Stenhouse, John

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511572968.004

Cited by 17 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Unfortunately this key idea was a potent item of scientism, or scientific racism, employed in the modernist history of British colonisation of this country (Stenhouse, 1999). It is only a small step from acknowledging the key role played by the British Empire in the development of modern science, to the old idea about European superiority and, even if only by implication, Māori inferiority (Wetherell & Potter, 1992).…”

Section: The Philosophy Of Māori Science Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Māori crisis in science education

Stewart¹

2017

teacherswork

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This article is written for teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand schools who teach science to Year 7-10 students or as part of a primary classroom programme under NZC (the New Zealand Curriculum). What can teachers do about inequity in science education for Māori students? Clear understanding of this complex issue is required, so this article offers a synopsis of the Māori science curriculum debate. Written from my perspective as an insider-researcher interested in this topic for many years, this article engages with important comments about Māori-medium science education made by Sir Peter Gluckman in a major report on science education (2011), and an earlier challenge by Graham Hingangaroa Smith (1995) about the ‘Māori crisis’ in science education. The article lists and discusses options for teachers, including the potential of ‘bilingual science’ both as a useful practical approach for any classroom teacher, and as a way of navigating the current theoretical impasse or ‘crisis’ in Māori science education.

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Section: The Philosophy Of Māori Science Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Māori crisis in science education

Stewart¹

2017

teacherswork

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“…Their assault on any notion of a fundamental commonality among human beings has disconcerting points of intersection with the radical critique of humanism today. The scientific argument of the nineteenth century that came closest to post‐humanism’s insistence on the hybridity of humanity, promising to ‘close the ontological gap between human and non‐human animals’ (Day 2008, 49), was the evolutionary theory of biological descent associated with Darwin, and yet this theory was adopted in Aotearoa New Zealand and other colonial sites precisely to legitimate the potential extinction of other, ‘weaker’ races in the face of British colonisation on the grounds of the natural law of a struggle for survival (Stenhouse 1999).…”

Section: Conclusion: Defending Humanism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanism, race and the colonial frontier

Lester¹

2011

Trans Inst British Geog

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Beginning with an engagement with Kay Anderson’s recent post‐humanist approach, I propose an alternative explanation for the rise of an innatist discourse of race around the mid‐nineteenth century. I argue that the shift to innatist ideas of racial difference has to be seen as a matter of specific geographies of political contestation and trans‐imperial mobilisation emerging in the spatial assemblages of colonial frontier zones during the early nineteenth century. I suggest that, aside from their violent struggles with indigenous peoples in these dispersed but interconnected locales, what prompted the refinement, dispersal and repetition of biologically determinist racial thought was emigrant British settlers’ mobilisation against the critique of fellow Britons inspired by a religious humanist doctrine of universality. This explanation shares Anderson’s focus on the affective realm of a colonial frontier, but it differs from her interpretation with its emphasis on the contested politics of colonial conquest and above all on the lingering political possibilities of humanism. In engaging with a specific post‐humanist interpretation of innatism, this article seeks to address some of the implications of post‐humanism more broadly for histories of race.

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“…Geographers have noted the spatially contingent nature of the uptake of Darwin's ideas on evolution (Livingstone 2006). In New Zealand, Darwinism was enthusiastically received, in part because the colony lacked any strong religious institutions to oppose evolutionary ideas, and also because scientists were keen to expound Darwinism as it leant a modern, professional basis to their efforts (Stenhouse 1999). Eurasian species, naturalists of the day believed, had evolved over a much longer time than Southern species, which possessed the weakness and vulnerability of youth.…”

Section: Containmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extension, subversion, containment: eco‐nationalism and (post)colonial nature in Aotearoa New Zealand

Ginn¹

2008

Trans Inst British Geog

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National identity in many post-colonial states is predicated on nature being outside and antecedent to culture and the colonial project. This paper questions the historical and essentialist assumptions underpinning this vision using New Zealand as a case study, and in particular the Christchurch Botanic Gardens in the nineteenth century. I argue that the Gardens were a site in the multi-species extension of colonial space, but that far from being docile entities, non-humans kicked back to change the very nature of the project. New Zealand's eco-nationalist project is described as not only an attempt to order the past, present and future lives of non-humans (invasive, native and migrant alike), but also to sanitise the colonial expropriation of the indigenous and to preclude any mode of relating to 'nature' that might subvert the essentialisms inherent in a preservationist ethic. Situated between three modes of critique: nature-as-ideology; nature as complex but real; and an ontological exposure of hidden hybridity, I make a modest move beyond (re)description of naturecultures to normative critique of their constitutive relations. key words eco-nationalism New Zealand history nature botanic gardens preservation

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Darwinism in New Zealand, 1859–1900

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

A Māori crisis in science education

A Māori crisis in science education

Humanism, race and the colonial frontier

Extension, subversion, containment: eco‐nationalism and (post)colonial nature in Aotearoa New Zealand

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