In Pursuit of Moving Targets: New Zealand Population Geography in the South Pacific

Abstract

New Zealand population geographers in the South Pacific islands early focused on resource issues, especially in Fiji and the smaller island states politically linked to New Zealand. This later extended into analysis of the structure of village level economic and social development, notably in Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Fiji. These analyses contributed to a clearer understanding of the substance of development at a key turning point in the region's history ‐ the transition to independence. Migration, or mobility, and urbanisation attracted enormous interest throughout the region, with lengthy debates ranging over migration models, urban permanence, the ideology of return and metaphors of mobility, establishing the most distinctive thrust of New Zealand research in the region. Practical research, involving censuses and consultancies, has directly contributed to development. Despite the valuable historical legacy the extent and significance of New Zealand work on the population geography of the Island Pacific has now dwindled.

Reflections on a region: New Zealand geographers and the study of Pacific peoples with special reference to the period 1945–1970

“…One of Cumberland's major legacies was the successive generations of graduates in the 1950s and 1960s that he and his staff encouraged to engage with issues related to the contemporary geography of New Zealand's Pacific neighbourhood. As Connell (1999, p. 38) observed, ‘In the 1950s and 1960s studies by New Zealand geographers in the region overwhelmingly concentrated on the “colonial realm” (Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelaus, Western Samoa) alongside Fiji and occasionally Tonga’. In the 1950s and 1960s, increasing numbers of graduate theses were being written by geography students, including me, on Pacific topics.…”

“…Cumberland's concerns, as noted earlier, were with comprehensive regional description and synthesis of information about the places he and his students were researching. There was no strong ideological dimension to his approach to population and development issues – as Connell (1999, p. 38) observed, his concerns for the future were deeply felt but they were essentially pragmatic. By the 1960s, a critical change was emerging in post‐war literature on development – a change reflected in the perspectives that Buchanan, Franklin and Watters brought to geographical research and teaching at Victoria University College in the 1950s.…”

“…In a sobering conclusion to his review of contributions made by New Zealand geographers to understanding developments in the Pacific region since 1945, John Connell (1999, p. 45) observed:…”

“…In New Zealand's geography departments, ‘field work’ is no longer a requirement in many courses, and research outside one's own country and cultural context has become much less common across the social sciences. Researching ‘the other’ is definitely not as fashionable in the early 21st century as it was in the mid‐20th century – the beginning of an era when New Zealand geographers and their distinctive practice of the discipline in the Pacific did so much ‘to shape island understandings’ (Connell 1999, p. 36).…”

“…My observations about the Pacific peoples and places are not intended to be comprehensive – reviews of research carried out by the New Zealand geographers on many key dimensions of human geography in the Pacific Islands (Connell 1999; Bedford 2004), Australia (Hugo 1999) and New Zealand (Bedford & Heenan 1987; Bedford 1999) have already traversed much of the relevant ground. Rather, the focus is on how the geography of the region's peoples was regarded and approached in the 1950s and 1960s with special reference to the ‘Cumberland’ school of regional geography and some of the critiques of the findings from research carried out by Cumberland and his students on land use in Samoa and Fiji.…”