Mapping Leisure and Life Through the Ages in New Zealand
This chapter offers an introductory map of leisure in the South Pacific state of New Zealand, taking special interest in the tightening and loosening of social and legislative control on leisure and its effect on ‘national identity’. An Arcadian exoticism
- PDF / 382,365 Bytes
- 25 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 26 Downloads / 210 Views
Mapping Leisure and Life Through the Ages in New Zealand Michael Toohey, Grant Cushman and Bob Gidlow
Introduction This chapter offers an introductory map of leisure in the South Pacific state of New Zealand, taking special interest in the tightening and loosening of social and legislative control on leisure and its effect on ‘national identity’. An Arcadian exoticism has inhabited European understanding of New Zealand. It is detectable in such concepts as ‘God’s own country’ (laconically and sometimes ironically abbreviated to ‘Godzone’), made fashionable in the early twentieth century by populist New Zealand premier Richard Seddon (1845–1906), and still detectable in the long-running tourism campaign ‘100 per cent Pure New Zealand’. Consistent with this image is the construction of New Zealand as a Better Britain in the South; a place where a ‘superior strain’ of Anglo-Celts was able to flourish in favourable social, political and physical conditions. The image of a country of tough, pioneering, outdoorsy and egalitarian (if slightly rustic) men and women persisted throughout much of the twentieth century and beyond. It is reflected both in a tradition of innovative outdoor recreation, exemplified by such activities as commercial bungee jumping and adventure multi-sport, and in a fondness for masculine ‘literary yarns’, characterized by Barry Crump’s hugely successful Good Keen Man (1960) and other novels and short stories in the same vein. The availability and type of leisure enjoyed by New Zealanders has been a key component of this image. New Zealanders have been portrayed as ‘keen on sport’, a notion supported by relative success in international competition (Laidler & M. Toohey (&) Jinan University, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China G. Cushman B. Gidlow Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand G. Cushman Waikato University, Hamilton, New Zealand © The Editor(s) 2018 I. Modi and T.J. Kamphorst (eds.), Mapping Leisure, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3632-3_3
29
30
M. Toohey et al.
Cushman, 1993). In contrast, a streak of democratic anti-intellectualism (sometimes defined as ‘tall poppy syndrome’) combined with physical distance from the ‘cultural capitals’ of the northern hemisphere has contributed to an image of a people more inclined to outdoor than indoor leisure, although the accuracy of this has long been debated, given that New Zealand was well on the way to becoming an urbanized society within 60 years of settler-colonization in the mid-nineteenth century (Fairweather & Mulet-Marquis, 2008: 6). In this chapter it is argued that social and legislative control played a role in structuring the leisure choices made by New Zealanders, and that as New Zealand society transformed from settler to settled, control over leisure tightened in the face of broadening commercial leisure choices. Thus, as New Zealanders enthusiastically embraced such new innovations in active and passive leisure as roller skates, bicycles, swimming baths, cinema, radio, television, jogging, aerobics and disco, governments, churches and
Data Loading...
