New Zealand geography, biography and autobiography

Introductionnzg_1200 73..78

New Zealand geography, biographyand autobiography

Michael RocheSchool of People Environment and Planning, Massey University, Private Bag11-222 Palmerston North, New Zealand

Abstract: This introduction to the special issue on biography and geography in NewZealand reviews some of the existing biographical and autobiographical writing relat-ing to the university discipline of geography in New Zealand. It then frames the fivepapers in this issue within the boundaries of haphazard events, mistakes and acci-dents, definitions of geographers and definitions of geography. While arguing forfurther research into disciplinary history in New Zealand, it is asserted that theseendeavours are of value for the future of the discipline and not only a matter ofconcern for those interested in the past.

Key word: biography, geography, New Zealand.

Biographical writing has been a long estab-lished means of approaching geography’s disci-plinary past (e.g. Dunbar 1978) althoughexercises in collective biography intended toreveal the origins and purpose of the discipline,sometimes in terms of model and exemplarylives, have been more numerous (e.g. Gilbert1972; Barton & Karan 1992). More recentefforts have linked individuals with key ideas(Hubbard et al. 2004). Griffith Taylor (1958)preferred the autobiographical route. In thelast decade, geographers have revisited biogra-phy and this special issue is a continuation ofthese efforts (Daniels & Nash 2004; Withers2006). That biography and geography shouldcome together is not surprising in that biogra-phy can be thought of as ‘life geography’(Daniels & Nash 2004). Evocation of place interms of home territory and new workingspaces is a theme in King’s (2007) collection ofAustralasian geographers’ accounts of theirprofessional careers in North America.1 It is apoint made emphatically in Gerald Ward’s

(2004, p. 89) autobiographical essay about hisearly life in Taupo.

Birth, naming, Maori and Pakeha friends, andupbringing in a family immersed in theTaupo county came together to make this myplace – and make it intimately an emotion-ally part of my identity. And the place, andmy intimate connections with it, laid thefoundation for the many of my later interests,attitudes, and even my profession as ageographer.

Withers has examined memory and thehistory of geographical knowledge andalthough his example of Mungo Park is farremoved from New Zealand it is pertinent,when it to comes to considering why some com-parable geographical careers are recognised insociety publications and retained in institu-tional memory while others are not (Withers2004). The papers in this special issue areframed by Peet’s reminder that, ‘biography has

Note about author: Michael Roche is Professor of Geography in the School of People, Environment andPlanning at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

E-mail: [email protected]

New Zealand Geographer (2011) 67, 73–78

© 2011 The AuthorNew Zealand Geographer © 2011 The New Zealand Geographical Society

doi: 10.1111/j.1745-7939.2011.01200.x

to be investigative, it has to be deeply apprecia-tive, it has to contextualise the haphazard, andto disturb the structured with the mistakes andaccidents that really make things happen’ (Peet2005, 165) and by the exchange between Driverand Baigent (2007) and Johnston (2007) overwho is counted as a geographer in the BritishOnline Dictionary of National Biography andwhat constitutes geography. Johnston opts forthe narrower professionally qualified universitystaff member, Driver and Baigent are open to abroader interpretation.

The genealogy of this special issue is some-what tortuous stretching back to an oral historyof geography project (Mansvelt 2003; Pawson2003;Roche 2003).The results of the oral historypilot study were reported on at the BrisbaneInternational Geographical Union (IGU)meeting in 2006 (Roche 2006) with a more par-ticular focus on biography and geography. Sincethat time, though unconnected with these twooccasions,a number of local and expatriate NewZealand geographers have produced autobio-graphical accounts of their careers within thediscipline. These are not the earliest such state-ments. The first is perhaps George Jobberns’address to the New Zealand Geography confer-ence in 1958, discussed his school, teachers’college, university career alongside wider disci-plinary matters (Jobberns 1939). One of Job-berns’ students and later colleague, MurrayMcCaskill provided an equivalent essay forSouthern Perspectives, a 50th year anniversaryvolume celebrating the establishment of NewZealand university geography in 1937 (McCa-skill 1987). Other contributions since theninclude essays by GerryWard (ANU;2004),RayWatters (Victoria;2008),Bryan Saunders (2004)and Kenneth Cumberland (Canterbury andAuckland; 2007). In a separate category is thelate Dame Evelyn Stokes (Waikato; 2001), whopublished an edition of her letters home fromher time as doctoral student at the SyracuseUniversity in the USA (1960–1963). More wideranging is Les King’s collection of 10 biographi-cal memoirs of seven New Zealand and threeAustralian geographers who spent some or all oftheir careers as postgraduate students and staffin Canada and the USA from the 1960s to the1990s (King 2007).

Autobiographical musings about a careerspent in academic geography are by no means

restricted to New Zealand. Indeed, somewhatearlier, quite an amount of such writingappeared in the USA in the early 2000s. Thishas taken the form of collections (Gould &Pitts 2002) as well as volume length individu-ally authored efforts (Gould 2000), some of itmore controversial than others (Symanski2002). Reflections on autobiography and geog-raphy followed around the same time (Moss2001). For New Zealand, Cumberland (2007)offered a glimpse of portion or a much largerbut unpublished manuscript.

In New Zealand, in addition to this autobio-graphical writing, there have been two otherstrands of writing about the early years of thediscipline. One of these takes the form of anni-versary histories, which understandably have acelebratory tone (Macaulay 1987; Holland et al.1995;Anderson et al. 1996). Exceptions are pro-vided by the Victoria University of Wellingtonwhere the document was provided as part of adepartmental review process (Franklin & Win-chester 1993) and Massey where it was specifi-cally commissioned and mixes celebration withmore searching comment (Saunders 2003). Theother is in the shape of biographical apprecia-tions, sometimes associated with the retirementof founding appointees, for instance Brockie’s(1981) essay on Professor Ron Lister fromOtago, though the most comprehensive treat-ment was Watters (1998) ‘appreciation’ ofKeith Buchanan (see also Lister’s (1978) essayon Cumberland). It seems unlikely this lattermodel will persist into the future as depart-ments have become larger, the professor ashead for the duration and as disciplinaryboundary rider has given way to short termrotational headships, a degree of pluralismwithin the discipline and a situation wheremany geography groups are now part of largermulti-programme units comprising a number ofdisciplines.

More formal statements, that go some waytowards placing particular individuals in theirwider intellectual and institutional context,exist for two individuals: Professor George Job-berns (Johnston 1981) and Professor SirCharles Cotton (Soons & Gage 1978) who havebeen included in Geographers’ Biobiblio-graphical Studies. Jobberns has also an entry inthe Dictionary of New Zealand Biography(Soons 1998), while Evelyn Stokes’ academic

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work has been has been recognised in a specialissue of the New Zealand Geographer (Bedford& Longhurst 2005). To these can be addedsome more closely focussed studies such asMoran’s (2000) unpacking of the divergence inviews between Kenneth Cumberland at Auck-land and Keith Buchanan at Victoria Univer-sity over approaches to geography (see alsoWatters 1998). Finally, there are some otheraccounts such as Marsden’s (2010) essay thatplaces Massey University’s inaugural Dean ofSocial Sciences and Professor of Geography,Keith Thomson, on a wider local stage withinand beyond the university. Obituaries are a dif-ferent case with regard to their closeness to theevents in question and sometimes the connec-tion between writer and deceased and thelimited space available, all of which precludes adetailed evaluation and it is anyway not theappropriate occasion on which to look moreclosely and critically at an individual and theirdisciplinary and institutional contributions.Watters’ (1997) obituary of Keith Buchananperhaps stands apart in this respect.

The papers in this special issue of the journaladvance a range of viewpoints, spanning from amore mainstream history of science perspectivefrom Crozier and Priestley focussing on the roleof Sir Charles Cotton in interpreting Harvardgeologist/geographer, William Morris Davis’ideas about a geomorphological cycle of erosionto Wilson and Henry’s critical cultural perspec-tive on what they term the ‘pragmatic sanction’of the New Zealand Geographer in circumscrib-ing the nature and scope of geography in NewZealand in the post-World War II decades. Theother articles are situated somewhere inbetween with Roche reconsidering George Job-berns’ school textbooks and the transition fromenvironmental determinism to regionalism inNew Zealand geography, to Pawson’s accountof the means and manner whereby KennethCumberland became involved in public policymaking, particularly but not exclusively in theareas of soil conservation and agriculture andemerged as the ‘public face’ of geographythrough his Landmarks television series.Bedford has tackled a broader topic in consid-ering population geography and the Pacificduring the 1960s, after the demise of a regionalapproach to the discipline, and was asked towrite himself into the narrative.

Crozier and Priestley’s paper signals thesomewhat complex backdrop in which geogra-phy was taught in the New Zealand universitysystem. Geomorphology-enabled geology toprovide a spring board for the teaching ofgeography. The prime focus of the paper is SirCharles Cotton, Professor of Geology at Vic-toria University, who gained an internationalreputation as an interpreter of landscape evo-lution along the lines first developed by W.M.Davis. The rise and fall of the ‘Davisian cycle’and the manner in which Cotton’s own workhas moved from centre stage is given dueattention. The Davis–Cotton connection high-lights an important USA–New Zealand linkand also bears upon the issue of what weregeography in its formative decades in NewZealand.

The second paper deals with George Job-berns, the first Lecturer in Geography in NewZealand.2 Heading an administratively inde-pendent department in 1937, having offered acourse from within the Geology Departmentsince 1934, Jobberns turned to geography froma background in geology. Rather than reiterat-ing the more usual account of the foundingfigure and the trails of the early days of univer-sity teaching, the paper, drawing on archivalsources, scrutinises Jobberns’ secondary schooltextbooks of the 1920s to 1940s. A strand ofenvironmental determinism is identified withinthese textbooks, although he shifted positiononce appointed to the university where a trip tothe USA and first-hand acquaintance withSauer’s ideas about geography appears to havebeen critical to his intellectual development.Regardless at the end of his career Joberns con-tinued to express approval of some aspectsof Ellen Churchill Semple’s work. Jobbernsaccepted the label, ‘a geographer by declara-tion’ (Roche 2010, p. 9) and moved to thediscipline from and out of his original speciali-sation of geology.

The focus switches from Jobberns toKenneth Cumberland in the next paper. Hiredby Jobberns from the UK in 1938, Cumberlandarrived in New Zealand, with MA (London)and a thesis on an agricultural geography topic,from an Assistant Lectureship at UniversityCollege London. Cumberland introduced amuch sharper edge to discussion around thediscipline framed in terms of regional geogra-

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phy. While he brought a British tradition ingeography to New Zealand, Cumberlandquickly embraced ideas from the USA, includ-ing Hartshorne’s views about geography as ascience of areal differentiation and adoptedsome of Sauer’s ideas about the morphology oflandscape. As well as his university teachingand research commitments, Cumberland wasinvolved with preparation of textbooks thatemployed a quite rigorous regional model andas Pawson’s paper in this issue also highlights,he had an extraordinarily successful engage-ment with the development of soil conservationprogrammes in the 1940s and in the 1950s in theAuckland scene in terms of regional planningand environmental management. Cumberland,in the New Zealand setting, sits comfortablywith Johnston’s (2007) views on who was ageographer and what was geography. Pawsonshows how Cumberland while having a quiteprecisely defined perspective on the nature ofgeography, also developed a very expansiveview about the value of geographical knowl-edge with regards to land use, urban planningand environmental management.

One of Cumberland’s other efforts wasbringing the New Zealand Geographer intoexistence and serving as its first editor from1944 to 1954.Wilson and Henry in revisiting theearly years of the New Zealand Geographerprovide a reminder that non-academics andacademics other than geographers were con-tributors to early issues and that authorshipand subject matter changed over the firstquarter century the journal’s existence. Whilethis was in response to domestic and externalpressures, they also show how the journal wasan ‘actor’ in its own right, in terms of displayingwhat was geography and who was a geogra-pher. Over time, the New Zealand Geographerbecomes increasingly the preserve of the aca-demic geographer and research scientist. KeithBuchanan’s foundation of Pacific Viewpoint(now Asia Pacific Viewpoint) at Victoria Uni-versity in 1961 might be seen as one reaction tothe geography that the New Zealand Geogra-pher endorsed and upheld.3

Regional geography, used efficiently byCumberland to position geography in theschools and at the university, gave way in NewZealand at the universities in the 1960s to theinfluences of the so-called quantitative revolu-

tion. Bedford, an Auckland BA and MA gradu-ate himself while Cumberland was professor,discusses population geography as a systematicfield of human geography during the 1960s,with particular focus on the Pacific. Cumber-land, for a time, also worked on the southwestPacific. Bedford was asked to write himself intothe narrative, which offers, as Peet suggests,some insights into the importance of haphazardevents in terms of how Bedford came to apopulation geography thesis topic. Bedfordconcludes by pointing to the extent to whichNew Zealand geography’s capacity in popula-tion geography has diminished over the lasttwo decades and this serves as a reminder thatthese sorts of changes may be dislocated fromacademic and applied imperatives. It serves as afurther caution against regarding geography ashaving an ever-enduring and unchanged placein the academy and this assumption under-pinning broader historical and biographicalprojects.

Peet’s assemblage of haphazard events, mis-takes and accidents are apparent to varyingdegrees in the following papers. For instance,the timing of Jobberns’ 1939 trip when the out-break of World War II prevented him fromtravelling onto the UK as planned, thus increas-ing his knowledge of and connections to USgeography and geographers.

This special issue is necessarily selectiverather than comprehensive in its treatment,though I would argue that there is a degree ofcoherence to the overall mix. That said, I amconscious that the individuals concentrated onin the first papers in this collection are all menin senior university positions. Evelyn Stokes’contribution has been recognised in a previousspecial issue, but the continuation of a projectof this sort further into the 1960s and 1970s willneed to include male and female geographersand extend beyond the professoriate. Thus, thisis hardly the final word on the foundation eraof the 1930s and 1940s, but there is much morethat can be done on the 1950s to 1970s, and ifnothing else, I would hope that this specialissue stimulates the local geographical commu-nity to preserve, archive and further writeabout its disciplinary histories. The creation oflarger schools housing several disciplines atmany New Zealand universities ought to giveadded weight to this task. This does not involve

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clinging grimly to the past, or uncritically orapologetically defending the disciplinary short-comings of earlier eras. While some might seethis a little more than pleading a special case, Iwould argue that a clearer appreciation of thedisciplinary heritage of geography in NewZealand will make it easier for the discipline toreact, respond and adjust to the perhaps dra-matically changing conditions, but where newpossibilities may be seized, within the univer-sity sector of the early 21st century.

Endnotes

1 The relationship between people and place oughtnot to be taken for granted; however, as a formerMassey colleague once explained to me, havingtrained in geography, his first academic appoint-ment was in Africa where the sameness of the envi-ronment and the continental scale turned hisattention away from environment to society andculture and eventually, he rebranded himself as asociologist.

2 Expatriate New Zealander R.O. Buchanan was bythis time already on the staff of University CollegeLondon.

3 But at the same time, the borders are somewhatpermeable; the New Zealand Geographical SocietyConference in 1961 provided the platform forBuchanan to deliver his notable ‘East Wind WestWind’ presidential address, later published in theNew Zealand Geographer and reprinted elsewhere.

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New Zealand geography, biography and autobiography