Past Marsden Fund successes

Beyond the Blitz: Trauma and British Fiction, 1939-1950
Eluned Summers-Bremner (Department of English)

What kind of fiction does war produce? Can fiction deliver truths about trauma when other forms cannot? How does it respond to everyday concerns? The public narrative of the Blitz describes English heroism in the face of German bombing 1940-41. The myth has elements of truth, but ignores evidence of a Britain full of anxieties. Concurrently the pioneering research group Mass-Observation asked ordinary people to write diary accounts of what they heard and saw. Their focus was on people’s ‘feelings, their worries, frustrations, hopes, desires and fears.’ Updating participant records decades later, M-O found people typically revised their memories to match the public narrative of resilience.

This study proposes a new archive with which to contextualise the M-O records: the period’s experimental fiction. A trauma studies perspective historically developed in response to war enables a new understanding of modernism that reads literary fiction alongside diary accounts as distinctive responses to the same overdetermined phenomena. Comparing formally innovative novels and stories--works which make the world strange--with first person accounts of deeply estranging wartime events will enable clearer assessment of the extent to which a national literature can assist with managing the historical fallout of a changing culture.

Transformations of entrepreneurial tribal Maori leadership
Merata Kawharu (James Henare Maori Research Centre)

For forty years there has been no major analytical work on contemporary Māori leadership. The economic condition of Māori tribal groups has changed dramatically during that time, from a state of resourcelessness to an unprecedented phase of economic development as a result of Treaty settlements. How have these changes, and the remarkable rise of the entrepreneurial leader, affected traditional notions of leadership? How do tribal groups balance the competing demands of culture and commerce, heritage and development?

This ground-breaking research will reveal the significant contribution that indigenous entrepreneurship can make in areas of wealth creation, social stability, and national identity, and its importance to New Zealand’s social, economic, and political future. The multi-disciplinary team - an historian, two anthropologists, and an economist - will use a case-study approach to show how matters such as commercial/cultural balance, trusteeship, accountability to multiple stakeholders, and reciprocity between leaders and their people are negotiated, and how their successful resolution contributes to tribal well-being. The results of their work will lead to a new model of indigenous entrepreneurial leadership that demonstrates the centrality of culture and the complexities of entrepreneurship from an indigenous perspective, and makes an important contribution to the international literature on entrepreneurship.

Successful Marsden subcontracts

Troubling choice: exploring and explaining techniques of moral reasoning
Dr Julie Park (Anthropology Department)

The archaeology of territoriality: Trade, conflict and agriculture in New Zealand before European contact
Associate Professor Thegn Ladefoged (Anthropology Department).

Grace in the twenty-first century

What is the gap between merit and favour? This question is being explored by Dr Glen Pettigrove of the Department of Philosophy in his project, “Grace: the Ethics of Unmerited Favour.” The ancients referred to unmerited favour as charis or gratia, ie, grace, which plays a significant role in many of the emotions and activities that matter in our lives. Grace has a bearing on love and hatred, hope and despair, forgiveness and revenge, justice and mercy, work and play.

This project will examine the nature of grace and its significance for ethical theory and moral practice. In particular, it will involve a revision of much that has been taken for granted in value theory, practical reasoning and theories about justice. It will also rebut several objections raised against New Zealand’s system of restorative justice.

Te Ao Tawhito (the ancient Māori world)

Aspects of early Māori life are hotly debated in New Zealand. Yet the last comprehensive attempts to explore Te Ao Tawhito (the ancient Māori world), by Elsdon Best and Te Rangihiroa, was more than 80 years ago. Since that time, theoretical frameworks have shifted radically and new information has come to light.

A team from the Department of Māori Studies and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (The National Institute of Research Excellence for Māori Development and Advancement) aim to provide a richly documented, authoritative account of early Māori life. This will draw upon all available types of evidence, as well as Māori philosophies and contemporary theoretical ideas. This information will inform a new book, Te Ao Tawhito: The Ancient Māori World, which will be authored by the project’s principal investigator, Distinguished Professor Anne Salmond.

Slavery in Māori society

In “Slavery in Māori Society: Myths and Realities”, Dr Hazel Petrie of the Department of History hopes to uncover the purposes and functions of the historical system of slavery among Māori in New Zealand. Dr Petrie’s premise is that slavery should be seen as a distinct social or economic institution that is unique to the society in which it operated.

Dr Petrie will be looking at the role and status of slaves before and after European contact, to find out whether Christian teachings or a British presence affected their treatment. She will also explore the reasons captives were taken, why large numbers were released from the late 1820s onwards, the practice of marriage between slaves and free Māori, the rights of slaves and their descendants and the use of slaves in the sex industry from about 1820 to about 1840.

Dryland agriculture

In “Determining the distribution of prehistoric dryland agriculture throughout the Hawaiian Islands”, Associate Professor Thegn Ladefoged of the Department of Anthropology is exploring the complex chiefdoms of prehistoric Hawai’i and their highly intensified agricultural systems. Only a small number of these have been studied in detail and the extent and distribution of the productive base of the archipelago is unknown. The proposed research will establish the prehistoric distribution of dryland agriculture throughout the Hawaiian islands.

This research will offer insights into the constraints of intensive dryland agriculture, and investigate ways that people increased their resource bases, such as by warfare and through marriage alliances. Using non-destructive archaeological techniques, the research will investigate and document an important component of the rapidly disappearing Hawaiian landscape.

“Mothers’ Darlings: Children of Indigenous Women and WWII American Servicemen in NZ and South Pacific Societies” is a joint project involving researchers at Otago University and staff and postgraduate students of Auckland University’s Anthropology Department (2009).