Prentice Chris

From CollabLandWiki

On the beach?:The question of the local in Aotearoa/New Zealand cultural studies

Chris Prentice,(2004) Wellington: Victoria University Press. P111-129

• Prentice describes the beach as conventionally a colonial site of first encounter between peoples, culture, geographies and histories and in post colonial times the setting for encounters, re-enactments, and revisions.
• Prentice argues that New Zealand must stand as a sign of the local.
• Prentice suggests that as an island nation we have taken on the beach as our national landscape. The beach to New Zealanders she argues functions more than just a place it is familiar to all as no-one is ever far from the beach it has related memories and its own structure of feelings.
• Prentice argues that the beach at the same time is a site of liminality that contradicts the familiar and local we associate with it. It is the space between ocean and land and in Maori tradition it is the corridor between the known and occupied to the uncertainty of the ocean it becomes a liminal space.
• Prentice argues that we use it to escape our structured lives it is a free zone. She argues that beach is part of the capitalization of meaningful like in tourism as both work and leisure take place here it is not a free space for everyone.
• Prentice suggests that in New Zealand culture is most strongly identified with Maori, while indigenous has cultural attachments to the land itself (people of the land), so Maori culture has become the local and become in the tourist market what distinguishes New Zealand from other countries.
• Prentice argues but with this Maori’s have moved from the object in the tourists gaze to active agents in their representation.
• Prentice argues that global capitalization and tourism, place becomes a form of sign, where it becomes an exhibition of itself, it becomes hyper-real.

• Beach as site of arrivals and departures in the Maori world...corridor between the known and occupierd world and the uncertainty of the ocean.

• Colonisation - Maori - land

            - Paheka - 'encroaching' from the sea

How this relates to waiheke

• Waiheke been an Island like the rest of New Zealand has a very strong relationship with the beach if not more so.
• The site maitaita has Maori and European history so therefore memories and emotions related to it.
• It is also a liminal space where people are arriving and leaving from the island to Auckland where people are moving from sea to land and where people are moving out to the rest of the island.