Cameron Boyle
The Australian National University, School of Sociology, Graduate Student
- Sociology, Gilles Deleuze, Continental Philosophy, Landscape Architecture, Cultural Studies, Environmental History, and 14 moreNew Zealand Studies, New Zealand, New Zealand History, Social Theory, Social Sciences, Landscape History And Conservation, Landscape and Culture, White Settler Soceties, White Settler Diasporic Writing, History of New Zealand, Settler Colonial Studies, Settler/Indigenous relations, Settler colonialism, and White Settler Colonialism(New Zealand Studies, New Zealand, New Zealand History, Social Theory, Social Sciences, Landscape History And Conservation, Landscape and Culture, White Settler Soceties, White Settler Diasporic Writing, History of New Zealand, Settler Colonial Studies, Settler/Indigenous relations, Settler colonialism, and White Settler Colonialism)edit
Research Interests:
In this article, I argue that art can enable a critique of museological conventions, along with related ideas of natural history and extinction, which together have structured practices of preserving and representing departed species as... more
In this article, I argue that art can enable a critique of museological conventions, along with related ideas of natural history and extinction, which together have structured practices of preserving and representing departed species as scientific specimens. I draw on the case of the huia specifically, a bird species endemic to New Zealand, which became extinct in the early twentieth century, as a result of multiple ecological, cultural, political and economic forces stemming from colonization. I suggest the preservation of individual huia birds in the form of scientific specimens demonstrates how Victorian aesthetics and ideas about the natural world shaped the modality through which non-human life was, and to some extent still is, recorded and portrayed according to particular archival norms. Utilizing concepts from recent scholarship in the field of extinction studies, I critically consider how the works of two artists which feature the huia, challenge the traditions of the museu...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper examines the role of nostalgia in practices of remembering the Huia, an extinct bird endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand. It suggests that nostalgia for the Huia specifically, and New Zealand's indigenous birds more generally,... more
This paper examines the role of nostalgia in practices of remembering the Huia, an extinct bird endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand. It suggests that nostalgia for the Huia specifically, and New Zealand's indigenous birds more generally, has occurred as both restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. It argues that the former problematically looks to recreate a past world in which birds flourished. In contrast, the paintings of Bill Hammond and the sound art of Sally Ann McIntyre are drawn on to explore the potential of reflective nostalgia for remembering the Huia, and New Zealand's extinct indigenous birds more generally, in a more critical and nuanced way.
Research Interests: Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, Geography, Communication, Education, and 15 moreDigital Humanities, Art, Australian Studies, Animal Studies, Linguistics, Film and Media Studies, Fine Arts, English language and literature, Art Practice, Birds, Art and Design, Extinction, Arts and Humanities, Legal Studies, and Agricultural and Resource Economics
This chapter aims to problematize the notion that tourism and conservation are opposed to one another, by interrogating the expression of this in New Zealand's legislation which clearly states that tourism is allowed in the... more
This chapter aims to problematize the notion that tourism and conservation are opposed to one another, by interrogating the expression of this in New Zealand's legislation which clearly states that tourism is allowed in the country's protected areas so long as it is 'not inconsistent' with the conservation of such sites. The central question guiding this chapter is how might novel nature-based experiences in New Zealand's protected areas enable a form of tourism which is not only consistent with, but also strengthens, conservation at these sites? In response to this question, three landscape design projects located at different national parks in Te Wai Pounamu, New Zealand's South Island, are examined. These individual case studies have intentionally sought, through the use of design-directed research, to explore ways in which protected areas as key sites in the nature-tourism interface could be reimagined.
Research Interests:
This article presents ways to rethink current approaches to protected areas in New Zealand, which have been dominated by problematic colonial ideas that uniformly construct such places as separate from people and as reminiscent of a... more
This article presents ways to rethink current approaches to protected areas in New Zealand, which have been dominated by problematic colonial ideas that uniformly construct such places as separate from people and as reminiscent of a pre-human past. This has resulted in the strict separation of productive landscapes from protected landscapes in Aotearoa, New Zealand. A re-evaluation of the idea of allocating further lands that have high endemic biodiversity values solely for protection is considered in light of the country’s public conservation lands reaching 33 per cent of the country’s total land area and still continuing to grow. Using a design-directed research approach we put forward seven alternatives to imagining protected areas that act as speculative futures from which to reimagine and expand the potential of New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity beyond solely preservation-focused approaches that have been based on a fortress conservation model. These futures are not prescriptive but opportunities to extend the value that New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity might have, and consider its capacity to foster deep connections between people and place, in ways in which both endemic biodiversity and people thrive.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
New Zealand's landscapes have played a central role in settler and Pākehā cultural imagination, probably none more so than those that are considered to be wild or wilderness. These are the mountains, forests, wetlands, and other... more
New Zealand's landscapes have played a central role in settler and Pākehā cultural imagination, probably none more so than those that are considered to be wild or wilderness. These are the mountains, forests, wetlands, and other environments that are unfarmed, nonurbanized, perceived to be natural, and mostly composed of indigenous plant and animal species. I draw on a range of literature relating to New Zealand's wilderness, from the journals of explorers and settlers, to contemporary advertising in conservation and tourism. I argue for the existence of a dominant settler and Pākehā understanding of such landscapes as uninhabited and primeval, which I refer to as the New Zealand wilderness myth. I contend that this myth relies heavily on what I term the regional construction of the South Island, which represents the South Island as the true place of New Zealand's wilderness. I utilize critical regionalism to investigate the myriad ways in which this myth arises out of t...
Research Interests:
In this article, I argue that art can enable a critique of museological conventions, along with related ideas of natural history and extinction, which together have structured practices of preserving and representing departed species as... more
In this article, I argue that art can enable a critique of museological conventions, along with related ideas of natural history and extinction, which together have structured practices of preserving and representing departed species as scientific specimens. I draw on the case of the huia specifically, a bird species endemic to New Zealand, which became extinct in the early twentieth century, as a result of multiple ecological, cultural, political, and economic forces stemming from colonization. I suggest the preservation of individual huia birds in the form of scientific specimens demonstrates how Victorian aesthetics and ideas about the natural world shaped the modality through which non-human life was, and to some extent still is, recorded and portrayed according to particular archival norms. Utilizing concepts from recent scholarship in the field of extinction studies, I critically consider how the works of two artists which feature the huia, challenge the traditions of the museum and the archive. Firstly, I examine how Fiona Pardington’s photography of huia specimens frames the species as a life form which became extinct in a context scarred by the complex and violent entanglement of people and nature. Secondly, I show how a work of sound art by Sally Ann McIntyre, which is centered on the inaudible recordings of huia specimens played on Kapiti Island, the bird’s original habitat, highlights that extinction results in the loss of multispecies relationality.
Research Interests:
The distinctive form of New Zealand’s protected areas developed out of rapid environmental changes during nineteenth-century colonization practices, and is based on valuing endemic nature as something separate from human culture. This... more
The distinctive form of New Zealand’s protected areas developed out of rapid environmental changes during nineteenth-century colonization practices, and is based on valuing endemic nature as something separate from human culture. This binary division has resulted in a ‘fortress conservation’ approach, which separates protected areas from productive landscapes in ways that can limit their potential. Insight in international approaches offers the possibility to integrate protected areas in multifunctional landscapes and social-ecological systems. This study examines these land-use tensions in the context of the Mackenzie Basin in New Zealand’s South Island, where traditional non-irrigated sheep farming, tourism and newly established irrigated dairy farms compete for influence in the region’s future ecological and aesthetic makeup. The authors consider how landscape architecture design methods of scenario development, programme design, mapping and communication strategies might unsettle current norms that separate protective and productive land uses to achieve more integrated expressions of landscape.
Research Interests:
Geographer John Wylie critiques problematic claims of belonging to place that would suggest a natural connection between people and topos. Such ontopological beliefs in a homeland rely on environmental determinism or historicization to... more
Geographer John Wylie critiques problematic claims of belonging to place that would suggest a natural connection between people and topos. Such ontopological beliefs in a homeland rely on environmental determinism or historicization to assert an inextricable link between blood and soil formed over centuries of human occupation and use. In this article we examine ways ontopology operates in the protected areas of Aotearoa New Zealand, which as places that are understood as ‘wild’ and thus outside of the presence of people, provide an intriguing contrast for considering ontopology and how it may be approached through design. Wylie identifies two counter-ontopological positions for landscape: one an orientation towards hospitality, welcome, and sanctuary; the other seeking to destabilise homeland thinking through unsettling, dislocating, and distancing such troubling claims of belonging to place. Drawing on these directions, we examine a landscape design project undertaken by Lincoln University’s Landscope Designlab at Ararira Wetland in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, which reimagines protected areas by expanding ways people might engage with them through the design of counter-ontopological forms.
Research Interests:
This paper examines the role of nostalgia in practices of remembering the Huia, an extinct bird endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand. It suggests that nostalgia for the Huia specifically, and New Zealand's indigenous birds more generally, has... more
This paper examines the role of nostalgia in practices of remembering the Huia, an extinct bird endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand. It suggests that nostalgia for the Huia specifically, and New Zealand's indigenous birds more generally, has occurred as both restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. It argues that the former problematically looks to recreate a past world in which birds flourished. In contrast, the paintings of Bill Hammond and the sound art of Sally Ann McIntyre are drawn on to explore the potential of reflective nostalgia for remembering the Huia, and New Zealand's extinct indigenous birds more generally, in a more critical and nuanced way.
Research Interests:
This paper draws on articles published in the New Zealand Herald between 1914 and 1933 by the writer and journalist Elsie K. Morton to demonstrate how nostalgia for childhood experiences in the forest, or the bush, as it is labelled... more
This paper draws on articles published in the New Zealand Herald between 1914 and 1933 by the writer and journalist Elsie K. Morton to demonstrate how nostalgia for childhood experiences in the forest, or the bush, as it is labelled colloquially, have acted as an antimodern response to and critique of deforestation in New Zealand. Morton's articles are situated within the wider body of cultural antimodernism in New Zealand, locating them after the antimodern literature of Maoriland in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, but before the antimodern writing of several prominent authors who published their works in the 1930s and 1940s. The author makes the argument that the bush landscape is central to the expression of antimodernism as a response to the modernisation of New Zealand.