Oceania Books

I thought this was a good, thorough book that contained all the info you might need to know if you're considering moving to New Zealand.

I found thins book to be not at all helpfull to me in moving to New Zealand. In fact I found it to be very out of date and the back section that talks about the Kiwi people and their way of life seemed depressing to me. I found the book to be constantly stereo typeing Kiwis. Sheep, beer, rugby etc. I think that the information in this book was true 10 years ago but a lot has changed in New Zealand in that time, especially in the cities. The information in this book is all available on the internet and it is constantly updated there.

I bought this book about a year ago, just as I was beginning to think of a move to New Zealand. Well, here we are, one year later... and I'll be there in four weeks time!

This book helped me so much that I simply had to write a review of it before leaving. There are only about twenty books on my list to take with me to NZ, and this is one of them. I can't recomend it highly enough.

I've been to NZ a handfull of time now. I find this book to be right on the mark. It captures just about everything you need to know about living and working in NZ, and many thing you don't need to know... but are entertaining in their own right.

Mr. Hempshell touches on everything that a prospective migrant would want to know, with a great deal of humor as well (I love the little cartoons). I also bought books which were supposed to be about immigrating to NZ. Steer clear of these books. They tell you nothing that you can't find out for yourself on the NZ immigration web site.

If you are thinking of moving to NZ this is the book for you. Of all the books about NZ I've bought this year, this is the only one I still refer to. You'll not go wrong, trust me.

I read this book before i went on a vacation to New Zealand last year. It was fairly informative. If you have absolutely no knowledge of the country, this book will be very helpful. However books such as this one are not extremely useful, even if they were updated each year. (which this book isn't) The section about Television in New Zealand was outdated. This book makes it seem that even the best satellite service will not compare to even cable in the US. In other words, their television offerings are scarce. However, I found that to be untrue. Sky TV offers many channels and has good variety. This is just an example of how this book cannot possibly keep you informed about a rapidly changing country like New Zealand. The point is, if you really want the scoop on living in New Zealand, ask your friends who've visited for information. An even better way is to search on the internet. Go to a chatroom that has New Zealand inhabitants and ask them. They are very friendly.

A children's story. This is set on the beach of the Coorong in South Australia, for the main part, as a boy who lives in that setting interacts with the people, the environment, and comes across a pelican.

The boy forms a bond with the bird in a touching story.

This was an entertaining good children's story to learn a little bit about Australian life

This book is touching and beautifully written. It is appealing to older children and grownups.

This book is about a boy who becomes a friend with a pelican. I suggest this book to chidren over 10 years old.

As a globe-trotting Kiwi who unfortunately left their copy behind when changing continents and came on here to replace it, I can only recommend the book. I loved it and only disagreed with one minor point. Other than that, it was spot on. It pokes fun at our national foibles while highlighting some of our national strengths in a balanced and clear way. The first time I read it I alternated wry grins with sheepish smiles and outright laughs.
Good stuff.

Jo, you truly are the definition of a xenophobe. Assuming you have actually been to New Zealand, you must really have some issues if you came away with an attitude like that. Wherever you are from, at least the majority of all kiwis are broad-minded enough to realise that despite your apparent lack of intelligence and ability to make sweeping generalisations, these are probably not traits apparent in everyone from your country. Get a life.

I have enjoyed the Xenophobe's Guides to three of the peoples that I've lived among (Danes, Swedes and English), and have felt them to be insightful and humorous. Consequently I was very disappointed by the Xenophobe's Guide to the Kiwis. It was neither insightful nor humorous. I felt that the light-hearted teasing applied in the other books was largely replaced by an air of base critical negativity. It concentrated on some very odd, and utterly redundant things that I feel the XG is hardly the forum for. The Kiwi author has taken the very real Kiwi trait of self-bashing to an unfortunate extreme in the completely wrong publication.

Jo Chambers is a bitter and twisted individual, who is in great need of a holiday. Jo ¡°sweetie¡±, I suggest a wonderfully relaxing holiday in beautiful New Zealand.

I bought this book expecting it to be quite useful on our recent trip. We've just returned from 4 weeks driving throughout New Zealand, and this book was worthless. I guess it might be worth buying if you're only going to be in New Zealand for a short week and don't expect to wander far from your hotel, but if you're spending any time there -- or if you're looking for a guide that will help you explore what New Zealand really has to offer -- don't waste your money buying this guide. The places shown as "must see" are very limited, with glaring omissions, and there are a lot of better (and much less expensive) hotels and restaurants than listed. Some of the information is just plain inaccurate, and even some of the maps have errors in them. We wound up trading this guide for a dog-eared Tony Hillerman novel in one of the places we stayed, and we got the better part of the deal. If you're looking for a good guide that will give you accurate information and lots of things to choose from, it's better to spend a little more and buy Frommer's or Fodor's. If you're looking for a good map, I highly recommend the AA New Zealand Road Atlas (paperback) -- it was our bible when it came to finding our way around the country.

Whether or not I agree with its top ten list, I cross-checked it over and over in planning my upcoming trip. Compact, well-written and informative -- it may be the only guide I put in my suitcase.

This guide's major advantage is its size. The guide highlights all of the major New Zealand attractions with a terse, yet comprehensive, style. It may not have all of the information you need in New Zealand, but it will certainly help!

This book is full of bitterness and resentment, it is full of repeating terms such as "and there are still some in goverment who still refuse to utter the word 'sorry'".
The authors (and there are alot of them) should realise what a readers motivation is in picking up this book. Is it to be given a politically weighted, bitter (and actually quite shallow) account of indigenous culture? Or is it to gain a wider appreciation of a subject which in massive and very interesting in a positive way? An example of this books shallowness is p67 and the (brief) section given to aboriginal art, amongst a lot of resentment it mentions that Papunya was the birth of the aboriginal art movement as we know it today and that the some of the Elders of the community where encouraged to paint, no mention of Geoff Bardon who was the driving force behind the movement and who risked great personal hardship to do so.

Dissapointing and negative.

I'm heading to Australia to work on Aboriginal civil rights issues, and picked up this book a few months ago as an intro. While it is certainly no legal treatise, it is a great introduction to an interesting and diverse group of people and their history and struggles to survive European colonization. The reviewer below seems to object to the obvious emotion with which much of the book is written. You should know that, while it is in large part the work of Lonely Planet writers and researchers, they also went straight to the source and have many, many shorter pieces written by Aboriginal people whom they asked to contribute. If you are looking for a dry, detached work of anthropological research, this is not it. If you want an exposure to a variety of topics in the voices of the people about whom they are written, this is a great resource. It is an admirable achievement from Lonely Planet, and a moving testimonial to the world's oldest continuous culture.

I have been researching the discrimination faced by the Aboriginal people for several years. Until I found this book, I'd never seen any book that I thought accurately portrayed the situation. The book is excellent. It contains general information about important issues and has very detailed sections for each state/territory. It is a necessity for anyone interested in the Aboriginal history and culture!

I am inclined to agree with reviewer Jaffe and the Editorial Reviews. As a native Kiwi I know Auckland and Fiordland well having hiked extensively in both areas.
The Auckland sections covers the well known outdoor main attractions of the region well: the islands of the Hauraki Gulf and the extensive network of regional parks, many of which are coastal and have fantastic views from the walks in them.
Fiordland is the "honey pot" for accessible wilderness hiking in New Zealand. The description of the History, National Parks, short day walks and longer multi-day treks on well formed tracks is quite good. The maps are a bit scant, but you will buy better maps when you arrive in an area. And NZ does publish a wide selection of very good maps of all our park network. For a day-by-day detailed guide to the walks you are better to buy the Lonely Planet "Tramping in New Zealand" (even us locals use it). The book index is not so good, even the Routeburn "Great walk" (the finest 3 day walk in NZ in my opinion) is not listed but you can find it on page 457 with a 1/2 page description of it. After 5 years the book is not really dated. The one new development in NZ is private walking tracks and I can recommend the Banks Peninsula Track just out of Christchurch (page 388 of the book).
So as a one volume "outdoor type" guide to NZ the book is worth buying and fills a niche not quite met by Rough Guide or Lonely Planet.
So come and visit us.

Adventuring in New Zealand turns out to be a fairly pedestrian travel guide, with little to recommend it. While claiming to be an "adventuring guide", there's little more about hiking, parks, fishing, climbing, etc. than any of the standard guidebooks. Design, illustrations, and indexing are second rate. Give this one a miss.

My partner and I found "Adventuring..." the single most useful guide for our visit to New Zealand in January 2003. I disagree with the prior negative customer review and wonder if M. Goldstein actually used this book for travel to New Zealand or was merely an armchair traveler seeking amusement.

It's true this isn't the kind of general guidebook so ably done by Lonely Planet and others. Jefferies doesn't refer the reader to specific restaurants or lodgings. What she does superbly is to introduce each region of the country with a detailed essay on its flora, fauna, terrain and history.

Her knowledge of New Zealand's parklands runs much deeper than a conventional guidebook. While not neglecting famous tourist attractions, she takes you far off the beaten path to smaller forest preserves that harbor natural treasures. The book is not a detailed trail guide, but it points you to the access points for the back country with useful general descriptions of many hikes.

Jefferies doesn't glamorize. Her descriptions of the deforestation and other environmental abuses that New Zealand has suffered might unsettle a conventional sightseer. For the environmental traveler with a serious interest in the natural history of the islands, it's just right.

i love earls style of writing. i love the way we see the main characters thoughts, feelings and anxieties. instead of everything being a happy ending, stuff actually goes wrong, which i love.
hes funny and creates an atmosphere which runs throughout his novels. rather than a story where soemthing has to happen non stop just to keep u interested, this book has the lulls and highs of life itself. its like seeing someone else's life, and how they deal with it.
admittedly seeing as this is his first book, it does ccentre a bit much upon mood and thoughts than events, but i happen to like this. his later books are even better.
a seriously aussie novel. the humour the people, the pastimes are all familiar to our country. its great.

The Novel After January by nick Earl's is set on Quuensland's sunshine coast and teells of a boy's wait till the end of january for his results of school,in order for him to contimplate his future (After January.The story begins with alex ,a boy spending much of his time body boarding at the local beach with little in his life,with a yearn for feminine interaction Alex then begins his quest to find love and finds in a girl with similar intrests in Fortuna who he falls in love with thus for creating the climax and most intresting part of the novel.This long drawn out climax eventually happens a long time into the book and it seems to take forever to happen.Earl's vast characteristaion eventaully does little to the atmosphere eventaully resulting in a poorly constructed book of which the plot has had not enough developement.Earls attempts to write in the proverbial 'thoughts on paper' genre has liitle impact and the talent is one that takes much more talent to perfect than what is illustrated thoughout the novel.Igive the book two stars only due to the fact that their is a climax even though it only lasts for perhaps two of the books very small chapters.I suggest that if youy can read this you must be very patient and enjoy reading novels of liitle substance or personality.To Nick Earls I suggest he spends more time at the drawing board when writing the next book,to avoid creating a book that is even more dismal that this effort.

In this book Nick Earls has done much to combat the notion that young love is immature love, that it is only for the bold or brash at heart, and most of all that it is based almost soley on physical contact. Earls' main character, Alex, is waiting for his High School grades to come out, waiting to see whether he's scored a university position. He's at the beach house trying to distract himself from the anxiety inherent in the wait, by bodysurfing and watching cricket on TV. Then comes F (we aren't told her full name until later in the book), who surfs into Alex's life and upsets all his plans for an uneventful couple of weeks. Not that he's complaining... Earls uses the first-person present tense device very well indeed, and the book left me feeling a little breathless by the end of it, just like when I first fell in love as a youngster. And if a book can rouse old emotions in that way, then the writer must have achieved something great.

This book takes the reader into the maritime realm of the first seafarers of the Pacific Ocean. Most fascinating of the ancient cith of Mu where the first pan-Pacific maritime university trained sailing fleets to discover and chart this very ancient part of the world. Delves a little bit into possible ties with Lemuria and other lost lands of the Pacific.

Good compilation of information (as you can probably judge from the 5-page bibliography), but not much of a leisurely read. Discusses possible origin of the polynesians, ancient ruins found on the said islands, as well as legends and artifacts passed on through generations. The author manages to touch alot of topics, but as a general interest book, it just doesn't work.

Childress has uncovered a deep Pacific base for ancient navigators,
who were much more likely the ancestors of American megalithic
builders than the posited but unlikely survivors of a Berengia
migration to the New World -- even though academic texts still fondly
describe ice-age hunters following wandering caribou over thousands of
miles of thick icesheets where neither the hunters nor the hunted
would have had anything to eat.

I bought this book to help plan a month and a half long trip to New Zealand and Australia staying mostly in hostels. I cannot recommend this book for a reliable source of information for hostels or restaurants. Most restaurants I have tried to find no longer exist. The hostel and attraction prices are wrong (of course these are subject to change), however, the recommended hostels have been hit or miss. There have been some good ones as recommended by the book (Sydney Central YHA, Old Countryhouse in Christchurch, NZ) but there have been some disgustingly unclean (Bondi Beach YHA) and unlivable (Global Palace) recommended highly by this book. I think that a better source of information would be customer reviews on the internet.

It's a great book. It is very complete and very accurate, most of the times.
I didn't gave it 5 stars because sometimes it isn't very easy to find the information.

I recommend it.

I bought this book 2 months ago while planing a trip to OZ & NZ later on this year.
It is well orgenized (the TOC is region based) and drills down in each area to its unique and famous places.
The book has just the right quantity of information regarding each item with a veriety of maps and side trip activities.
It contains a lot of usefull data about both countries and you can defenetly see the it was written by backpackers.
Reading the book has contributed me a lot in the planing fase of the trip, hopefully i'll be able to compliment it more after i'll return.

The blurb for this book suggests a scholarly analysis of the effect of law on an emerging culture. It is anything but. It is better described as a muddled attempt to justify the modern political movement that elevates the descendants of 18th century Hawaiians to sacred victimhood enjoyed by Indians and Eskimos. The title should be a warning that this author cannot tell the difference between a colonist and an immigrant. She displays a less than adequate understanding of Hawaiian history and misses the significance of early leaders, both native and immigrant. Queen Kaahumanu, probably the most important force in creating the Hawaiian monarchy, is barely mentioned, and then denigrated as a sort of tool of the Christian missionaries. Sanford Dole, chief justice of the monarchy, head of the provisional government, president of the republic, and governor of the territory, is ignored. The biggest problem with this book is that too many readers will take it seriously.

The last decades of the twentieth century have witnessed a florescence of literature on the postcolonial, seen simultaneously as an era and a condition of social life. Inspired in large part by the work of Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Edward Said, this work had examined how the relations of power and culture forged during the colonial era have shaped the present. One legacy is Orientalism, another our contemporary conceptions of race, gender and sexuality (Merry 11).

Introduction
In what Pierre Bourdieu would arguably identify as the "Legal Field ,"moves were undertaken by "experts" in Hawaii not just to discipline Hawaiians but inadvertently to make them allies of their own demise. Edward Said's notion of Orientalism is important but not in the way, I will argue here, Merry mobilizes Orientalism. Foucault's notions of discourse and power apply but Merry does not use Orientalism to counter Foucault's and Barthes's "death of the author" - the writers of law give the "authority" through their being "experts." Authority, that is to alter the daily regimen of work and sex, in an effort to produce both legally and morally productive and civilized bodies. That these discourses played themselves out, Merry is extensive with her examination of the archive. Echoing Foucault's discourse examination, the Hilo archive is thick with power moves meant to direct people to behave in a "civilized" manner. Finally, Merry will argue that this legal space or field is nuanced - that this is a site of contention and resistance - with, at the risk of adding another 50 cent word to the mix - that I will not deal with any further - white hegemony.

Summary
Short description of the book... the main question being asked by Merry is how does law transform or control notions of normality, productivity, and sexuality. In this extensively detailed examination of the Hilo archive, Merry examines the archives and thus discourses that went into effect to dislodge indigenous Hawaiian law. The result of this transition was a new set of laws that transformed Hawaiian sexual, marriage, and working patterns taking private matters into a public sphere (McClintock 10-12).

Edward Said and Orientalism
Merry begins Colonizing Hawaii by introducing what she sees as "transitions" (63-114). Transitioning Merry identifies as a "religious" to a "secular" law. The local Hawaiians, in an effort to be considered civilized and as a result seen as equal and sovereign, actually had no expertise in this realm and eventually handed control over to those who wrote the laws. Players such as William Little Lee (Merry 86), John Ricord (Merry 90), and Lorin Andrews (Merry 91) would provide the authorial function to enshrine into law through their extensive expertise in the area. I find myself at a loss as to how Merry mobilizes Edward Said's notion of Orientalism.

I have found it useful to employ Michel Foucault's notion of discourse, as described by him in The Archeology of Knowledge and in Discipline and Punish, to identify Orientalism. My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage - and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. Moreover, so authoritatively a position did Orientalism have that I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism (Said, Orientalism 3).

Over and above the notion of authorial function Orientalism is the study of discourses that authorized Imperialism on the premise that colonizers had "prior knowledge" or "invented information" through culture. To digress slightly, Said speaks of Silvestre de Sacy, Ernest Renan and Gustave Flaubert occupy a "transdiscursive" position while Burton, Chateaubriand, and Lane writing about Egypt and Napoleon reading this tract and informing his takeover - when he got there he was not "surprised" - he had arrived. In Culture and Imperialism Said speaks to Conrad's Heart of Darkness to demonstrate this point that culture preceded conquest/imperialism. In Merry, prior knowledge mattered less - what was crucial was invented or created knowledge. Hiram Bingham, Merry fails to argue did not "know" about the Islanders but was more interested in bringing them civilization - in short placing knowledge (that only he, his ilk and the legal community identified above, possessed) new knowledge. Knowledge that only the productive, compliant, and imposing on this malleable culture/people "... prohibitions [that] were designed to engender a new kind of person managed by self -restraint and internal control" (Merry 189).

Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punish and Archeology of Knowledge
Notions of coercion/control is where her use of Foucault is arguably its strongest, in an effort to alter or "discipline" the behavior both in the field and in the bedroom, what the law could not alter, society did (see Bingham in Merry 79).

This superimposition of different models makes it possible to indicate, it its specific features, the function of `training.' The chiefs and their deputies at Mettray had to be not exactly judges, or teachers, or foremen, or non-commissioned officers, or `parents,' but something of all these things in a quite specific mode of intervention. They were in a sense technicians of behavior: engineers of conduct, orthopaedists of individuality. Their task was to produce bodies that were both docile and capable (Foucault 294).

The labour by which the convict contributes to his own needs turns the thief into a docile body... The wages of penal labour do not reward production; they function as a motive and measure of individual transformation: it is a legal fiction, since it does not represent the 'free' granting of labour power, but an artifice that is presumed to be effective in the technique of correction (Foucault 243).

In one of the more nuanced moves in the whole book: the transition from one legal framework to the next; the Hawaiian elite, wished to comply in an effort to be seen as civilized (Merry 112 and McClintock 13) , were all too willing to comply. Coercion would be done from the top down from that moment onward. In the end, as Merry points out "In the 19th century as in the present, law provides a vital terrain for struggles over nationhood and identity, including the place of women in the order of the family and the state and the civilizing of the body through the body of law" (Merry 266). I find this passage a real problem because she almost seems to say: "The colonizer has taken over using and now you - the colonized - can use that very same as a tool of resistance. Foucault would argue that if repression has been the glue that binds power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, with so much invested in its development - I find it ironic that Merry would suggest it is the mode of effective resistance. The cynic in me is doubtful.

Sally Engle Merry: Spaces of Contention and Resistance
Despite the top down coercion through the institution of law that only foreign lawmakers possessed (Merry 88-89), Merry suggest that there existed a limited but all too real set of avenues for resistance.

Clearly, the law is neither purely a tool for imposing the rule of dominant groups nor a weapon for weapon for resistance, but a site of power, defined by its texts, its practices, its practitioners, available to those who are able to turn it to their purposes (Merry 265).

The most problematic of scenarios relating to space of resistance was that particular litigants did not have the knowledge within which to act - they had neither the resources nor the knowledge/literacy within which to seek redress (Merry 264) in this new and really in-organic new set of laws. This may have all but insured job security for lawyers for years to come but it is clearly indicative that these new spheres of illegality where just as unstable as the people writing them and the people being written about. Clearly, the laws where written for a societal framework where its target audience where neither ready for nor had the history of European modernity to draw from. Altering normative measures through the re-codification of laws is a stroke of genius that I would argue was an enjoyed unintended consequence.

Works Cited
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The birth of the Prison. Tran. Alan Sheridan New York: Pantheon Books, 1975.
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Merry, Sally Engle. Colonizing Hawaii - The Cultural Power of Law. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
---. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Miguel Llora

This book is a valuable study of the colonization of Hawai`i and the role of "law" in the islands' cultural transformation. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a critical understanding of Hawai`i's social, economic and politial dynamics. I particularly benefited from the insights on religion, sexuality and women. Sally Engle Merry provides a good articulation of the inevitable paradoxes facing the Hawaiian Nation in the 19th century vis-a-vis encroaching American imperialism and colonization. "Colonizing Hawai`i" is also a good read in the context of critical legal studies.