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    In Search Of A New Zealand National Identity
    In Search Of A New Zealand National Identity
    In Search Of A New Zealand National Identity
    Ebook27 pages22 minutes

    In Search Of A New Zealand National Identity

    By Justin Cahill

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    About this ebook

    This is an introduction to whether there is a distinctive New Zealand national identity and, if so, what prompted its development, what sustains it and whether it has changed character over time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJustin Cahill
    Release dateApr 28, 2015
    ISBN9781310779497
    In Search Of A New Zealand National Identity
    Author

    Justin Cahill

    Welcome to my Smashwords profile.I am a New Zealand-born writer, based in Sydney. My main interests are nature and history.My thesis was on the negotiations between the British and Chinese governments over the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It was used as a source in Dr John Wong’s Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, the standard work on that conflict.I wrote a column on the natural history of the Wolli Creek Valley for the Earlwood News (sadly, now defunct) between 1992 and 1998.My short biography of the leading Australian ornithologist, Alfred North (1855-1917), was published in 1998.I write regular reviews on books about history for my blog,’ Justin Cahill Reviews’ and Booktopia. I’m also a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald's 'Heckler' column.My current projects include completing the first history of European settlement in Australia and New Zealand told from the perspective of ordinary people and a study of the extinction of Sydney’s native birds.After much thought, I decided to make my work available on Smashwords. Australia and New Zealand both have reasonably healthy print publishing industries. But, like it or not, the future lies with digital publishing.So I’m grateful to Mark Coker for having the vision to establish Smashwords and for the opportunity to distribute my work on it.

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      Book preview

      In Search Of A New Zealand National Identity - Justin Cahill

      Preface

      I

      This is a short account of the emergence of a New Zealand national identity. I wrote it while taking Eugene Kamenka’s influential course ‘Nationalism and the Nation State’ at the University of Sydney in 1992.

      Though now dated, it was my first attempt to engage with my national identity. In 1983, we left the rural Southland town of Gore for Sydney. The Emerald City’s denizens were, to me at least, brash and superficial. By contrast, New Zealanders seemed more reserved and less inclined to self-promotion, or ‘skyting’, as we called it. Encountering these differences led me to question what it was to be a New Zealander and what set us apart.

      My existential crisis aside, it was also my first opportunity to engage with an eminent international scholar on the forces which drove modern history. Kamenka had a though-provoking method of presenting and analysing his subject. He was reluctant to answer the question ‘what is nationalism’ immediately. He did not approve of preliminary definitions, preferring instead to develop them after thorough discussion of the surrounding facts and issues.

      A nation, Kamenka began, is a daily plebiscite: we agree to continue living together as we share, among other things, a common outlook and idea of ourselves. This insight into the voluntary nature of society was among the questions Kamenka raised that continued to occupy me long after I finished the course.

      They also included whether there is any meaningful distinction between ‘nationalism’ and a sense of ‘national consciousness’ or ‘national identity’. The orthodox view is that ‘nationalism’ emerged as a political ideology during the eighteenth century. Townshend, for example, observed that nationalism "…is a modern ideology [that] answers a need for rootedness generated by the dislocating effects of the modernization process" (Townshend, p.15). It comprised of a set of beliefs about national consciousness

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