Electric landscapes : electricity and environment in New Zealand 1902 to 1980

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century the New Zealand environment has been drastically changed by technologies of electricity generation, transmission and consumption. Just as the use of electricity is woven into our daily lives, so are the physical components of the system that generates and delivers that electricity embedded in our landscapes. Electric landscapes are those places created by electricity generation and transmission such as hydro-electric, theπnal or geothermal power schemes. The Iit city and its electrified streets with traffic controls and illuminated billboards is also an electric landscape, and one that has become a quintessential element in urban life. This thesis offers a comprehensive examination of how New Zealanders used the generation, transmission and consumption of electricity to create new landscapes. It argues that electric landscapes are places of ambivalence where multiple and contradictory interpretations exist simultaneously within the one frame. It shows how multiple perspectives contributed to the formation of the landscapes of electricity development and demand. Electric landscapes were created in the encounter between technology and specific environments, and they were shaped through a dialogue between engineers, politicians, Conseiwationists, local communities, journalists and the wider public. The thesis draws attention to previously unstudied landscapes and reveals a complex history of historical attitudes to large-scale technological change of the environment. In particular it provides a more nuanced and longer-term perspective on the emergence of the enviromnental movement in New Zealand than the well-known, Manapouri-Centred story, In a series of case studies of distinctive electric landscapes created from the early twentieth century to the end of the 1970s, the history of electric landscapes reveals complexities and ambivalence in the conceptions New Zealanders held about electricity as it shaped their environments. It draws on the international literature of environmental history, historical geography and the history of technology and environment, and it focuses on popular conceptions of nature, electricity and the environment as described in print media, letters, petitions and submissions. It finds that multiple and often Contradietoiy conceptions about electricity, nature and about the impacts of large-scale construction projects all combined to shape New Zealand's electric landscapes.