A Change in the Air: Alternative Energy and Moral Narratives in a New Zealand Community

Abstract

The case of Makara, a semi-rural township outside Wellington, New Zealand, and a proposed major windfarm in the area is explored in this thesis. The windfarm has been integrated into local meaning systems through focusing predominantly on two frames of reference: energy and morality. This thesis focuses on energy and morality as aspects of culture, themselves both material and symbolic, and positions them as pivotal points in the interaction between humans and the social and cultural world. This is undertaken by first pulling energy away from its overly mechanised and scientific treatment in order to consider it as a 'social good', and an important factor in community identity formation. Then, morality is examined as taking shape in moral narratives, a means by which the community is able to narrate a coherent existence in a time of uncertainty, and in the process creates a scheme of acceptable behaviour and beliefs. Energy is drawn into this discussion by virtue of it being the focus of the community's moral narrative. In this fashion, the community is able to reconfigure the material elements of a prevailing grand moral narrative on renewable energy into new forms.