Ohakune : a study of community in a New Zealand small town

Abstract

Much has been written about the small rural communities which are the products of European settlement in the 'New Worlds'. All manner of social scientists and a number of novelists have documented 'Small Town, U.S.A.' and its equivalents in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The actual extent of the similarity between the North American and Australasian cases is not yet clear, for there is a relative scarcity of material on the towns and villages of the latter. A parallel between the North American and Australasian forms has been suggested by S.H. Franklin who attests to the likelihood of both forms being ultimately recognized as belonging to a common type. See 'The Evolution of the Village Community, Wellington Province, New Zealand', Pacific Viewpoint, I,2,1960. But from the varying assortment of data and fiction a prevailing theme emerges - that of the small community, separated from the more dynamic influences of larger urban centres. As such, the small town is characteristically portrayed as a phenomenon existing outside the mainstream of mass society; a place where distance and limited numbers of people combine with a complex of economic and social factors to create an integrated local type with a distinct personality.