From `sustainable rural communities’ to `social sustainability': giving voice to diversity in Mangakahia Valley, New Zealand

Journal of Rural Studies 16 (2000) 433}446

From &sustainable rural communities' to &social sustainability': giving voice to diversity in Mangakahia Valley, New Zealand Kathryn Scott *, Julie Park , Chris Cocklin
The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
Monash University, Clayton, Vic 3168, Australia

Abstract Despite widespread interest in the notion of sustainability, little progress has been made towards an understanding of its social dimensions. Nonetheless, the concept of &sustainable rural communities' is embedded in popular, policy and academic discourses, where the needs of &rural communities' are usually equated with those of farm families. Our ethnographic research in Northland, New Zealand illustrates the diverse interests to be found within &rural communities'. Interviews and participant observation were undertaken between August 1995 and July 1996 in the Mangakahia Valley. The increasing divergence in the ethnic, class and occupational makeup of the population has brought with it complexities in terms of what can be said to contribute to &sustainable rural communities'. We suggest that &sustainable rural communities' be treated as a folk category, and instead, social science discourse should resort to the broader concept of social sustainability, which will have a locally de"ned content, not a universal de"nition, but will include elements of livelihood, social participation, justice and equity.  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

In the literature on sustainability and sustainable development, &community' and &social' are widely acknowledged as essential elements (e.g., Barbier, 1987; Cocklin, 1995; Gale and Cordray, 1994; Roberts and Hollander, 1995; Yiftachel and Hedgecock, 1993). Indeed, along with environment and economy, social considerations make up the three main elements of sustainability (Cocklin, 1995). Comment on the social and community dimensions of sustainability has trailed discussion of environmental and economic aspects, however. This is particularly the case in the rural context, although some work has emerged (Gale and Cordray, 1994; Jiggins, 1994; Le Heron, 1994; Rivers, 1994; Saltiel et al., 1994). What sustainability means in terms of rural communities is not at all clear, however; on the one hand it might imply stasis, but it might also suggest an ability to respond positively to change. Recent commentators have pointed to a tendency in academic discourse and policy prescriptions to treat &rural communities' as homogeneous in nature, ignoring the diversity in ethnicity, class and occupational status which are evident in many rural areas (Cloke and Little, 1997). This paper responds to these admonitions to give voice to diversity in the analysis of social sustainability in the countryside.

* Corresponding author. Fax: #64-9-373-7434.

Analysis of the notion of sustainable rural communities has particular relevance in New Zealand, where a commitment to the concept of sustainability has been signalled, particularly through the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA). Traditionally, the &rural' in New Zealand has been equated with pastoral farming and this continues to be evident in policy. For example, a Ministry of Agriculture (MAF) report states that `[i]mproving farm pro"tability is the single most e!ective contribution MAF can make to improving the viability of rural communitiesa (Webber and Rivers, 1992, p. vii). Country districts are not sites of homogeneous rural communities, as Miller (1996) has pointed out for Britain, especially with reference to class, and Allen and Sacks (1991) more generally for class, race and ethnicity. In the Mangakahia Valley, our study site in the North Island of New Zealand, ethnicity cross-cuts or aligns with class to create deep, if often unrecognised, di!erence. A further basic distinction between farming and non-farming pursuits may disqualify those not involved in farming from full membership of &the rural'. Gender may also hide the productive work of women, transforming it to &helping'. In the Mangakahia, class, ethnicity and gender are strong modes of social di!erentiation. This was brought clearly into focus during a discussion with a Pakeha (New Zealander of European descent) woman we interviewed,

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who commented on the number of indigenous Maori families returning to family land in the district. In the next breath she explained that there were &almost no families left' in the district, as she counted o! the handful of remaining Pakeha farm families. This example and that of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries above demonstrate the subsumption of rural into agricultural, equating rural communities with farming communities. In this paper we draw on ethnographic research in Northland, New Zealand, to demonstrate the rich diversity of interest groups within a rural area and consider the implications this has in determining what may be said to be &good for the community' or contribute to the sustainability of rural communities. Following Jones (1995), we examine lay, policy and academic discourses and practices in relation to community, the &rural' and sustainability. We highlight the need to examine the multitude of competing voices in a particular locality if &sustainability' is to be about anything other than maintaining the status quo and entrenching current patterns of inequality. Change e!ected upon rural communities and the associated issues of community viability have featured prominently in the academic literature for some time. Shifting economic fortunes, land-use changes and inmigration to rural communities, particularly from nearby urban areas, have been among the forces of change upon rural settlements and communities (e.g., Goldschmidt, 1978; Henry et al., 1987; Hill, 1990; Hodge, 1984). In New Zealand, interest in the social and community level impacts of rural change has been focused particularly around land use, and especially the implications of expanding a!orestation (e.g., Le Heron and Roche, 1985; Smith, 1981; Cocklin and Wall, 1997). Whether a &rural crisis' exists is still debated, given the variable fortunes of di!erent sectors of farming (Pomeroy, 1996), the geographically di!erentiated economic circumstances of farming, and the varying vibrancy of rural communities in New Zealand. Our own research gives substance to the view that di!erent groups have been a!ected in di!erent ways and to varying levels by wider economic and regulatory changes, as we will discuss below. These "ndings accord closely with those in Cloke's (1996) analysis. The RMA shifted the responsibility for resource management from national to regional and local levels of government, based on the rationale that those closest to the resources are best placed to decide how resources should be allocated (Furuseth and Cocklin, 1995; May et al., 1996). It is therefore up to regional and district authorities to balance the needs of local people and communities, while ensuring that developers are `avoiding, remedying, or mitigating any adverse e!ects of activities on the environmenta (RMA, 1991, Part II, S5(2)).

May et al. (1996) make the following observation about the RMA: In this new regime, resource developers are free to exploit resources for their self-interest, so long as they internalize the environmental costs of their production and meet the environmental bottomlines that are being established by regional and local councils. The legislation reveals a touching faith in the will and ability of councils to balance interests. As Gray (1991) identi"ed in the context of an Australian rural town, far from being `a kind of people's corporationa entrusted to manage resources, councils tend to be controlled by a powerful elite who have emerged out of a particular history of property relations. The needs of some communities and groups are therefore not necessarily provided for. Our research in Northland certainly indicated a similar situation exists in New Zealand. The voices of any other than certain groupings of farmers are seldom attended to in policy and academic discourses. Little is known about the impacts of economic and political changes upon the &other' in rural areas, including small business-owners, Maori, lifestylers (people who live on small blocks of land but derive most of their income elsewhere), farm and horticulture workers, and bene"ciaries; those &hidden others' referred to by Cloke and Little (1997). Furthermore, the historical emergence of these stakeholder groups is little understood and they are frequently passed over as &newcomers', without su$cient attention to the relationships between them and with farming groups, and how their presence transforms social relations within rural places. Meanwhile, under the auspices of the Resource Management Act, regional and local councils struggle to interpret how people and communities might best `provide for their social, economic, and cultural well-beinga (RMA, 1991, Part II, S5(2)). In the following analysis we examine academic discourses of rural, sustainability and community, then approaches to these in government policy. This is followed by an examination of social sustainability issues in the Mangakahia Valley, New Zealand, the site of our ethnographic research.

1. Academic discourses of rural, sustainability and community Conventionally, the &rural' concept has been applied in both lay and academic discourse to a convergence of concerns: land use and population density. According to White (1986, p. 413), for example, rural areas are `2dominated by open countryside, extensive land uses and low population densitiesa. However, in practice, `2it is impossible to produce an exact de"nition of

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rural characteristics; instead the &rural' is often thought of as a polar opposite to &urban'a. There is a discernible movement in scholarship from attempts to de"ne the rural as a distinct locality to an interest in the social representation of the rural through attention to discourses (Halfacree, 1993). Postmodernism and the &crisis of representation' in rural studies has led to attempts to better understand the meaning of rural in terms of both residents' (e.g., Halfacree, 1995) and popular consciousness (Willet and Lulo!, 1995). This approach allows for the recognition that `2people do not hold a clear, well-de"ned and well-structured &image' of &the rural'a (Halfacree, 1993, p. 33). Goodman and Redclift (1991) argue that `the &rural' designation is a frequently concealed suggestion that spatial, rather than social and economic factors, lie at the heart of social deprivation in the countryside2 [implying that] social deprivation re#ects the problems of rural areas, rather than the problems within rural areasa (pp. 79}80) which may be regional, national or global in their origins or scope. They raise the need to question the ideological construction of the &countryside', pointing to, for example, the hourly rates of pay for manual workers in Britain being well below the national average. In academic approaches to &community', a similar shift has occurred, moving from an interest in cohesion and integration (e.g., Burch, 1969) to less essentialist and consensual approaches. An emphasis has developed on micro-politics, cross-cutting alliances, social networks and the idea of communities of interest forming and disintegrating around issues (Park, 1984). Williams (1983) established that &community' has been in the English language since the 14th century, its meaning ranging from the common people, an organised society, the people of a locality, holding something in common, a sense of common identity. He could "nd no unfavourable use of &community', a feature it shares with the term &sustainability'. Our object of study becomes, to paraphrase Moerman (1974), how people accomplish community, what this means to people, and how community is used as a `warmly persuasivea (Williams, 1983, p. 76) rhetorical resource. The boundaries of communities have been given special attention in social science, particularly in the last two to three decades following Barth's (1969) important work on ethnic boundaries. Cohen (1985, 1986) has focused speci"cally on the symbolic construction of community, arguing that a focus on boundaries leads to an understanding of belonging and non-belonging, and leads away from the assumption that community is based on uniformity or integration. Cohen (1985) urges us to examine the discourses (practices as well as narratives) pertaining to boundaries as a key method for understanding communities.

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So what of rural communities? Jones (1995, p. 7) stated: When referring to rural communities, we are implying a locality, a geographically de"ned place where people interact. However, community is a dynamic interplay of historic processes and complex relationships, acted out in environments. Community embodies a wholeness; it is not enough to describe it as a sense of place, or as a product (of relationships between individuals) or as a social system. Rather, community comes into existence and de"nes its own form, out of the interaction of the participatory elements, in environments and over time. Jones also notes that diversity is often hidden or suppressed in rural communities in order to achieve a sense of social cohesion, solidarity and sense of belonging; thence, external forces are easier to see as the problem than local forces. This is very evident in the Mangakahia, where for example, the government's introduction of the RMA is blamed, rather than those neighbours with whom one is forced to consult. On the other hand, the suppression of di!erence is such that the more strongly people feel a sense of a$liation to a community, the less likely they are to publicly object to an action taken by another person deemed to belong to the same community. This was certainly the case among the Pakeha farmers during an irrigation consent process (Scott et al., 1997, p. 201). It is ironic that the local e!ectiveness of the RMA is curtailed by the very sense of community sustainability the Act seeks to promote. Put more negatively, for the RMA to be e!ective at the local level, fractures in community must become obvious, unless the RMA and its agents, or some other party (for example, Maori or conservationists) can be constructed as an external enemy. Concerns about the social implications of rural change and attention to rural discourses coincide with the emergence of the debate on sustainability and sustainable development. The two terms are not synonymous. References to sustainable development, for example, are often underpinned by presumptions about the need to maintain economic growth trajectories of a kind prescribed by conventional capitalist economics. The Brundtland report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987), for instance, explicitly assumed that intergenerational equity and the alleviation of the dire circumstances of the world's poor can only be achieved through the spread of industrialisation and the wider adoption of the Western economic growth model. Thus, the path to sustainable development that is laid in that report is predicated on an expressed faith in capitalist economics. Yet as a 1997 World Health Organisation report recognised, while, ideally, economic growth and development help create a better physical environment, especially by improving physical community infrastructure, frequently this is not the case because entrenched

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social and political inequalities prevent the redistribution of wealth to those who need it most. Furthermore, the &development' itself may further degrade the environment, endangering the health of both urban and rural poor who typically live in remote and ecologically fragile rural areas or on the periphery of expanding urban areas. McManus (1996) has written that a shift of focus has taken place away from &sustainability' towards &sustainable development', wherein the latter implies attention not only to human needs and aspirations but also achieving full growth potential. Sustainability, on the other hand, is often equated with a more ecocentric view of human}environment relations, according to which environment is privileged over economy and often over people as well. The use of this term, then, often implies a much stronger emphasis on environment and how development can be pursued within ecological limits. Both terms, but particularly &sustainable development', have been embraced in recent years by governments in an e!ort to respond to widely expressed concerns within society for the relations between economic activity and the environment. Policy prescriptions, though, are founded on an interpretation of sustainable development that accepts both the legitimacy and e$cacy of the conventional economic growth model. The notion of &sustainable development', which is expressed in so much government policy today is therefore more about encouraging economic growth, ostensibly to encourage sustainable lifestyles, than about achieving either ecological goals or social equity. Despite the widespread use of the terms in political, popular, and academic discourses, they are not clearly de"ned and indeed resist consensual de"nition, as Cocklin (1995) has explained: The lack of consensus in de"nition and the absence of a common conceptual framework have arisen because so many diverse interests have adopted the term in the belief, or hope, that it legitimises their own values and causes (Cocklin, 1995, p. 240). While some people have expressed concern over ambiguous and contested meanings, in reality we should be neither surprised nor concerned that agreed de"nitions have not emerged. This is because sustainability/sustainable development refer to the priorities society assigns, respectively, to social, economic and environmental factors (Cocklin, 1995), and the implicit weightings that are assigned to these have long been, and will always remain, subject to social contest. In other words, how the sustainability/sustainable development concept is played out in social, economic and political terms will de"ne what values gain hegemony, what then is sustained, and what is compromised. Of more direct relevance to our interest in rural communities are the interpretations and emphases that

have been given to the &social' in discourses on sustainability/sustainable development. In the Brundtland Report, concerns for society and communities were represented through references to equity, within and across nations and intergenerationally. However, Our Common Future, along with many other commentaries on sustainability/sustainable development fails to engage explicitly with what might, or should be, implied by the notions of social and community sustainability. Agenda 21, the major outcome of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, refers to the needs of individuals, communities and the environment. Central in the document is the concept of &sustainable livelihoods', according to which everyone in society could earn a living; this would require governments to address the causes of poverty, hunger, the inequitable distribution of income and low human resource development (Perrings, 1994). The environmental priority is to limit further degradation, while the social priority is to provide the capacity for people to feed, clothe and house themselves. Thus, governments were charged through Agenda 21 with the responsibility of working towards a more equitable division of wealth. Koopman}Boyden (1993, p. 14) has argued, though, that Agenda 21 does not provide direction as to how to achieve social goals and that it still treats social issues as an &add-on'. In the context of a Canadian seminar on sustainable rural communities, Bryden (1994) conceptualised communities as social systems and suggested that a &sustainable community' is one that has a long-term capacity to regenerate itself socially and economically and that has the capacity to reproduce itself and evolve economically, socially, culturally and ecologically. Dykeman (1990, p. 6) adopts a more managerial perspective and de"ned sustainable communities as `those that aggressively manage and control their destiny based on a realistic and well thought through visiona. Similarly, Bryant (1995, p. 180) de"ned sustainable community development as `a process by which the community attempts to in#uence the processes a!ecting the various activities in the community in order to improve the quality of life of its residents in an enduring way through identifying and pursuing strategies that are compatible with the natural environment, socially and culturally acceptable and economically feasiblea. All these de"nitions fail to represent the diverse interests of rural people. According to Allen and Sacks (1992), in the quest for sustainable agriculture it is vital to attend to social equity issues. They state that the causes of unsustainable agriculture (inherent in the current social and economic relations of production) must be addressed, rather than merely the e!ects (for example, loss of family farms, community disruption, environmental degradation).

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2. Policy constructions of rural, sustainability and community O$cially, &rural' in New Zealand refers to areas outside centres which have 1000 or more people (Department of Statistics, 1997). This means that we are referring to areas that have very little in the way of infrastructure and few services, unlike many &rural towns' referred to in the international literature. While the number of people in rural areas has remained stable at around 500,000 for the last 60 years, as a percentage of the total population they have declined signi"cantly to 15% the 1996 census (Pomeroy, 1991; Department of Statistics, 1997). A major shift in agricultural policies in 1984 was introduced by a Labour Government, traditionally representative of urban dwellers, unlike the National Party which has its roots in farming. However, following Cloke (1996) and Le Heron (1991), we suggest it is misleading to focus only on agricultural policy as the source of most rural change. Much wider changes were taking place in the nation, including a withdrawal of the state, changes in monetary policy, changes in urbanbased industries, and signi"cant adjustments in world markets that have seen most agricultural commodity prices fall and dramatic shifts in patterns of demand and supply. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (now Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) is the only central government agency which is explicitly responsible for the rural sector. Sorensen (1993) writes of the same situation in Australia and accounts for it by pointing to the political di$culties of introducing long-term strategies which coordinate various government agencies. In light of the downturn in the agricultural sector during the 1980s, the government was extensively lobbied in the late 1980s to establish a Ministry of Rural A!airs. The decision was made instead to extend MAF's brief to include `healthy communitiesa, human resources and rural a!airs perspective's (Pomeroy, 1991). MAF subsequently embraced the concept of sustainable agriculture, which they de"ned as: 2the use of practices and systems which maintain or enhance the ability of people and communities to provide for their social and cultural well-being, the economic viability of agriculture, the natural resource base of agriculture, other ecosystems in#uenced by agricultural activities and the quality and safety of food and "bre (MAF, 1993, p. 4). How then is MAF placed to attend to the social needs of rural people? According to the MAF Policy paper, Public Policy and Rural Communities, `[i]mproving farm pro"tability is the single most e!ective contribution MAF can make to improving the viability of rural communitiesa (Webber and Rivers, 1992, p. vii). The report acknowledges opposition to the reduction of services to rural

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areas, yet claims that some services have in fact improved and it is `often only the sense of community viability that has been denteda (1992, p. v). Our discussion below on the Mangakahia Valley points to the rather obvious fact that a sense of community is intrinsic to the concept of &community'. These policy discourses demonstrate the hegemonic subsumption of rural into agricultural, as if rural communities were composed entirely of farmers. Indeed, another MAF paper, Rural Community Development (Pomeroy, 1991), partially acknowledges this when it notes that although rural electorates are well represented in Parliament, minorities, such as Maori and women, are not. Diverse interests amongst farmers may also not be articulated through the current structures. While Federated Farmers speak for farmers, in Northland only 19% of farm owners are members (Blunden and Cocklin, 1995). Service and social needs of all are therefore not acknowledged by government. The traditional tendency to rely on agricultural agendas to cater to the needs of &rural communities' is called into question. For example, Lawrence and Williams (1990) observe that in Australia a `more productive agriculture is coming to mean less productive and viable rural communitiesa (Lawrence and Williams, 1990, p. 40). They note that increased technology and capital investment in agriculture has led to increased dependency on agribusiness, o!-farm credit, and unstable world markets. Farm amalgamations resulting in fewer farms and families, reduced employment of paid labour input and increased family input of labour have contributed to spiralling rural poverty. Elsewhere, Lawrence (1990) notes that solutions are to be found by giving attention to the economic and social irrationalities of existing production systems. Thus far in the discussion of policy we have tried to disentangle rural from agricultural, and to indicate that rural policy has tended to be agricultural policy. But even within that category of rural dwellers who are involved in agricultural pursuits there are several di!erent groups, di!erentiated by sectors of industry (beef/sheep, dairy) and their relationship to the means of production (such as farm owners, farm workers, share milkers, &lifestyle farmers'). When only family farmers are being discussed there is a tendency to imply that they have common interests and similar experiences of economic restructuring and global changes. However, as Pomeroy (1996) has noted, the declining fortunes of beef/sheep farmers are having serious implications for the ongoing economic viability of the farms, while for the majority of dairy farmers, returns have been relatively buoyant over the last decade. What then of those who are not farmers, including those that service the farming sector, who have been considered expendable under in the restructuring in New Zealand since 1984? (Cloke, 1996). Discourses of rural

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sustainability tend to disregard the social, cultural and economic needs of these hidden &others'. Given the focus on &environment' in discourses of sustainability, it is useful to examine also how the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) interprets &sustainability'. This Ministry is a signi"cant contributor to sustainability discourses, partly because it was a driving force behind the RMA. One MfE report (Gibbs, 1994) asserts that community sustainability is central to sustainable development because people need to act and think in a collective way, not just as individuals. The report de"nes a community as having `a sense of commonly shared sentimenta and therefore `sustainable communitiesa need an agreed set of means of interacting with their natural environment. This theoretically impoverished view of community is "rmly set in the 1950s structural}functional paradigm and ignores all the work that has been done subsequently on the means by which diverse interest groups can subscribe to a shared set of symbols and imagine themselves as a community, yet attribute di!erent meanings to these symbols. Such communities are aggregations, not integrations, and are #uid (Cohen, 1985). Within them may be groups and networks who have competing interests in the management of particular resources. An alternative policy construction of &sustainability' may be found in the proceedings of the third preparatory committee meeting for the International Conference on Population and Development by the New Zealand Delegation in 1994. Their second principle enunciated that: Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature. In addition they have the right to an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families, including adequate food, clothing and housing (Durie, 1997, p. 4).

3. Interpreting sustainability in Northland, New Zealand The research referred to below is part of a larger research project on the de"nition and analysis of sustainable land-based production in Northland, New Zealand (Blunden et al., 1995; Cocklin and Blunden, 1998; Cocklin et al., 1999; Scott et al., 1997). The research investigates those processes, forces and linkages at the regional, community and farm levels which impact on sustainable land-based production in its social, economic and environmental dimensions. The project is based within the social sciences of geography and anthropology and has included multiple research methods. Ethnographic research is the primary basis of the research presented in this paper. Participant observation and interviews were the key research methods employed. The ethnographic researcher (Scott) lived in the Manga-

kahia Valley between August 1995 and July 1996, taking part in many aspects of community life. Semi-structured interviews were completed with just over 100 people. Extensive "eld notes added considerable depth to the analysis of interview transcripts. Newspaper and other media accounts of local issues were also collected and analysed, along with relevant policy documents. The Mangakahia valley is situated in mid-Northland (Fig. 1) and runs NW}SE, being deeply incised in its northern reaches, but broadening in the southern end to alluvial #ats. The valley is surrounded by moderate to steep hill country. The river #ats and easier hill country are predominantly in dairying, while beef/sheep farms and, more recently, forestry are typical of the steeper country. Small patches of remnant native forest are found throughout the valley. While the southern part of the valley is less than 30 minutes easy driving from the nearest town (Whangarei), other parts of the valley are more isolated. At the time of the research, approximately 2900 people lived in the Mangakahia Valley, of which 20% were Maori. The valley has a youthful population with 29% of its population under 15 years of age compared to 26% for the wider rural Whangarei region. Of the population aged over 65 years, the Mangakahia has just 6%, compared to 11% for the wider rural Whangarei region. The age structure varied considerably throughout the valley however. Pakotai and Parakao, the more isolated districts in the north-west of the valley had the highest concentration of both the young and people over the age of 65, while Maungatapere, the area closest to an urban centre, had fewer school aged children and a high number of people of retirement age, as compared to the rest of the valley. Ethnicity throughout the valley also varied markedly, the Maori population ranging from 41% in Pakotai/Parakao to just 9% in Poroti (Davis and Cocklin, 1996; pers. communication, Peter Davis). It is likely that the high proportion of children under 15 and older people in the retirement age group in the north-west reaches of the valley are re#ective of the returning Maori population to that area. Schools are one of the few aspects of social infrastructure left in the valley, and are consequently important meeting points for people. The valley is served by four schools, the rolls of three of which ranged from 25 to 100 in 1996; Titoki has an area school which includes secondary schooling and had a roll of 250. The other important social institutions of the valley are the marae (Maori meeting and ceremonial places), "ve of which are scattered through the valley, and the one remaining shop.

 Peter Davis, a member of the research team, has updated Davis and Cocklin (1996), A Socio-Economic Proxle of Mangakahia, Northland for the projected book, Cocklin, C., Park, J., Blunden, G. (Eds.). N.D.

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Fig. 1. Area of ethnographic study.

The Mangakahia Valley is very much a microcosm of rural issues in Northland and elsewhere in New Zealand. The Mangakahia has been a!ected by the dramatic changes in the supply and organisation of rural services over about the last decade. Land-use changes have also had major implications for communities in the valley, including the conversion of land use from pastoral agriculture to forestry, the intensi"cation of dairy operations and the conversion of dairy farms on volcanic soils to horticultural and lifestyle blocks. In-migration is an important factor in the valley and has resulted in a changing demographic pro"le. The close

proximity of the valley to a major centre (Whangarei, with a population of approximately 45,000) has meant that the Mangakahia is attractive to &lifestylers' and commuters seeking a country lifestyle. The return migration of many Maori, which has been common over the last decade in many parts of Northland, is another important development that has contributed to the changing face of &community' in the Mangakahia. Within the valley, there are competing views on the consequences of in-migration for the sustainability of communities in the valley, as has been observed elsewhere (see, for example, Allan and Mooney, 1998).

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While the overall population of the valley grew by 13.5% between 1986 and 1996 (from 2556 to 2900), the proportion of people involved in pastoral farming has declined. This is particularly the case in the upper reaches of the valley where plantation forestry has replaced farms and pastoral farmers have declined from 72 to 63% of the resident population (Davis and Cocklin, 1996 pers. communication, Peter Davis). Nevertheless, pastoral farming still accounted for a large proportion (40%) of employment in the valley at the time of the research. Politically, farming families in New Zealand have experienced a loss of power at both a national and local level. The 1980s and 1990s were light years away from the 1950s and 1960s when the National Party (conservative) was seen as the parliamentary wing of Federated Farmers, the leading industry lobby group. Farmers can no longer expect supplementary minimum prices, subsidies and other incentives to expand pastoral farming. The RMA has introduced the need to consult with neighbours and others over all signi"cant resource development proposals. Accustomed to being independent in their work, many farmers have objected strongly to this and perceive it to be an infringement on their property rights. It was not surprising, therefore, that in the course of our research farmers expressed considerable frustration that `good farm landa was going into plantation forestry and lifestyle blocks or was unused, scrub-covered Maori land, while they, `the backbone of the countrya, were unacknowledged and unsupported. From another perspective, though, the RMA has afforded special attention to Maori cultural and spiritual values in relation to resource management. In the view of many Maori in the valley, this was the "rst o$cial recognition of their role of kaitiaki (loosely translated &guardians over precious resources'). In recent years, as return migration has strengthened their numbers in rural areas, kohanga reo (total immersion pre-schools) have been established, facilities have been improved at some marae, and kapa haka (Maori culture groups) for children have gained strength. Marae and Maori institutions continue to be based on whanau (family) and hapu (sub-tribe) connections. Nevertheless, the majority of Maori families do not have access to land or "nance, they are on very low incomes, many are on welfare bene"ts, and employment and training opportunities are few. The current situation for rural Maori is a consequence not only of land alienation but of the shift towards a post-industrial society, open to the vagaries of global markets and with an associated reduction in the need for a largely unskilled labour force in the cities. Farm women have traditionally done much of the work of sustaining networks among families which underpin many community activities. In recent years farm women have been more involved than ever in contributing to the viability of farms through their domestic work, their work around the farm itself, and their o!-

farm employment. In many parts of New Zealand these pressing burdens have meant that women are less available to contribute as much time and energy as before to community activities (Burborough et al., 1997, p. 7), although other research suggests that women continue their diverse contributions by working harder (Taylor and Little, 1995, p. 229). This increasing burden on women was also evident in the Mangakahia, most noticeably during the downturn in dairying of the 1980s. Members of the Country Women's Institute explained the scarcity of new younger members with reference to the increasing burdens placed on women. However, a small number of voluntary associations did survive, most notably the Garden Club, and farm women were active in the schools and playcentres, while Maori women supported the Maori Women's Welfare League and their marae.

3.1. What is good for the community? The increasing divergence in the ethnic, class and occupational makeup of the population has brought with it complexities in terms of what can be said to contribute to &sustainable rural communities'. Several examples, based on the ethnography, follow which illustrate our view that economic and social changes have a!ected di!erent groups within the Mangakahia in di!erent ways. As the examples reveal, what is said by some to be &good for the community' may in fact be detrimental to other groups within the valley.

3.2. Loss of services The loss of many basic services to rural areas is commonly said to undermine the sustainability of rural communities. Closer inspection indicates that changes in service provision has di!erent meanings and implications for di!erent people. The loss of the bus service, post o$ces and all but one general store in the Mangakahia was mourned by farmers as indicators of a &loss of community'. Improved roads and personal transport meant that, during the period of the research (1995}1996), most farm families made frequent trips to `towna (the city of Whangarei, which is a 20}60 min trip by car). While the loss of services was certainly inconvenient and created an added cost, the loss was most often re#ected on by farmers as a loss of somewhere to meet and feel part of the community. Although some beef/sheep farmers struggled to make a living, this section of the community had the resources to be mainly self-reliant. In contrast, many people, predominantly Maori, on very low incomes, were forced into reliance on each other for transport and other basic facilities (sharing of a washing machine was also common, for example).

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In general, farmers no longer required the passenger and carrier service provided by buses in the past. Many young people from farming families were provided with a car or at least had the use of a motor vehicle when required. &Lifestylers' were also reasonably mobile. In contrast, poorer families, mostly Maori, were greatly a!ected by the loss of the bus service. With very few local employment prospects and with training or tertiary education opportunities all based in Whangarei or further a"eld, opportunities were severely limited for those without transportation. Car pooling and car borrowing were commonplace for many of these families, particularly for making the trip to Whangarei for supplies and services. During the time of the research social welfare bene"ts were changed to a system whereby payments were made randomly on three di!erent days of the week rather than on a single nominated day, which made it more di$cult to coordinate car pooling. Car pooling was also common for those employed in seasonal horticultural work, and as one employer noted, `if that particular car doesn't arrive you miss out on half a dozen peoplea. General store and post o$ce closures were seen as a major blow to the communities in the valley. They were missed by all, for the convenience of a general store that stocked `gasket goo, wing nuts, everything, anythinga. For many farming people, the loss of a local shop or post o$ce also meant the loss of an important focus for community, as one woman explained: 2there was a little shop and garage across the road [here], and another shop at Parakao...and at one time there was a post place2It was somewhere else where when you drove to post your mail or buy your stamp you were bound to "nd somebody else was also there2You learn that Mrs so-and-so had her baby, or so-and-so isn't very well2so you drop something o! [to her] - be aware of things, so it was a communication link. Another person put it this way: The local post o$ce, they're all gone, and the store's gone. There's nothing that really binds the community together much any more, it's becoming very much an individual style of living out in the country now. Those that remained in the upper reaches of the valley * predominantly low-income Maori families * were least able to a!ord more regular trips to Whangarei and many did not have the convenience of deep freezers. Rather than mourning the &loss of community' associated with loss of services, these people tended to talk about the added "nancial costs.

3.3. School house rentals Rent increases for school houses have been imposed as part of the overall shift to a &user pays' philosophy and

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this change has also led to concerns about &community sustainability'. School houses were once provided at very cheap rentals to attract teachers to rural schools. In the Mangakahia, the smaller schools had one school house each, traditionally occupied by the school principal; the area school had six school houses because of its much larger roll and the attempts made in the past to attract teachers. Farmers saw this as `good for the communitya because of the regular interaction between teacher and community that it fostered. When government increased rents on school houses to market rates, many teachers decided to live elsewhere, often commuting from outside the valley. Several research participants re#ected on the negative outcomes of this change, stating that sports and other extra-curricula activities had su!ered, and more generally that communities had been weakened: 2I call it another nail in the co$n of rural schools, of rural communities. They forced a lot of teachers, principals, in areas like this to actually move from them and go and live somewhere else2The bureaucracy in Wellington have looked and put a pencil mark through there and haven't got the feeling for what the reality of living and being part of a little rural community is all about. It's dollars and cents [for the government]. Meanwhile, rental properties were generally in short supply, and school houses were highly sought after. The demand came from farm workers, people wishing to live in rural areas and commute, and Maori returning to the area. For the smaller schools which were under threat of closure or down-sizing, decisions about whom the houses would be rented to were based on the number of children a family had to contribute to the school roll. Valley schools were just one of the services that had only remained viable because of the new migrants in the previous 10 years. For in-coming families, the opportunity to rent a house adjacent to a small country school was very desirable. To the long-established farming families, however, the new residents were seen as transients, many on Social Welfare bene"ts, and not likely to contribute to the long-term sustainability of the community. &Community sustainability' from this viewpoint was clearly about stasis rather than change.

3.4. Changes at the Titoki playcentre The Titoki playcentre is situated in the hub of the dairying area of the valley. Changes in the membership at the centre was a clear example of how the population had changed in recent years and how the role of such community institutions was also changing. The playcentre had a full roll at the time of the research, and only two of the mothers involved were from a farm. This contrasted with only a few years before when local dairy farm

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women were the mainstays of the centre. Since then, newcomers included lifestylers, horticulturalists, small business owners, wives of commuters, farm workers and sharemilkers, and some solo parents and other people living on bene"ts. Several young Maori mothers, not typical playcentre participants, had joined and more were being encouraged to take part. A common complaint in the Titoki area was that the playcentre no longer put on social dances as they had in the past when farm women predominated at the centre. To many farming people, this indicated that the playcentre was not running as well as it had in the past. Yet to those that were involved at the time of the research, the playcentre was thriving. Women said they enjoyed the opportunity to meet other local women and for their children to get to know each other before starting school. Some women said that they had felt unable to "t in when the centre was run by farm women because the farm women were so e$cient and capable (possibly due to their having higher educational levels and broader work experience). The playcentre had changed to serving a more speci"c age group but people of more varied backgrounds and no longer took on the responsibility of organising community functions.

3.5. Return migration

bringing them up as a part of my history, a part of my old people, my hapu (sub-tribe), and being part of the marae (meeting and ceremonial place) has kept them in touch with all of that2It's given them a di!erent outlook on life, as compared to some of our town kids. Views on return migration varied considerably. Farming people in the valley generally expressed concern at the number of people dependent on bene"ts shifting into the area and there was a strong perception that they had come to the valley to avoid work. Many mourned the days when farming was the predominant land use and farming families formed a vibrant community. Return migration had shaken farmers' boundaries of community and comments such as there being `almost no families lefta re#ect the resistance to this change. Most Maori participants also acknowledged di$culties with return migration, particularly in accessing services, work, training and further education. A few spoke explicitly of the `poverty trapa they found themselves in. A more extreme view of the di$culties was expressed by one Maori participant: I mean our fathers all left the lands and we've all got to come home * nothing, there's no infrastructure, there's non-productive land, we're going to "ght cos there's too many of us now, we've bred like rabbits. And so what happens is these people now are being forced back into these small blocks of land and they say we'll put together Papakainga [housing scheme]2it's a rural ghetto, but they've got them out of the cities.

An important trend in rural Northland over the last decade has been the return migration of many Maori families to their ancestral homeland. This signi"ed a reversal of the trend since the Second World War of urbanisation of the Maori population. Nationwide, 75% of the Maori population lived in rural areas in 1945, but by 1981, 80% of Maori were urban dwellers (Metge, 1995, p.22). In the Mangakahia, many Maori returned in the late 1980s. This was most apparent in the north-west reaches of the valley, with those identifying as Maori increasing between 1986 and 1996 from 153 to 219 (a 43% increase). These people were from a range of age groups, including people with young children, middle-aged people with or without dependents and older retired people or those who had taken, or been forced into, early retirement. The reasons most often given by Maori for returning to the Mangakahia were wanting to live on family land because of their ancestral connections to that land, preference for raising children in the countryside and near family and because it was cheaper than living in the city. Return migration was a common response to reduced work opportunities in the cities, many saying that if they had to live on a bene"t anyway, they might as well return to their turangawaewae (ancestral standing place). One woman explained:

Yet none of the Maori that we spoke to who had returned to the valley regretted doing so, and they saw `coming homea as the best decision they could have made. In one sense, return migration could be said to contribute to &community sustainability' by maintaining the viability of local schools and the vitality of communities as a whole. However, many of the long-term residents were alarmed at the changing fabric of community in the valley. Just as urban migration of the 1950s and 1960s had brought about racial tensions as urban Pakeha and Maori came face-to-face for the "rst time, return migration has incited similar tensions in the rural context. Returning Maori were also faced with a future that o!ered few opportunities for employment and a reasonable standard of living. As the person above observes, &they got them out of the cities' but problems associated with unemployment and poverty have merely shifted to another landscape.

One of the pros for me is bringing our kids up out here2it's that whanaungatanga (kinship) thing2it's

One of the recurring themes in the Mangakahia was that of &loss of community'. The changes in land use, the

3.6. Loss of community

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removal or attenuation of various services and other associated factors had led, it was said, to a loss of community. It was easy for the ethnographer to assume that this was a widespread perception. Yet on closer analysis, things looked rather di!erent. Baldly, Maori were not mourning the loss of community, but the lack of services and economic resources: the material bases of livelihood. Some Pakeha were mourning the loss of community, the sense of belonging and of intersecting social relationships which earlier styles of farming and the availability of various services supported: a more spiritual basis of wellbeing. But not all Pakeha had the same sense of loss: newer lifestylers enjoyed the country living and the social gatherings. While Maori only occasionally used the term community, in most contexts their usage of it was synonymous with area or district, except when used in relation to `the Maori communitya. There the sense of community was based on the kinship and descent groups and the land to which they belong. This is a qualitatively di!erent kind of community from that perceived by Pakeha and it stretches well beyond the Mangakahia. Localised whanau (family) groups were growing stronger in the Mangakahia during the time of the study. The pastoral farming families did not see the activities of the lifestylers as &community' activities. Instead, they saw these people as being unavailable for traditional community activities and not contributing. For example, because lifestylers worked in town during the day, they were not available for the traditional weekday school working bees or calf club day (annual school pet and craft show). Nor did the farm families, for the most part, see the work for whanau and hapu which Maori did, as community work. Current playcentre mothers were not seen as community-minded because they did not put on dances for the district, but instead catered to the needs of families with young children and apparently satis"ed these needs very well. That the current members of the playcentre were from non-farming families and of di!erent class and ethnicity than the leaders of a few years back was perhaps signi"cant. The discourses about &loss of community' indicate that the predominating sense of community is the property of the farmers. Rather ironically, considering the more usual tendency to align Pakeha farmers with materiality and Maori whanau with spirituality, this analysis suggests that Maori valued community infrastructure for the material resources it provided, whereas Pakeha valued it for the sense of belonging and a$liation which it made possible. This is almost certainly because Maori family and social life normally provides for high levels of interaction, whereas that of Pakeha does not and so needs to be structured by interactions in the context of built environments such as local stores, post o$ces, sports clubs and the like. Maori identity, by contrast, was resourced by whenua (land) and whanau (family). Lifestylers enjoyed

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the social interactions at community events, but the sense of belonging seemed less important. Under these circumstances, discussions about community sustainability seem not just confused, but likely to contribute to the re-entrenchment of the dominant discourse * that of the farmers. While acknowledging that farmers have as much entitlement to resources for a sense of belonging as the next person, we suggest that a somewhat less ideological term is that of social sustainability (leaving aside the analysis of &sustainability' for the moment). This concept can embrace the social, cultural, political and economic resources necessary for livelihood, social participation and identity and a sense of worth, without invoking a politics of nostalgia, or worse * traditional values.

4. Conclusion Policy discourses of sustainable rural communities tend to equate the needs of rural communities with those of the agricultural sector, while the dominant lay discourse conveys the message that rural communities should be sustained because of their inherent worth. Given that the concept as a whole and the component parts of &sustainable rural community' are embedded in various kinds of lay, policy and academic discourses and practices, they must be attended to in our analyses. However, we propose that we attend to the concept as an object of study: a folk category, not as part of our social science discourse. Instead, in social science discourse we might resort to the broader concept of &social sustainability'. Further, instead of seeking a universal de"nition, we envisage &social sustainability' as having a local, historically de"ned content which will include elements of livelihood, social participation, justice and equity. `Communities of interesta within a given locality is a useful concept for analysis, for example, in relation to resource consent applications referred to above. In this instance, the aim of social sustainability could involve fostering processes which allow people who form di!erent communities of interest around the issue to engage with the issue and each other in new ways in an e!ort to get things done. This perspective is compatible with that espoused by Flora (1998) and Flora et al. (1997), who promote a marriage between the concepts of social capital and a notion of entrepreneurial social infrastructure. The convergence of perspectives is interesting and con"rmatory given their di!erent theoretical and empirical bases. While social aspects of sustainability are our core interest in this paper, it must be acknowledged that the interlinked concepts of economic and environmental sustainability are intrinsic to the notion of social sustainability. A social system cannot be sustainable if it is not economically and environmentally viable. In areas such as the Mangakahia in which livelihoods are strongly

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resource based and cultural identities are attached to the environment (Scott and Cocklin, n.d.), social sustainability hinges on maintaining the quality of that environment. Similarly, a social system cannot be sustainable if it is characterised by a proportion of the population living in absolute poverty, and/or by marked or increasing economic disparity (WHO, 1997; Wilkinson, 1998). Within the areas regarded as rural, whether as de"ned by professional or lay discourses, increasing economic disparities between families, occupational groups, ethnic groups, or geographical areas are warning signs of unsustainability. Human health, satisfying human relations, a sense of community, a sense of engagement, environmental health and, ultimately, economic viability are all threatened by increasing inequity, especially in a country where `a fair goa and more recently `a level playing "elda and now a stakeholder democracy: (Larner, 1998) are the bases of political ideology. Our research has highlighted the importance within the region often conceptualised as &the Mangakahia community' of ethnic, gender, class, and occupational di!erences. The di!erent social groupings which result from this social variation express di!ering concepts of community and experience di!erent needs and aspirations. Social, economic, demographic and land use changes in the Mangakahia were experienced in some sectors as loss of community and by others as loss of resources (see `Loss of communitya above). Withdrawal of services such as banking, general stores, and buses were felt by farmers more as a loss of community, while Maori experienced them as economic hardship. Most lifestylers who commuted to town daily hardly noticed these changes. The change in tenancy of school houses was a boon to lifestylers who sought a rural environment and to farm workers with children. However, farmers saw a loss of community leadership and involvement as a result of teachers no longer residing in the district. The playcentre case also demonstrates the di!erent needs associated with community networks between farming and nonfarming residents of the region. Maori returning to the Mangakahia described the whanau support and the bene"ts of living on ancestral land, despite some anxiety about jobs and living conditions. However, farmers tended to see the return migration trend as disruptive to the social fabric of the Mangakahia. In their view, Maori were returning `to nothinga. On the other hand, the increase in school rolls which resulted from return migration was seen positively by all residents anxious to keep the schools open. This ethnographic evidence suggests that continued use of &rural community sustainability' as an analytical term in academic and policy discourse promotes a view of the countryside as separated from the wider society, as homogenous and devoid of power relations. While introducing an alternative term will not by itself resolve these issues it is one part of a solution. Replacing the goal of

&rural community sustainability' with &social sustainability' would avoid the reinscription of problems and inequalities which are experienced in the countryside arising from the countryside (Goodman and Redclift, 1991). Instead it contextualizes the analysis of inequalities in rural society in the national and global "eld while de-emphasising assumptions about rural or community homogeneity or discreteness. This is not to say that residents in the countryside do not have experiences in common, nor does it deny that some speci"c infrastructural provisions are required. For example, speci"c health and educational resources, adequate roads and telecommunications are necessary to support the livelihood and social participation of rural citizens. Social sustainability recognises that prevailing social relations and the bases of livelihoods in the countryside are the outcomes of the same historically contingent processes that have produced the social con"gurations which exist in the nation at large. Like economic or environmental sustainability, social sustainability is a global struggle, though experienced in locally speci"c ways.

Acknowledgements This research was undertaken as part of the project `De"nition and Analysis of Sustainable Land-based Productiona, which was funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (Contract No. UOA509). We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the project team as a whole, and the infrastructural support provided by the Department of Geography, University of Auckland. We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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