J Overton
Biographic Data
| ID | 1573 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Overton |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Overton |
| SIGNATURE | OVERTON J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University of Wellington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9080-9510 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 69 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 249 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 69 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Taking (anti‐)‘woke’ seriously: The future of development cooperation and humanitarian aid
The Pacific in Transition: 50 Years on
The islands of the Pacific Ocean have been the subject of much study with regard to change and transformation. Current concerns with the effects climate change have not always been central and other discourses, such as development and progress, social change and decolonisation have interested the work of social scientists over several decades. Furthermore, until recently such research has been mainly carried out by individuals and institutions fr…
How do university students of different ethnic backgrounds perceive factors that hinder learning in STEM and non-STEM majors
This study explores university students’ perceptions of factors that hinder student learning with particular attention to students’ discipline (STEM vs non-STEM) and ethnicity. A sample of 1684 university students in New Zealand participated in this study. Students’ responses to an open-ended question were first inductively coded and then quantitatively analyzed using Chi-square independence test and logistic regression. The findings identified s…
Culture, scale and the adaptation of good governance: Insights from SOEs in Samoa and Tonga
Grounding financialisation: Development, inclusion, and agency
The increasing complexity and visibility of financial capital and processes in the global economy and in everyday lives offers both tantalising promise and pitfalls. This review of financialisation in global development develops three key themes: debates and contests over the definition, nature, and extent of financialisation (“what is it”); the erosion within these debates of distinctions between long‐held categories within development – between…
Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes
"Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes." Economic Geography, 98(2), pp. 197–198
Is This Professor Māori? Personal reflections on identity in academia in Aotearoa New Zealand
This article has been inspired by “Why Isn’t My Professor Māori?” (McAllister et al., 2019), an article which appeared in this journal and addressed the under-representation of, and inequities facing, Māori academic staff in universities in Aotearoa New Zealand. I present some personal reflections and raise some questions with regard to academics with Māori heritage but who struggle to identify as Māori. I also describe some of the discomfort of …
Learning journeys: Five paradigms of education for development
Education is one of the key objectives of, and means for, development. Its value is widely accepted though we rarely investigate the way different theories of development inform widely differing justifications and strategies for education. This article explores some of these issues and proposes five main paradigms regarding the education‐development nexus. These we term neoliberalism, retroliberalism, neostructuralism, place‐based and radical. Ea…
Boom city! Regional resource peripheries and urban economic development in Chile
Although most studies of resource peripheries are macroeconomic in scale, a regional perspective permits a better understanding of the economic implications of commodity dependence. This study of the boom in commodity exports in Chile in the period 2005–15 shows that while a boom may have adverse effects on other activities, it also had positive impacts on the demand for ‘non-tradable’ construction, commerce and hospitality services in urban area…
Contextualising empowerment: Highlighting Key Elements From Women's Stories of Empowerment
This article explores key elements of women’s empowerment based on findings from fieldwork in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. It argues that efforts to promote women’s empowerment should recognise that empowerment requires women to make their own strategies to suit their particular circumstances. The 4Cs and 3As reflect the personal, relational, and multidimensional aspects of empowerment. The framework talks uniquely to the context where women in thi…
Globalisation is not spelt with a zed: Geography texts for and from Oceania
Writing on a subject as all‐encompassing as globalisation from “down here” (Oceania) in a way that is relevant “up there” (Anglo‐America), while retaining the “Antipodean” perspectives we seek to represent and embody, presents significant tensions. How does a textbook on globalisation written from our viewpoint negotiate the very system it aims to critique? We reflect on writing Geographies of globalization in the context of the fraught politics …
Ethical agro-food networks in global peripheries, Part I: The rise and recommodification of fair trade and organics
Rapid global growth of ethical agro-food networks such as fair trade, organics, and geographical indications has been accompanied by an increasing volume of research, but, as yet, there has been little comparative or integrated study of these networks from the perspective of development geography. Focussing particularly on Latin America, this two-part series of articles summarises the state of the art and proposes an integrated research agenda on…
Ethical agro-food networks in global peripheries, Part II: Re-placing commodity dependence
This is the second of a two-part series of review articles on ethical agro-food networks (AFNs) in global peripheries, with a focus on Latin America. This article focuses on origin or locality-based strategies, including geographical indications (GIs) as well as alternative approaches to valorising place-product connections. It compares the impacts of origin-based networks to fair trade and organics and identifies possibilities for alternative or…
Tout le monde a sa place? Mirab, education, and society in Wallis and Futuna
Wallis and Futuna officially became a 'Sub-National Island Jurisdiction' (known as French Overseas Territory/Collectivity) in 1961 and has since adopted an economic and political structure consistent with the MIgration, Remittances, Aid, and Bureaucracy (MIRAB) model. Although the MIRAB economy has been stable, the rapid increase in migration for higher education of the younger population since the turn of the century raises questions concerning …
Fiji Water, water everywhere: Global brands and democratic and social injustice
Over recent decades, the demand for bottled water has grown exponentially at the global scale. In the marketing of such products, discourses of purity and paradise have often been invoked. Marketed as a ‘Taste of Paradise’, FIJI Water has gained enormous international success as an ostensibly clean and green product. Celebrity endorsements – reaching as high as US President Barack Obama – have abounded, driven in part by the belief that the corpo…
Waves of Knowledge: A Seascape Epistemology
Retroliberalism and the new aid regime of the 2010s
This article coins the term ‘retroliberalism’ to describe the aid regime that has evolved out of the post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) world order. This approach sees a partial return to the principles of classical liberalism with respect to the role of the state vis-à-vis the market, whilst also perpetuating a number of the principles of neoliberalism. At the same time, the rejuvenation of an active state harks back to modernization principles …
Fictive place
The construction of ‘fictive place’ is ever more common in capitalist production and exchange. It could be argued that the adoption of Geographical Indications (GIs) is a form of resistance to the homogenizing effects of globalization. In some ways fictive place-making can be seen as a means of adding value to land; however, we argue that fictive place has become a factor of production in its own right. We investigate this through a discussion of…
Investing in place: Articulations and Congregations of Capital in the Wine Industry
There has been a longstanding debate about the role of capital in agriculture. Most of this has taken place in the context of the so-called 'agrarian question'. This discussion has often been overgeneralised and simplified the specific geographies of agrarian transformations. We argue this has arisen due to a failure to characterise and analyse the different forms of capital engaged in agricultural production and how they are articulated and asse…
Conspicuous production: Wine, capital and status
The recent expansion of the global wine industry, especially in developing countries, has brought to light the apparent phenomenon of conspicuous production. This form of economic activity is characterised by investment decisions that seek status and reputation alongside or, in many cases, ahead of profits. This paper examines the wine industry and uncovers examples of conspicuous production occurring at different scales, from celebrities and ind…
Geographies of Globalization
Geographies of Globalization 2nd edition offers an animated and fully-updated exposition of the geographical impacts of globalization and the contribution of human geography to studies and debates in this area. Energetic and engaging, this book: • Illustrates how the core principles of human geography – such as space and scale – lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon • Debates the historical evolution of globalized society • Analyses th…
Class in a Glass: Capital, Neoliberalism and Social Space in the Global Wine Industry
This paper explores the evolving relationship between class and capital in the neoliberalised global wine industry. Wine is a unique sector that is possessed of intricate and underexplored aspects of class formation. Having investigated the recent restructuring of the industry under neoliberalism the paper goes on to analyse class formations in the production and consumption spheres. In this discussion we note not only the concrete economic and s…
Developmentalities and Donor–NGO Relations: Contesting Foreign Aid Policies in New Zealand/Aotearoa
In this paper we draw on the concept of governmentality to examine the relationships between donors and northern non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) during moments of policy change. Our case study comes from New Zealand/Aotearoa where a change in government has seen aid policy shift from poverty alleviation to sustainable economic development. We detail three mechanisms through which the government sought to normalise this change: changes in la…
Geographies of Aid: A Critical Research Agenda
Geographical studies of international aid have been scarce. In this article we make the case for geographies of aid, arguing not only that aid would be better understood if a geographical lens were applied, but also that many of the core questions and concepts that concern geographers could be approached and better understood through research on the geographies of aid. We consider that while the global politics of aid is well understood the way l…
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples
Linda Tuhiwai Smith Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples Zed Books, London, 2012, 2nd ed., ISBN 978 1 8481 3950 3, 256 pp. When the first edition of this book appeared in 199
Fictive place
The construction of ‘fictive place’ is ever more common in capitalist production and exchange. It could be argued that the adoption of Geographical Indications (GIs) is a form of resistance to the homogenizing effects of globalization. In some ways fictive place-making can be seen as a means of adding value to land; however, we argue that fictive place has become a factor of production in its own right. We investigate this through a discussion of…
Maps, markets and Merlot: The making of an antipodean wine appellation
Retroliberalism and the new aid regime of the 2010s
This article coins the term ‘retroliberalism’ to describe the aid regime that has evolved out of the post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) world order. This approach sees a partial return to the principles of classical liberalism with respect to the role of the state vis-à-vis the market, whilst also perpetuating a number of the principles of neoliberalism. At the same time, the rejuvenation of an active state harks back to modernization principles …
The consumption of space: Land, capital and place in the New Zealand wine industry
Neoliberalism is dead, long live neoliberalism? Neostructuralism and the international aid regime of the 2000s
In the 2000s a new aid regime evolved. This promised to move beyond the former neoliberal approach in a number of ways. It would involve greater consultation between donors and recipients, shift the focus from economic growth to broader factors, including poverty, and hand back the responsibility for this to the nation-state. This approach bears strong resemblance to the rise of neostructuralism, a development paradigm that has become highly infl…
Playing the scales: Regional transformations and the differentiation of rural space in the Chilean wine industry
The Race to the Bottom of the Glass? Wine, Geography, and Globalization
The wine industry is becoming increasingly globalized as consumer demand, capital investment, and industry restructuring lead to higher volumes of trade, greater levels of multinational ownership, and the evolution of new networks of production and consumption that link the four corners of the world economy. While there are some tendencies towards increasingly homogenized and low-cost production, wine is an industry that exemplifies the complex a…
The inverse sovereignty effect: Aid, scale and neostructuralism in Oceania
Theories and practices of international aid have stressed the need for the full participation of recipients. This approach has been strengthened by international agreements such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005, which called for ‘ownership’ of development strategies by recipient agencies. This seemed to promise recipient governments an increased stake in the way aid was used for development and poverty alleviation. However, i…
Class in a Glass: Capital, Neoliberalism and Social Space in the Global Wine Industry
This paper explores the evolving relationship between class and capital in the neoliberalised global wine industry. Wine is a unique sector that is possessed of intricate and underexplored aspects of class formation. Having investigated the recent restructuring of the industry under neoliberalism the paper goes on to analyse class formations in the production and consumption spheres. In this discussion we note not only the concrete economic and s…
Reversing the Tide of Aid: Investigating Development Policy Sovereignty in the Pacific
Since the early 2000s, international development cooperation principles emphasise recipient countries' ownership of policies, donors' alignment with the recipients' administrative processes, and harmonisation of donor processes. Overall, this should enhance the development policy sovereignty in the Pacific Island countries and polities. Since 2011 researchers from Victoria University, Massey University, the University of the South Pacific, and th…
The colonial state and spatial differentiation: Kenya, 1895–1920
A theory of exploration
Defining Regions: The making of places in the New Zealand wine industry
As a product, wine is closely associated with place. The industry has devised various strategies in order to delimit space and create places that are marketable as brands. Although demarcated by supposedly ‘natural’ features, these spaces are socially constructed in order to maximise accumulation. This article reports on the use of place-making strategies in the case of the New Zealand wine sector and the role of capital and agency in their produ…
International Students Pursuing Postgraduate Study in Geography: Impediments to their learning experiences
There are significant numbers of international postgraduate students studying in Western universities thanks to scholarships provided by governments and other donors. While these fully funded students are generally welcomed by geography departments, inadequate attention has been paid to considering how to facilitate their learning experiences given the particular impediments they face. Based on research conducted at Massey University, New Zealand…
Social Control and Social Engineering: African Reserves in Kenya 1895-1920
The establishment of African reserves in early colonial Kenya is examined in an effort to analyse the motives of the colonial state in the formulation of its social and spatial policies. It took time to develop a reserves policy. There was even debate about whether any land should be set aside for Africans. Ostensibly, reserves were established to protect African-held land from encroachment by European settlers. However, it is apparent that there…
Contextualising empowerment: Highlighting Key Elements From Women's Stories of Empowerment
This article explores key elements of women’s empowerment based on findings from fieldwork in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. It argues that efforts to promote women’s empowerment should recognise that empowerment requires women to make their own strategies to suit their particular circumstances. The 4Cs and 3As reflect the personal, relational, and multidimensional aspects of empowerment. The framework talks uniquely to the context where women in thi…
Fiji Water, water everywhere: Global brands and democratic and social injustice
Over recent decades, the demand for bottled water has grown exponentially at the global scale. In the marketing of such products, discourses of purity and paradise have often been invoked. Marketed as a ‘Taste of Paradise’, FIJI Water has gained enormous international success as an ostensibly clean and green product. Celebrity endorsements – reaching as high as US President Barack Obama – have abounded, driven in part by the belief that the corpo…
Investing in place: Articulations and Congregations of Capital in the Wine Industry
There has been a longstanding debate about the role of capital in agriculture. Most of this has taken place in the context of the so-called 'agrarian question'. This discussion has often been overgeneralised and simplified the specific geographies of agrarian transformations. We argue this has arisen due to a failure to characterise and analyse the different forms of capital engaged in agricultural production and how they are articulated and asse…
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples
Linda Tuhiwai Smith Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples Zed Books, London, 2012, 2nd ed., ISBN 978 1 8481 3950 3, 256 pp. When the first edition of this book appeared in 199
Unethical ethics: Applying research ethics in Uzbekistan
This paper discusses the problems of seeking to apply Western notions of research ethics to Uzbekistan. These problems are not unique to Uzbekistan, but reflect a significant ‘disconnect’ between W
The poverty consensus: Some limitations of the ‘popular agenda’
The New Poverty Agenda is said to represent a break with the past and to offer a rationale for aid that is built on partnerships towards a common and realizable goal - the elimination of poverty. However, recent critiques have highlighted problems with the practice of poverty policy, and particularly limitations identified from its association with global actors which stand accused of contributing to poverty. For some, there is no new agenda; a p…
The Origins of the Kikuyu Land Problem: Land Alienation and Land Use in Kiambu, Kenya, 1895-1920
Land and land shortage lie at the center of Kenyan political history throughout the colonial period and beyond. Land alienation created a keen sense of loss among Africans and attempts by the colonial government to assuage this, such as the Kenya Land Commission of the 1930s, did little to meet the problem of growing African land shortage. The land problem was most strongly felt and expressed by many Kikuyu, especially in the south. There were ma…
Grounding financialisation: Development, inclusion, and agency
The increasing complexity and visibility of financial capital and processes in the global economy and in everyday lives offers both tantalising promise and pitfalls. This review of financialisation in global development develops three key themes: debates and contests over the definition, nature, and extent of financialisation (“what is it”); the erosion within these debates of distinctions between long‐held categories within development – between…
Policy, Personalities and Pedagogy: The Use of Simulation Games to Teach and Learn about Development Policy
Simulation games have a long history in education and are well suited to learning about negotiation, power, relationships and uncertain outcomes. This paper reflects on the experience of using a semester-long simulation game to introduce postgraduate students to development policy. It focuses on three issues identified in the literature—realism, the role of staff and assessment—and maintains that the risks and uncertainties associated with simula…
Vakavanua, vakamatanitū: Discourses of development in Fiji
Discourses about development have contributed to profound socio‐economic transformation in all parts of the world. This paper examines the development debate in Fiji with particular reference to two distinctive approaches: state‐led developmentalism ( vakamatanitū ) and a discourse about custom‐led development ( vakavanua ). Political and economic dimensions of these alternative discourses are reviewed with particular reference to land tenure sys…
A theory of exploration
Exploration, Image and Illusion: Developing Views of the Nelson Colony, 1840–1865
Exploration, Image and Illusion: Developing Views of the Nelson Colony, 1840–1865
Fijian Land: Pressing Problems, Possible Tenure Solutions
The colonial state and spatial differentiation: Kenya, 1895–1920
A Fijian Peasantry: Galala and Villagers
Village societies in rural Fiji have often been studied in terms of a dichotomy between traditional village communalism and independent galala individualism. This was especially so in the 1960s, at a time when government efforts to promote individualist Fijian agriculture led to the creation of a number of resettlement schemes based on the peasant model. Social scientists hailed the galala movement as a fundamental and progressive process of chan…
Fiji: Future Imperfect
The Origins of the Kikuyu Land Problem: Land Alienation and Land Use in Kiambu, Kenya, 1895-1920
Land and land shortage lie at the center of Kenyan political history throughout the colonial period and beyond. Land alienation created a keen sense of loss among Africans and attempts by the colonial government to assuage this, such as the Kenya Land Commission of the 1930s, did little to meet the problem of growing African land shortage. The land problem was most strongly felt and expressed by many Kikuyu, especially in the south. There were ma…
War and Economic Underdevelopment? State Exploitation and African Response in Kenya 1914-1918
Social Control and Social Engineering: African Reserves in Kenya 1895-1920
The establishment of African reserves in early colonial Kenya is examined in an effort to analyse the motives of the colonial state in the formulation of its social and spatial policies. It took time to develop a reserves policy. There was even debate about whether any land should be set aside for Africans. Ostensibly, reserves were established to protect African-held land from encroachment by European settlers. However, it is apparent that there…
The limits to accumulation: Changing land tenure in Fiji
Processes of class formation in rural Fiji have been suggested in a number of recent works. Land accumulation has been seen as a vital part of this and the effects observed have included landless‐ness and poverty. However, this article suggests that the limits to such land accumulation may have been reached in some areas. Because Fiji has retained a form of communal tenure over most of its land, indigenous Fijians have been able to resist continu…
Small States, Big Issues? Human Geography in the Pacific Islands
The Pacific Islands present a different context for the study of human geography in the Third World. Though marked by much diversity in terms of culture, environment and history, there are key features which distinguish the region. Compared to elsewhere and with the notable exception of Papua New Guinea, they are small in terms of population, land area and resource base, yet many have attained independent nationhood. Island states are frequently …
An introduction to sustainable development: The developing world
See(k)ing God through the icon: A semiotic analysis of Jean-Luc Marion’s Dieu sans l’Être
Colonial Green Revolution? Food, Irrigation and the State in Colonial Malaya
This text investigates the relationship between colonialism and agricultural development. It focuses on Malaysia and rice production and investigates why a green revolution did not take place in colonial tines, when in several ways the preconditions were laid for this. It is shown that colonial agricultural policy was based on a low-cost, low-tech model of rural development, which nevertheless offered a sustainable alternative to recent advances …
Colonial Green Revolution? Food, Irrigation and the State in Colonial Malaya
Integration or Self‐Sufficiency? Peninsular Malaysia and the Rice Trade in Southeast Asia
The issue of food self‐sufficiency has recently come under scrutiny as global trade liberalisation has been in conflict with national development strategies founded on protection and encouragement of staple food production. This paper examines the case of rice in Peninsular Malaysia from an historical perspective. It traces the evolution of self‐sufficiency strategies from colonial times tothe present and notes how and why such policies have been…
R. Gerard Ward: Quintessential Pacific geographer
In December 1998 Professor R. Gerard Ward retired after 27 years as Professor of Geography in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. Ward’s contributions to his discipline, the social sciences, and the discourses about development in the Pacific region have been very considerable. This paper reviews some of the achievements of one of the twentieth century’s eminent Pacific geographers. After establ…
Vakavanua, vakamatanitū: Discourses of development in Fiji
Discourses about development have contributed to profound socio‐economic transformation in all parts of the world. This paper examines the development debate in Fiji with particular reference to two distinctive approaches: state‐led developmentalism ( vakamatanitū ) and a discourse about custom‐led development ( vakavanua ). Political and economic dimensions of these alternative discourses are reviewed with particular reference to land tenure sys…
Strategies for Sustainable Development: Experiences from the Pacific
Contents * 1. Sustainable Development and the Pacific Islands - John Overton * PART I: CONTEXTUAL ISSUES * 2. Resources and the Environment - John Overton and R R Thaman * 3. An Historical and Political Context - Richard Wartho * 4. Culture and Society - Regina Scheyvens * 5. Livelihoods - Nicholas Purdie * 6. Land Tenure and Atoll Society in Kiribati - Peter King * 7. Migration and the Cook Islands - Kirsti Hooker and Judith Varcoe * 8. Vanua: L…
Arguing Anselm's Argument
Interpretation surrounding Saint Anselm's celebrated Proslogion often divides across analytical (philosophical) and non‐analytical (historical, phenomenological, etc.) lines, with focus on the argument(s) of Chapters 2 and 3 isolated from the rest of the text. Interpretations may vary significantly, but the lines of interpretation continue along these divisions, thus propagating the distinction. Alternative tools, however, expose difficulties of …
From the Archives: “The Precious Little Craft”
Vera Cruz and its castle are in view, twelve miles off. This morning Commodore Connor took the general and his officers on a
The Black Regulars, 1866-1898
From the Archives: A Well-Traveled Class Ring Comes Home
Understanding coups
Political science (47 works) · Geography (39 works) · Economics (33 works) · Law (32 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs (18 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Politics (17 works) · Economic geography (15 works) · Political economy (15 works)