general archive

It has been a while since I lived in New Zealand and the place seems more and more strange. New New Zealand records what I found there in 1986. (By 2004 a huge plastic model of some creature from The Lord of the Rings was draped menacingly over the Wellington airport.)

Guardianship: the Utopia of the New Class discusses two complementary left-wing visions of bureaucracy. The continual expansion of state services is a subject which has interested me ever since my lazy days in the Housing Division of the Department of Public Works in New Zealand.

The article on the two Polanyi brothers presents in embryo the contrast treated at more length in Chapter Five of The Culture Cult—"What Karl Polanyi Found in Dahomey". (An excerpt from The Culture Cult dealing with Karl Polanyi is at this site under "Anthropological Farce")

For the rest, What is Boloism? pays tribute to a hard-working writer on social history whose columns have enlivened weekend reading in the UK for 70 years. Ken Maddock honors the passing of one of Australia's more distinguished anthropologists.

"New New Zealand", Commentary, June 1987. (Originally published as "Beyond California".)

"Guardianship: the Utopia of the New Class", Quadrant, April 1983.

"Polanyi K and Polanyi M", IPA Review, Vol 46, No 4, 1994

"What is Boloism?", Quadrant, January-February 1981

"Gutenberg II", Quadrant, August 1981

"Kenneth James Maddock, 1937–2003", Quadrant, 2003