Keynote address to the 2005 Conference of the Sociology Association of Aotearoa New Zealand, 25 November, The Eastern Institute of Technology, Napier. [1]

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the tramps abuse one another: ‘Moron!’, ‘Vermin!’, ‘Abortion!’, “Louse!’, ‘Sewer-rat!’, ‘Curate!’. Then Estragon says with finality ‘Critic!’. All Vladimir can reply is ‘Oh!’. The text says ‘He wilts, vanquished and turns away’.

‘Writing the Recent Past’: A New Zealand Book Council Seminar, 1 November, 2005.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

Let me begin by saying that although I am not a trained historian – two courses in economic history being my total at university – I read history for pleasure, I use history in my research and writing, and I recommend students do history to broaden their perspectives. However, today we are talking about contemporary history, which comes out from another profession.

Paper to The History of New Zealand Economics Session at the June 2005 conference of the New Zealand Economist’s Association.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

In the course of describing the evolution of the New Zealand political economy between 1932 and 1984, my book, The Nationbuilders, highlighted four economists: Bernard Ashwin, Bill Sutch, Bryan Philpott and Henry Lang. This paper looks at those economists from the earlier phase of the period, thereby leaving Philpott and Lang and others for a later assessment. By focussing on the period in which economics first became important in the New Zealand policy process, it adds to the first two a number of other economists: particularly Horace Belshaw, Dick Campbell, Douglas Copland, and James Hight.