‘I wouldn’t trade this country of ours for anything’: place, identity and men’s stories of the 2016 M7.8 Kaikōura/Waiau earthquake

ABSTRACT

There is an emerging area of research that examines men’s personal disaster accounts, including how gender identities and sets of understandings about masculinities shape response and recovery. This paper adds to the literature through providing a geographic enquiry into men’s sense of place and identifying the impacts of the Kaikōura/Waiau (7.8 M_w) earthquake sequence on rural men. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 19 men across Marlborough and North Canterbury who experienced the earthquake. Findings explored how rural masculine identities, exemplified in the Southern Man trope, were integral to rural men’s earthquake stories. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and doxa and using field as a geographic metaphor for place, the research identified that participants relied upon rural skills and local knowledges to navigate the changing dynamics of place. More broadly, this paper illustrates how post-disaster impacts on individuals and communities may be traced through examining a gendered sense of place.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• disasters
• masculinity
• rural identities
• place
• Bourdieu

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge and thank all participants who gave their time and stories for this research and the reviewers who provided constructive and invaluable feedback on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ACC is a crown entity that provides medical and income insurance for accidental injuries.

2. EQC is a crown entity that provides earthquake insurance.

3. For the purposes of this paper, the Kaikōura earthquake (official name) is referred to as the Kaikōura/Waiau Earthquake out of respect for the local communities that name the event the Waiau earthquake.

4. A person of European decent.

5. Small rural property.

6. This research gained ethical approval from Massey University Human Ethics committee (application no. 18/13).

7. Māori community centre. Marae are spaces of significance to Māori, that reflect community places and/or meeting houses.

8. Emergency response authority.

9. Māori understand Papatūānuku to have given birth to life. She is therefore an ancestor of all life on earth (Buck, 1949).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Massey University [N/A].