Cross-cultural Comparisons

as a Component of Country Studies of Huts: methodological notes

by Sam Demas

(Note: this is part of the larger work New Zealand Huts: Notes towards a Country Study)

While learning basic facts about NZ huts (e.g. how they are organized, operated, funded, and used), I was quickly drawn to trying to understand the cultural context of huts and long-distance human-powered travel in NZ.  While I made progress in learning the facts, developing even a slightly nuanced understanding of the broader context for NZ huts will take more time, travel, tramping, talking and reading.

This “NZ country study” – still a work in progress — is one building block in a larger project to compare and contrast huts across 6 – 8 nations.  Tramping, traveling and talking in NZ informed my approach to country studies in part by stimulating many questions of cross-cultural comparison.  I found myself trying to compare what I was learning in NZ with what I knew about the topic in the USA.  Wow!  Confronting my incomplete and idiosyncratic understanding of my own culture was a useful, if humbling, experience!  Travel abroad can certainly help us understand ourselves and the place we call home, as well as a bit about other peoples and lands.

I’m just beginning to learn how to think about cross-cultural comparisons and have a long ways to go……. 

So what follows is not a cross cultural comparison of NZ huts with US or other nation(s); I simply don’t know enough yet to go there.  Rather these are thoughts and questions, using NZ as an example, towards a more intentional method of cross-cultural comparison as a lens for studying and comparing hut systems.

The hope is that these notes will stimulate useful comments and criticisms, and perhaps even lead to collaborations in exploring this arena of comparing hut systems around the world.

1. In beginning a country study, I focus on ascertaining the obvious facts about a hut system so I can begin to draw comparisons with huts in other nations.

2. This leads to identifying the unique features of each nation’s hut system, comparing and contrasting them. What makes this hut system different from others in the world?  For example, in NZ this includes:

• Historical development of tramping and huts
• Tramping culture and tramping clubs of New Zealand
• The large DoC government-owned and operated hut system
• Great Walks and other categories of tramps and huts
• Hut architecture and design
• Private walks and huts
• Maori operated huts and tracks
• And small but interesting topics such as: the innovative gear industry of NZ, car relocation services, the Kiwi bach as a related architectural type,
• Overview of the relevant literature, including books, magazines and websites; and a sense of the state of relevant publishing, maps, libraries and archives.

3. Next, I try to drill deeper, looking at key attitudes, metrics and indicators of land use, environmental awareness, and recreational culture. Most nations do not have book like Shelter from the Storm, which provides a starting point for such analysis.  Among the topics in this arena are:

• Land use and environmental attitudes:
  • What are the historical patterns of land use and how do they influence environmental attitudes today? It was invaluable to have a broad overview, such as that provided in Chapter 26 “Land under Pressure” in Michael King’s Penguin History of New Zealand.  This includes a sketch of the historical patterns of land use, the dawning of environmental awareness, the arc of environmental activism and legislation, and key environmental organizations.  This background informs questions I ask in interviews and casual conversations.  Geoff Park’s Theatre Country is another example of environmental history shedding light on present attitudes and challenges.
  • What percentage of land is in public ownership and how is it administered for recreation and conservation?
  • What is the role of private land and of land owners in recreation and conservation?
  • Extent, operations and changing attitudes towards wilderness, national parks, and other lands with conservation value? Wild Heart edited by Mick Abbott and Richard Reeve, for example, brings together differing perspectives, and points to areas where Kiwi attitudes converge and diverge from those in the USA, Australia and elsewhere, and specifically addresses ideas about huts and wilderness.
  • Key features of the culture’s attitudes about and engagement with environmental issues such as protection of natural resources, recycling and consumer habits, environmental education programs.
• Recreational culture in general:
  • What is the historical arc of recreational culture over time? For example, in former British colonies, how were British attitudes to alpinism, rambling, outdoor clubs, and hunting absorbed, transformed and/or rejected. The prevalence and extent of elitist vs. egalitarian ethos of tramping and tramping clubs, and of alpinism, for example.  These evolved differently in New Zealand than in Ireland, Canada, and the USA.  These differences may shape and can help to understand cultural differences in recreation in these nations.
  • Roles of clubs and other mechanisms for promoting and supporting participation in tramping? Extent of permission and overlap with conservation organizations?
  • What are the recreational motivations and values of a culture (e.g. solitude, not seeing others, tolerance for crowding, etc.) and how do they shape huts, tramping and camping? How and why have the relationships of hunters and trampers evolved?
  • What is the history and culture of long distance, human-powered travel in a nation? Extent and nature of trails and of accommodations for skiers, walkers, and cyclists?  How are hospitality traditions of a nation reflected in modern recreational culture?
  • Miles/km of tracks/trails and nature of the trails? Nature and difficult of the terrain? Trends in trail maintenance?
  • General health and fitness of the populace, rates of participation in long-distance human-powered travel, preferences for terrain, accommodations,
  • Trends in camping, hiking, cycling, etc.? How do these affect interest in/use of huts and other accommodation systems?
  • Rights of access – NZ, USA and Ireland have similar laws around legal rights of access for walkers on private land; these are based largely on English laws that have long since been changed in the UK. Most other European nations seem to recognize traditional rights of way to a greater extent than the former British colonies.  Similarly rights of access to coastal lands (e.g. Queen’s chain in NZ) differs among nations and can affect the extent of tracks by rivers/seas/ocean.  The overall impact of these legal differences is of course affected by the extent of publicly owned lands, by other relevant legislation.  Is there a Walking Access Commission or other entity advocating for the rights of walkers?
  • Laws related to recreation – For example, in NZ the laws providing for health care for trampers injured in the backcountry, combined with laws prohibiting recreationists from suing a company or government for liability in case of death or injury create a more relaxed and creative approach to outdoor recreation than in the USA.
  • Tourism and impacts on nature

• Attitudes toward, use, and role(s) of huts:
  • Societal attitudes towards and extent of knowledge of, huts as recreational infrastructure?
  • Hut etiquette varies among cultures, and differences can be sources of tension in the remarkable experience of communal living that huts provide.  It will be interesting to study differences among nations and how they relate to deeper cultural traits, preferences, and values. 
  • Level(s) of amenities and how this reflects cultural preferences and traditions? Nature of the terrain?  Demographics of use (age, gender, race, education, domestic, international).  Rates of participation compared with other recreational opportunities?
  • Use of huts for educational, conservation, therapeutic purposes?
  • Affordability of huts?
  • Categories of hut visitors catered to? For example, in NZ huts are categorized as catering to Backcountry Comfort Seekers, Backcountry Adventurers, Remoteness Seekers, and Thrill Seekers.  In the far less developed hut systems of the USA, there is no guidebook to hut systems (I’m working on one now!), and there are no equivalent categories signaling the comparative level of amenities/difficulty/challenge of a hut system.

4. Finally, I hope to understand some of the broad historical and socio-economic context, the key challenges of a nation that condition efforts to create its environmental future, and how these factors may influence the present and future roles of its huts. In the case of New Zealand, some of the fascinating broad features of Kiwi culture that resonated with me include a set of conflicts and conundrums that arise in part from its unique position as the last large land mass to be settled by Europeans.  In his Penguin History of New Zealand, Michael King opens the book with a quote from Geoff Park that summarizes a central conflict of the nation’s identity and future: 

New Zealand’s fertile plains were the last that Europeans found before the Earth’s supply revealed itself as finite.  Our relationship with them has been completely unsustainable…..[We] have exploited these islands’ richest ecosystems with all the violence that modern science and technology could summon….We must live with the rest of nature or die with the rest of nature.

While the environmental challenges faced by Kiwis are certainly not unique, they create a set of salient characteristics of NZ culture that influences attitudes to huts, tracks, tramping and outdoor culture.  This seems particularly so due to the rapidity of environmental degradation in this young nation, the broad awareness of the populace of the issues, the comparatively large amount of land in the conservation estate, broad popular support for DoC and its brief to protect and conserve natural resources, and the apparent strength of the environmental movement.

A few of the remarkable contradictions, conflicts and conundrums that struck me as central to NZ’s current challenges and environmental futures:

• The rapid deforestation of over 50% of the land in pursuit of the goal of creating the Great Britain of the southern hemisphere, complete with a pastoral landscape aesthetic creates ongoing environmental challenges.
• The designation of 40% of the nation’s land mass as part of the conservation estate sets up a stark dichotomy in land use: developed and conserved.
• These islands with no native terrestrial mammals have established an economy based on animal husbandry.
  • An island of 3.5 million people, produces food (especially particular dairy and meat) to feed 40,000,000 people per year, which incurs internal environmental costs.
  • Kiwis have among the highest annual rate of consumption of meat per person in the world.
  • The growing export economy for dairy products is utilizing water resources at a stunning rate. A very wet nation appears to be facing issues of water quality and, in some areas, sufficiency.  Resolution of this issue may open a Pandora’s box of issues, including Maori water rights.
• The role of Maori citizens in civil society in general, and in conservation and tourism issues in particular is a major challenge and an opportunity.
• The legal personification of former national parks, such as Te Urewera, is a remarkable development, introducing a parallel system of land rights and management. It will be fascinating to see what the Maori do with the dozens of huts for which they are now responsible.
• An island nation with a sense of isolation from the rest of the world, Kiwi’s are in fact very much tied into the rest of the world. They are: curious about and engaged with the larger world, while mindful of the fact they have created something special that they don’t want to spoil, and simultaneously always looking elsewhere for answers, affirmation and a sense of what is worth paying attention to.  This brings to mind the aphorism “be careful what you wish for”, and is encapsulated in Allen Curnow’s warning,

Always to islanders danger, 

Is what comes over the sea.

• New Zealand is “Clean and Green” and “100% Pure”, and also competing in the international economy with nations that have no such aspirations.
• An important part of NZ economy is international tourism, which inexorably veers into “mass tourism”, and
  • strains the patience of Kiwis and threatens the natural beauty and integrity of the very ecosystems that make the land so appealing; and
  • strains DoC’s ability to cater to a broad range of recreational uses of the conservation estate, while also pursuing its lofty conservation goals;
  • prompts the question: who benefits and what suffers from the seemingly inexorable growth in international tourism. Is it sustainable over time, and at what costs?
• Conservation conundrums: for example, use of the pesticide 1080 as a divisive issue; viewed as “correcting a blunder with a crime”.

Most of the items on this short list of major challenges certainly have analogs in other cultures.  While I can’t get lost in the deep weeds of these issues, I am fascinated by discussing with colleagues:

• How do these cultural particularities inform national environmental values and aspirations? and
• How do they condition attitudes and programs in environmental education, recreational culture and in the roles of huts in a particular culture, and across cultures?

In the end, the real fun will come in trying to look across what I learn about Ireland, New Zealand, USA (and eventually other nations such as Switzerland, Austria, France, Norway and Japan), to see if I can detect patterns, anomalies, unique features, trends, and interesting ideas.  To the extent this comparison of hut systems might be grounded in some level of cross-cultural comparison and understanding, the work may have greater meaning.  Ideas travel far and wide and find new meanings as they go……