ABSTRACT
Since nineteenth century settlement, the livelihood and lifestyles of people in New Zealand have been intrinsically interwoven with relations to, and conditions of, overseas markets. A country similar in land size to Japan and the United Kingdom but with today’s four million people ‘by world standards a virtually empty country’ (Clark and Williams, 1995, 21), New Zealand needs to engage in local-global interactions such as trading to overcome the economic disadvantages of being a small market. These processes have intensified over the last two decades under neo-liberal deregulation and the removal of protectionist borders. These political changes have created conditions for New Zealand people, firms and localities to become part of rapidly integrating global financial, trade and production networks (Le Heron and Pawson, 1996). Increasingly, territorial and industrial policy approaches are targeting on ‘participation in globalization processes’ as the way to secure profitability for local economic actors while simultaneously pursuing wider societal objectives.
