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Canterbury (better known as the Fiordland(not New Zealand) crested penguin).

An excellent chapter on the soils remindsus that more has been lost through winderosion than human effort, notwithstandingthe observation that only percent of Canter-bury soils are elite and that half of them arewithin one hour’s drive of Christchurch.Similarly Colin Meurk wonders whether thebiodiversity of the plains and downlands willremain in the corners of fields created bycircular irrigators, and such speculationsare supported by George Knox and KevinO’Connor’s reportage that by the time thisbook is published, almost half the combinedfarm gate receipts for Canterbury and Marl-borough will come from dairying.

Canterbury has some firsts and some bests.It has some 27 000 km of river channels, morethan any other region in New Zealand. LakeEllesmere is the largest of the Canterburylakes and with 161 recorded species claims themost diverse bird fauna of anywhere in thecountry. Wasp densities in some honeydewbeech forests are the highest to be found any-where and New Zealand also has the largestpopulation of wild ferrets in the world, and theCanterbury population is up there with thebest. The most extreme insect in Canterburyis an unnamed flightless geometrid mothfound above 3000 m, and astonishingly, 60%of geckos recovered on Motunau Island weremore than 36-years old.

This is a quite remarkable book and theeditors are to be congratulated on maintaininga long tradition of scholarship. It is a referencework of staggering proportions. The editingof works such as this is not without anguishand as editors and authors, they have used asmoothing process that has provided evennessto the text, yet has left room for individualinterpretation, differences and opinions. Thebook is the better for those differences. SteveDawson suggests that when viewing seals fromyour car it is best done when it is stopped, andwe are informed that should you wish to poseas a female cicada, you may call males in frommany metres away by simply snapping yourfingers. John Lovis chastises the obstinacy ofthose that believe that long-distance dispersalhas little or no significance for biogeographicalinterpretation, a sentiment I endorse.

The publication of the second edition of the

Natural History

in 1969 was the inspirationfor this reviewer, with colleagues, to take onthe challenge

The Natural History of SouthernNew Zealand

. It would be nice to think thatthis third edition would inspire those of morenorthern regions to collect together the naturalhistory of their areas in the not too distantfuture; there is some urgency to this matter.

John Darby

Wanaka

?? 2009651Book ReviewBook ReviewsBook Reviews

Geographies of health: Therapeutic

landscapes

A. Williams. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007. 373 pp.ISBN 9780754670995.

Health and healing have long been associatedwith particular places and geographers aredevoting increased attention to the therapeuticprocesses and qualities attributed to differentsettings at various times. In analysing settingswhich for a range of environmental, individualand societal reasons are considered to haverestorative qualities, Wilbert Gesler developedthe notion of ‘therapeutic landscapes’. Suchsites are associated with treatment or healingand are places that gain reputations for pro-moting physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Although a place’s reputation may notbe tested empirically, it represents an ‘under-stood truth’, a cultural construction thatarises less from scientific method than fromexperiences, perceptions, ideologies, attitudesand feelings.

In this new collection, Williams weavestogether a wide but related range of criticallyinformed essays which interrogate the therapeuticlandscape concept at a range of spatial andtemporal scales. ‘Traditional therapeutic land-scapes’ are examined in part one. Here, theauthors consider the health-related qualitiesof a range of everyday environments such asthe beach, yoga centres and mountains. Inproblematizing the notion of stillness, DavidConradson provides a particularly nuancedaccount of the therapeutic qualities of twomonastic communities in contemporary Britain.He argues that to fully understand the thera-peutic properties attached to a particular

Book Reviews

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© 2009 The AuthorsJournal compilation

© 2009 The New Zealand Geographical Society

setting, one must examine the broader societalcontext in which they exist.

In part two, authors explore what are labelled‘unique’ populations under the banner of‘therapeutic geographies for special popula-tions’. Support group users, urban neighbourhoodresidents and families become subjects ofenquiry. Here, the contribution of DeVerteuil

et al.

offers a rich account of the issuessurrounding the location of three drug andalcohol treatment programs in Winnipeg,Canada. The conclusions of this chapter haveimplications for still unwritten geographies ofsubstance abuse treatment.

The ‘application’ of therapeutic qualities toa range of healthcare sites such as hospitalsand the home are the focus of part threebefore part four moves to offer critique of thetherapeutic landscape concept in a range ofcontexts. The contribution by Andrews andHolmes forces us to question the therapeuticlandscape concept through their study of threegay bathhouses in a Canadian city. While gaybathhouses possess a therapeutic name andlong heritage, they are sites which host sexualbehaviours that are potentially hazardous tohealth and the target of public health messages.The rich narrative surrounding experiences ofthese

different

therapeutic sites should provideinspiration to those interested in questioningpopular representations of sites of well-being.

In the final section, the book moves beyondgeography to consider the therapeutic land-scape concept in the field of health anthropology.Hoey’s chapter offers a history of the NorthernMichigan Asylum in the second half of the19th century as well as an account of itspresent use as a ‘neo-traditional’ community.Einwalter discusses a variety of informal artand memorials that are constructed by passingmotorists on Nevada’s rural roadways. Heraccount provides an example of how theflexibility of rural spaces allows individuals togain therapeutic benefit from interaction withand use of the environment.

This volume recognizes the continuedmaturation of the therapeutic landscape conceptboth within and outside the discipline of healthgeography. Williams does well to summarizepossible directions for future research. Scholarsand students across a range of social sciencedisciplines could benefit from reading this

collection as it successfully brings togetherestablished authors and their interests in therecursive links between place(s) and wellbeing.

Jason Myers

School of Geography, Geologyand Environmental Science

The University of Auckland

?? 2009651Book ReviewBook ReviewsBook Reviews

South-east Asian development

A. McGregor. Routledge, London, 2008. 251 pp.ISBN 0415381525 (pbk).

Written as a textbook for undergraduateclasses, this book covers a broad spectrum oftopics and debates concerning development inSouth-east Asia. This is no easy task given thetremendous diversity and complexity of theregion and McGregor is to be congratulatedfor taking on such a difficult assignment, withall its potential pitfalls. The book is structuredcoherently around nine chapters. We beginwith an introduction to the South-east Asianregion and different perspectives on devel-opment. Here McGregor states that thebook will provide ‘a unique perspective basedon equitable development principles’ (p. 16).Thereafter follows a brief but helpful historicalchapter on pre-colonial and colonial periods,before three thematic chapters cover economic,political and social development in turn. Theseare followed by three further chapters thatexamine transformations in urban, rural andnatural spaces, before a concluding chapterrevisits the concept of equitable developmentas a cautious, yet optimistic approach forward.

While I am not convinced that situating thebook in debates around equitable develop-ment is a unique approach, it does provide aninteresting and open framework for the differentchapters that follow. The book is also pep-pered with engaging text boxes that providefurther useful insights into specific themes andcase studies, helping to bring certain elementsto life through the everyday realities that peopleface in the region.

The focus of this book is clearly on con-temporary development from about the 1970sonwards. Hence while the stage is set for sucha discussion through the brief history in chaptertwo, there is only limited coverage of the early