REWORKING THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE LONG BOOM - THE SMALL-TOWN EXPERIENCE OF RESTRUCTURING IN REEFTON, NEW-ZEALAND

During the postwar long boom, the economic, political, and cultural co nfigurations adopted to regulate the crisis tendencies of capitalism i n New Zealand were broadly those of social democracy. Key features of social democratic policy in this period were the assistance of primary production through subsidies, the protection of domestic industry, a well-developed welfare states, and the promotion of economic developme nt in marginal places and regions. These regulatory arrangements found expression as a distinctive geography of the long boom. In small town s this was typified by clusters of agencies associated with the state' s intervention in production and its provision of infrastructure. Loca l employment was often concentrated in these agencies. We examine the nature of such a geography during the long boom in Reefton, a small to wn on the West Coast of the South Island, and its subsequent reworking during the restructuring of the 1980s. This reworking is explored thr ough a focus on the major state and private sector workplaces within t he town's economic base and their employees. As key influences upon th e newly emerging geography of the town, the forms of local governance that are being adopted in order to attract the spending and investment lost during restructuring are examined.