“It’s been a good life” : a relational ecology of becoming in Otapiri, Aotearoa : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

Abstract

Near the end of his life, Malcolm, a rural Southland farmer, told me: "It's been a good life." Not long after, he died. This thesis asks what makes a life ‘good’ to the person who lived it, while exploring the researcher's responsibility when that person can no longer explain what they meant. What began as research into rural community change evolved over time into an inquiry into the conditions through which a life remains meaningful across profound transformation. Through oral life history and a relationship that deepened into friendship, I trace how Malcolm’s sense of a ‘good’ life was sustained – not through individual accomplishment, but through care accumulated slowly, redirected when worlds shifted, and dispersed into futures he would never inhabit. Drawing on Bourdieu, Tronto, Hage, and Biehl & Locke, I develop an analytic lens I call a ‘relational ecology of becoming.’ This lens attends to how dispositions rooted early – through family, place, and more-than-human relations – are sustained, and then reassembled as fields and viability transform. By using metaphors formed through the relationship and place – the rooting tree, the mycelial substrate, and the kererū – I argue that care is not lost through rupture, but is creatively reassembled and dispersed. These metaphors serve as analytic tools for understanding a life that remains unfinished: one where care persists beyond the individual, regenerating new growth in the wake of shifting worlds. Following Malcolm's death, the thesis also becomes an examination of the ethical afterlife of carrying a life story forward. It explores how obligation, grief, and relational asymmetry shape what can be told when direct reciprocity is no longer possible. The 'good life' that emerges in this story is relational and unfinished – a condition not of lack, but of continuation. It persists in recovering wetlands, trees not yet grown, and practices of care carried forward by others beyond the lifespan of the person who began them.