No. 8 wire (New Zealand)

NO.8 WIRE 🇳🇿
Location: New Zealand
Definition: No. 8 wire practices refer to problem-solving approaches and creative resourcefulness mentality. Born from the ‘pioneer’ mindset and geographical remoteness, it is a prized component of New Zealand’s national identity.
Keywords: New Zealand – Agriculture – Innovation – Farming – UK
Clusters: Wire practices
Author: Grace Reynolds
Affiliation: Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

By Grace Reynolds, Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

No. 8 wire practices refer to the problem-solving approaches, shaped by New Zealand’s geographical remoteness. No. 8 wire practices and mentality, born from the remote ‘pioneer’ mindset, are a prized component of New Zealand’s national identity and culture. No. 8 wire practices occur widely and are impossible to list definitively, yet they are identifiable by two key features. They are normally centred around problem-solving. They are characterised by a lateral-thinking approach, resorting to resources at hand, rather than seeking specialised tools or materials. The solutions are unique, but the practices are generic. Individual no. 8 wire practices have analogues elsewhere, themselves the result of scarcity or geographical or political remoteness. No. 8 wire as a mindset and part of identity, however, may be unique to New Zealand. The French rural débrouille comes close, although it carries overtones of working-class pride and barter systems which are not present in no. 8 wire (Hugues 2022).

No. 8 wire is integral to the New Zealand way of life and national identity. Since these practices emerge from everyday situations, they are inherently informal, even where they occur in ostensibly regulated settings. This creates an ambivalent relationship between no. 8 wire and authority: the practices are praised but are also a source of tension between the state and people, because they bypass the rules.

“No. 8 wire” is a type of wire used for agricultural fencing, and a catalyst for innovation in and of itself. Prior to its introduction in the 1850s, farmers relied on labour-intensive methods of dividing land and corralling sheep. The multiple ways the no. 8 wire revolutionised farming in remote, sparsely populated areas within its intended application for fencing may have made farmers see it as an innately creativity-sparking product. The modern concept of no. 8 wire comes from a situation typical for rural farmers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They often had rolls of no. 8 wire, so when other, non-fencing, problems arose, due to the remoteness of farms within NZ and the remoteness of NZ itself, and the time other solutions would take, no. 8 wire was frequently the only resource available to solve them. From the beginning of formalised government, there was a split: no. 8 wire versus the ‘official’ way. No. 8 wire got things done, sometimes in place of government and sometimes despite it.

In New Zealand, the state-led, top-down national identity-formation manifests itself as praise for no. 8 wire practices as essential for a remote nation dependent on external engagement – but only when it fits with the values espoused by formal governance. By 1900, New Zealand had the most patents – official evidence of problem-solving – per capita in the world, which the government celebrated, and which nowadays the state cites as ‘good’ ingenuity (Derby 2015).

The modern concept of no. 8 wire – creative resourcefulness, filling gaps left by officialdom – remains embedded in the New Zealand national identity. New Zealand is more connected to the rest of the world now, but no. 8 wire persists, and remains in tension with formality. Contemporary politicians talk about problem-solving as essential to New Zealand being able to ‘punch above its weight’; New Zealanders still disproportionately file patents; and a search for ‘Kiwi ingenuity’ brings back more than a million results, covering everything from documenting ‘No. 8 wire on screen,’ ‘best of’ articles listing innovations, government campaigns about a ‘nation of problem-solvers’, and articles about particular ‘contraptions’– all portrayed positively (Smith 2020). This is partly because these things generate income: inventions regulated via patents are monetised via trade. Creative arts can be profitable or bring in revenue by encouraging tourism.

As well as income, the government also seeks control – states value predictability. No. 8 wire’s informality and the ambiguity it represents can threaten control. In New Zealand this creates tension between formal institutions and the governed, on whom the government depends for its existence. National identity is both ‘top-down’ (shaped by formal entities), and ‘bottom-up’ (arising from the population). No. 8 wire as the element of national identity is paradoxical, constantly negotiated between the government and the governed, and a site for imposing and resisting norms. A classic example of no. 8 wire practice in this space are baches – holiday homes (Swarbrick 2005). Until the mid-20th century, baches were frequently home-made from what holidaymakers could acquire and adapt easily and cheaply: old timber, decommissioned trams, or agricultural products (literal as well as figurative no. 8 wire). Planning legislation introduced decades later would have rendered them illegal but the pre-existing structures were excluded from the regulations.

Even where the state deems no. 8 wire positive or non-threatening, there is ambivalence. In a twist which takes no. 8 wire simultaneously back to its roots as a prosaic tool but also an inspiration in itself, Waikato Museum’s ‘No. 8 wire National Art Award’ puns on no. 8 wire’s history of inspiring creativity by challenging the public to produce artworks made from no. 8 wire (Waikato prize 2023). The solutions – a mode of upcycling an agricultural tool into something beautiful – require lateral thinking similar to that employed by early settlers. The ambivalence exposes a ‘zone of discretion’ – even in apparently heavily regulated and normative settings, formal rules are not strictly formal. In modern New Zealand, no. 8 wire persists and is tolerated even in highly organised official areas: the law, healthcare and science. In 2006, solicitors adopting a no. 8 wire approach to solving problems with unit titles, went beyond interpreting and applying law to creating new norms (Thomas 2006). No. 8 wire practices filled a regulation gap.

In response to the considerable administrative demands placed on medics and patients by clinical trials, a New Zealand medical ethics committee recommended a ‘“number-8-wire” ethics alternative’ to US-imposed regulations (Tolich and Hapuku 2009). In this case, the regulator was external to (and remote from) New Zealand, so the dynamic was different: no. 8 wire as a state-sanctioned marker of New Zealand-ness and identity helped a formal institution (the ethics committee) resist regulation itself. New Zealand’s fringe position may have been a factor too: it may have punched above its weight, but it was not likely to threaten the US hegemony.

Scientific no. 8 wire practices are another example of informality going against international standards. New Zealand hydrographers applied no. 8 wire approaches where traditional instruments and approaches were ineffective (Le Coz 2018). Their research withstood scientific peer review; the techniques were rigorous, but they were also unique and developed for the particular context. Another New Zealand-specific science example is a means of converting car airbags into seismographs (English-Lueck 2003). Standard monitoring equipment can be expensive and hard to access in earthquake-prone New Zealand; airbags are generic, plentiful cheap – and effective.

The Waikato art prize, baches, legal interpretation, clinical trials and scientific measurements give a flavour of the contemporary no. 8 wire practices in sometimes surprising sectors. The surprise comes from the ambivalence: despite legislation, ethics, international norms, and other types of regulation, no. 8 wire ‘hacks’, inherently informal and norm-disrupting, flourish. If they achieve their ends, the no. 8 wire means are tolerated – and even celebrated. Tolerance, however, does not always translate into encouragement. Formal institutions would rather regulate, even where this seems misplaced. The New Zealand Productivity Commission’s report (2021), which refers to New Zealand’s remoteness as a barrier to growth, states that innovation is essential to growth, and that government’s role is to ‘facilitat[e] and co-fund innovation’. It recommends that the state should ‘discontinue clearly unsuccessful initiatives’, encapsulating the state’s ambivalence towards innovation and invention. The state should direct ingenuity; but it should also cut off ‘unsuccessful’ innovation.

References

Waikato prize. 2023. National Waikato Museum, Hamilton. https://waikatomuseum.co.nz/artspost/fieldays-no.8-wire-national-art-award/

Derby, M. 2010 (updated 2015). ‘Inventions, patents, and trademarks – The ‘no 8 wire’ tradition’. Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/inventions-patents-and-trademarks/page-1

English-Lueck, J.A. 2003. ‘Number Eight Fencing Wire: New Zealand, Cultural Innovation and the Global Silicon Network’. Adaptation of poster presented at the 2003 AAA annual meeting, Chicago, IL. https://svcp.org/pdfs/Number_Eight_Fencing_Wire.pdf

Hugues, F. 2022. ‘Getting by in rural France: La débrouille as a form of quiet popular resistance?’. European Journal of political and cultural sociology, Volume 10:1, 2023.

Le Coz, J. 2018. ‘L’hydrométrie en Nouvelle Zélande: l’esprit “Number 8 wire”’ (Hydrometry: efficiency and resourcefulness). La Houille Blanche (International Water Journal), No. 2.

New Zealand Productivity Commission. 2021. “New Zealand firms: Reaching for the frontier. Final report”. New Zealand Productivity Commission, April. www.productivity.govt.nz/inquiries/frontier-firms/

Smith, R. 2020. ‘Promoting our Kiwi Ingenuity’. New Zealand Story, 2 December. https://www.nzstory.govt.nz/about-us/news/promoting-our-kiwi-ingenuity/

Swarbrick, N. 2005. ‘Creative life – architecture’. Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, 8 February. https://teara.govt.nz/en/creative-life/page-4

Thomas, R. 2006. ‘Fifer, unit titles, and no 8 wire’. The New Zealand Law Journal, May.

Tolich, M. and Hapuku, J. 2009. ‘Number-8-wire ethics: a New Zealand ethics committee’s response to lengthy international clinical trial information sheets’. Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association 24 April, 122 (1293).