ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
the point of social influence study, criticisms of Brown’s and Keith’s New Zealandism and Keith’s defenses of his arguments (Keith 1983, 2007) are attempts to
establish memes that concern different New Zealand art history narratives. They
matter because if some memes are more readily distributed than others, then the
former have more influence socially (Heylighen (1998), Blackmore (1999), Distin
(2005)). Keith’s incorporation of contemporary Maori art into a bicultural narrative
with Pakeha art of nationally distinct art is not just furthering his argument and
gaining a fuller, more accurate picture of New Zealand art history. It also lends
support to his argument and thus influences how readily his arguments might be
taken by the public and art world.
The evolutionary and neuroscientific understanding of psychological phenomena
like the bandwagon effect and processing fluency can thus integrate with Francis
Pound’s (2009) latest argument about the historical development of New Zealandism in the New Zealand \