Malls & Liability

When I travel somewhere, be it inside the United States or outside, I tend to look out for things that are similar to and quite different from the same things at home. I carry with me a certain level of expectation that there will be differences between home (whether that be Pennsylvania, Durango, Colorado, or the U.S. in general) and any place I visit. There are certain places in which I expect more similarity and places in which I expect less: I expect that a visit to Nairobi, Kenya will reveal more cultural differences than a visit to New Zealand, for instance.

Carrying expectations has a certain danger to it. Of course, this is an exciting danger because have one’s expectations challenged or shattered altogether can be quite a learning experience. It can also be transformative in that it helps one to look at oneself through a suddenly different lens.

I had occasion, while we were staying in Wanaka in central Otago, New Zealand, to peruse the magazine section of a drug store. I picked up the December 2005/January 2006 edition of New Zealand Geographic, a publication for New Zealanders that examines issues and places relevant to New Zealander life. I opened the table of contents and was captivated by one word in the title of one of the feature articles: “mall.”

I turned to the article and read it through. (I rarely read magazine articles through, especially when I’m standing in front of the rack in a drug store.) The author reported on his examination of a phenomenon that has apparently been of some concern to New Zealanders (and especially North Islanders) for a few years: the expansion of mega-malls and “hyperstores” (like Wal-Mart in the U.S.) and their dominance on the mercantile landscape. In his twelve-page article he discussed the problems of urban sprawl, hyperstores crushing the viability of small local businesses, the significance of intentional “city-centres” that were designed by merchants rather than town councils, and the meaning of shopping as recreation.

Change all the place-names, and it could have been an article in Time or Newsweek about the United States.

Here I was, operating under the expectation that New Zealand did not struggle with issues of urban sprawl and commercial land use; after all, is this not the country in which one-tenth of the land is national park, which spends so much energy on conservation and wildlife preserves? But here was the evidence, in black and white, that New Zealand is mulling over the same issues as my home. Fascinating.

But we’re not in the United States, and (alas) no one is paying me to write a cultural comparison article. So instead of mulling over this matter too much, I spend an afternoon with Sara riding an Aqua Bike (see earlier entry). The next day we go out together on Lake Wanaka on kayaks for an hour. Today we rented bicycles and helmets from the hostel and rode down to a great view of Aoraki and Mt. Tasman. After all, this may be the last time we’re in New Zealand, so we’ve got to soak up this place, just as we soaked up the penguins and the sea lions and the albatrosses in Dunedin. We’ve been doing some active stuff.

We’ve been doing some dangerous stuff, come to think of it.

We could have fallen off the Aqua Bike (or been pushed), hit our heads on the paddle-wheels, and drowned. I could have tipped over a kayak, got my foot stuck, and smashed my head on a rock. I could have hit a rock on my bicycle and been thrown into a barbed-wire fence. Heck, I could have been attacked by a randy sea-lion.

And who would be responsible?

According to the running trend in the States, not me. No, the vendor would have been responsible: the one who rented us the bikes, the kayaks, and the ten-yard exposure to the sea lion. I’m sure of it. Because I never signed a waiver.

Sara noticed it first: we haven’t signed any paperwork to waive our rights since we landed on this archipelago. Not a single line. The only things we’ve signed are credit card receipts, so the New Zealanders can take our money (which we’ve been glad to give them—vive l’economie Kiwi!). We’ve been on a cruise in which our boat could have been struck by lightning, the lifeboats failed, and all the passengers eaten by sharks in the Tasman Sea. But did the cruise company give a rip about liability? Nope! “Welcome aboard!” was all they said.

It’s rather unsettling, I have to say, as a conscionable American in a strange land. After all, these people do speak English, don’t they? Sure, they pronounce things differently, but don’t they know the word “suit”? “Tort”? “Negligence”? What’s wrong with them? Don’t they care that one of their customers, victim to a strange occurrence or freak accident, might take them to court and take every penny from them? Don’t they see the danger? Don’t they look out over this sea of tourists and see schools of money-hungry, accident-prone sharks waiting for the scent of blood so they can have their class-action feeding frenzy?

I guess they don’t. And nobody else around here seems to notice. Perhaps there’s something wrong with me. Or maybe I’m just different because I’m from the United States.

~ emrys