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532_16 | Bibliography
Ross Chambers: "Orphaned Memories, Foster-Writing, Phantom Pain: The Fragments Affair", in: Nancy K. Miller and Jason Tougaw (eds.) Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community, Urbanan and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002, pp. 92–111
Daniel Ganzfried: "Die Holocaust-Travestie. Erzählung". In: Sebastian Hefti (ed.): ... alias Wilkomirski. Die Holocaust-Travestie. Jüdische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 2002, pp. 17–154,
Yiannis Gabriel: "The Voice of Experience and the Voice of the Expert – Can they Speak to each Other?" In: Brian Hurwitz, Trisha Greenhalgh, Vieda Skultans (eds.): Narrative Research in Health and Illness, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, , pp. 168–186
Lawrence L. Langer: Using and Abusing the Holocaust, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006,
Susan Rubin Suleiman: Crises of Memory and the Second World War, Cambridge etc.: Harvard University Press, 2006, |
532_17 | Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson: Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions and hurtful acts, New York: Harcourt, 2007,
Matthew Wickman: The Ruins of Experience. Scotland's "Romantik" Highlands and the Birth of Modern Witness, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007,
Binjamin Wilkomirski: Fragments. Memories of a Wartime Childhood. Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway. New York: Schocken Books, 1996 (reprinted in Maechler, 2001a, pp. 375–496)
Froma Zeitlin: "New Soundings in Holocaust Literature: A Surplus of Memory". In: Moishe Postone and Eric Santer (eds.): Catastrophe and Meaning. The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003, , pp. 173–208 |
532_18 | Journal articles
Elena Lappin: 'The Man with Two Heads,' Granta 66 (1999), pp. 7–65; published in abridged form as:
Timothy Neale (2010): ". . . the credentials that would rescue me': Trauma and the Fraudulent Survivor". In: Holocaust & Genocide Studies, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 431–48
External links
"Why One Would Pretend to be a Victim of the Holocaust: The Wilkomirski Memoir" by Renata Salecl published in Other Voices, v.1 n.3, 2000
"Truth, Lies and Fiction", BBC Radio 4 In Our Time podcast, 15 July 1999
Literary forgeries
Place of birth missing (living people)
Holocaust-related hoaxes
1995 books
Written fiction presented as fact |
533_0 | John Melchior Bosco (; 16 August 1815, 31 January 1888), popularly known as Don Bosco , was an Italian Roman Catholic priest, educator, and writer of the 19th century. While working in Turin, where the population suffered many of the ill-effects of industrialization and urbanization, he dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth. He developed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that became known as the Salesian Preventive System. |
533_1 | A follower of the spirituality and philosophy of Francis de Sales, Bosco was an ardent devotee of Mary, mother of Jesus, under the title Mary Help of Christians. He later dedicated his works to de Sales when he founded the Salesians of Don Bosco, based in Turin. Together with Maria Domenica Mazzarello, he founded the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, now commonly known as the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, a religious congregation of nuns dedicated to the care and education of poor girls. He taught Dominic Savio, of whom he wrote a biography that helped the young boy be canonized. |
533_2 | He is one of the pioneers of Mutual Aid Societies that were initiated as collaborative financial support to young migrant Catholic Workers in the city of Turin. In 1850 he drew up regulations to assist apprentices and their companions when any of them was involuntary without work or fell ill.
On 18 April 1869, one year after the construction of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, Don Bosco established the Association of Mary Help of Christians (ADMA) connecting it with commitments easily fulfilled by most common people, to the spirituality and the mission of the Salesian Congregation (CG 24 SDB, 1996, NR. 80). The ADMA was founded to promote the veneration of the Most Holy Sacrament and Mary Help of Christians (Don Bosco, Association of the Devotees of Mary Help of Christians, San Benigno Canavese, 1890, page 33). |
533_3 | In 1875, he began to publish the Salesian Bulletin. The Bulletin has remained in continuous publication, and is currently published in 50 different editions and 30 languages. In 1876, Bosco founded a movement of laity, the Association of Salesian Cooperators, with the same educational mission to the poor.
Bosco established a network of organizations and centres to carry on his work. Following his beatification in 1929, he was canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI in 1934. |
533_4 | Life
John Bosco was born on the evening of 16 August 1815 in the hillside hamlet of Becchi, Italy. Becchi is located in a region that was called Castelnuovo d'Asti, which was later renamed Castelnuovo Don Bosco in honour of the saint. He was the youngest son of Francesco Bosco (1784–1817) and Margherita Occhiena. He had two older brothers, Antonio, and Giuseppe (1813–1862). The Boscos of Becchi were farmhands of the Moglian Family. John Bosco was born into a time of great shortage and famine in the Piedmontese countryside, following the devastation wrought by the Napoleonic Wars and drought in 1817.
When he was little more than two years old, his father, Francesco, died, which left the support of three boys to his mother, Margherita. She played a strong role in Bosco's formation and personality, and was an early supporter of her son's ideals. |
533_5 | In 1825, when he was nine, Bosco had the first of a series of dreams that would play an influential role in his outlook and work. This first dream "left a profound impression on him for the rest of his life", according to his own memoirs. Bosco apparently saw a multitude of very poor boys playing and blaspheming and a man, who "appeared, nobly attired, with a manly and imposing bearing" and said to him, "You will have to win these friends of yours not with blows, but with gentleness and kindness. So begin right now to show them that sin is ugly and virtue beautiful".
Bosco, when he was ten years old at the festive oratory, started watching his classmates' attitudes, and in every fight, he was the referee. The older boys were scared of him because he knew their strengths and their weaknesses. |
533_6 | When travelling entertainers performed at a local feast in the nearby hills, he watched and studied the jugglers' tricks and the acrobats' secrets. Then, he would put on shows of his skills as a juggler, magician, and acrobat with prayers before and after the performance. The money that he needed to prepare all the shows was taken from selling the birds that he hunted and given to him by his mother because she trusted him.
Poverty prevented any serious attempt at schooling. His early years were spent as a shepherd, and he received his first instruction from a parish priest. His childhood experiences are thought to have inspired him to become a priest. Being a priest was then more commonly a profession for the privileged classes, than for farmers. Some biographers portray his older brother, Antonio, as the main obstacle for Bosco's ambition to study, as Antonio protested that John was just "a farmer like us!" |
533_7 | On a cold morning in February 1827, John left his home and went to look for work as a farm servant. At 12, he found life at home unbearable because of the continuous quarrels with Antonio. Having to face life by himself at such a young age may have developed his later sympathies to help abandoned boys. After begging unsuccessfully for work, he ended up at the wine farm of Louis Moglia. Although he could pursue some studies by himself, he was not able to attend school for two more years. In 1830, he met Joseph Cafasso, a young priest who identified some natural talent and supported his first schooling. Bosco's mother, Margherita, managed to earn enough money to finance his education. In 1835, Bosco entered the seminary at Chieri, next to the Church of the Immacolata Concezione. In 1841, after six years of study, he has ordained a priest on the eve of Trinity Sunday by Archbishop Franzoni of Turin. He was twenty-six years old.
Priesthood and first apostolates |
533_8 | John Bosco was first called to be chaplain of the Rifugio ("Refuge"), a girls' boarding school founded in Turin by the Marchioness Giulia di Barolo. His other ministries included visiting prisoners, teaching catechism, and helping out at many country parishes.
Adulthood
Turin then had a population of 117,000 inhabitants. The city reflected the effects of industrialization and urbanization. Numerous poor families lived in the slums of the city and had come from the countryside in search of a better life. In visiting the prisons, Don Bosco was disturbed to see so many boys from 12 to 18 years of age. He was determined to find a means to prevent them from ending up here. |
533_9 | Because of population growth and migration to the city, Bosco found the traditional methods of parish ministry to be inefficient. He decided that it was necessary to try another form of apostolate, and he began to meet the boys where they worked and gathered in shops and marketplaces. They were pavers, stonecutters, masons, plasterers who had come from far away, as he recalled in his brief Memoires. |
533_10 | The Oratorio was not simply a charitable institution, and its activities were not limited to Sundays. For Don Bosco, it became his permanent occupation. He looked for jobs for the unemployed. Some of the boys did not have sleeping quarters and slept under bridges or in bleak public dormitories. Twice, he tried to provide lodgings in his house. The first time, they stole the blankets; the second, time, they emptied the hayloft. He did not give up, and in May 1847, he gave shelter to a young boy from Valencia in one of the three rooms he was renting in the slums of Valdocco, where he was living with his mother. He and "Mamma Margherita" began taking in orphans. The boys sheltered by Don Bosco numbered 36 in 1852, 115 in 1854, 470 in 1860, and 600 in 1861, reaching a maximum of 800 sometime later. |
533_11 | Bosco and his oratory moved around town for several years; he was turned out of several places in succession. After only two months based in the church of St. Martin, the entire neighbourhood expressed its annoyance with the noise coming from the boys at play. A formal complaint was lodged against them with the municipality. Rumours also circulated that the meetings conducted by the priest with his boys were dangerous; their recreation could be turned into a revolution against the government. The group was evicted. |
533_12 | Work with apprentices
In the archives of the Salesian Congregation is a contract of apprenticeship, dated November 1851; another one on stamped paper costing 40 cents, dated 8 February 1852; and others have later dates. They are among the first contracts of apprenticeship to be found in Turin. All of them are signed by the employer, the apprentice, and Don Bosco. In those contracts, Don Bosco touched on many sensitive issues. Some employers customarily made servants and scullery boys of the apprentices. Don Bosco obliged them to agree to employ the boys only in their acknowledged trade. Employers used to beat the boys. Don Bosco required them to agree that corrections be made only verbally. He cared for their health and demanded that they be given rest on feast days and an annual holiday. Despite all the efforts and contracts, however, the situation of the apprentices of the time remained difficult. |
533_13 | One influential friend was Piedmontese Justice Minister Urbano Rattazzi. He was anticlerical in his politics but saw some value in Bosco's work. While Rattazzi was pushing a bill through the Sardanian legislature to suppress religious orders, he advised Bosco on how to get around the law. He found a religious order to keep the oratory going after its founder's death. Bosco had been thinking about that problem too and had been slowly organizing his helpers into a loose "Congregation of St. Francis de Sales". He was also training select older boys for the priesthood. Another supporter of the idea to establish a religious order to carry out Bosco's vision was the reigning pope, Pope Pius IX. |
533_14 | Bosco disliked the ideals that had been exported by Revolutionary France and called Rousseau and Voltaire "two vicious leaders of incredulity". He favoured an ultramontane view of politics that acknowledged the supreme authority of the pope. In 1854, when the Kingdom of Sardinia was about to pass a law suppressing monastic orders and confiscating ecclesiastical properties, Bosco reported a series of dreams about "great funerals at court" that referred to politicians or members of the Savoy court. |
533_15 | In November 1854, he sent a letter to King Victor Emmanuel II and admonished him to oppose the confiscation of church property and suppression of the orders, but the King failed to respond. His actions, which had been described by the Italian historian Roberto Petoia as having "manifest blackmailing intentions", ended only after the intervention of Prime Minister Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour. The king's family suffered several deaths in a short period. From January to May 1855, the king's mother (age 54), wife (32), newborn son (Vittorio Emanuele, Count of Genoa; nearly four months old), and his only brother (32) all died. |
533_16 | Opposition to Bosco and his work came from various quarters. Traditionalist clergy accused him of stealing the young and old people away from their own parishes. Nationalist politicians, including some clergy, saw his several hundred young men as a recruiting ground for revolution. The Marquis de Cavour, the chief of police in Turin, regarded the open-air catechisms as overtly political and a threat to the state and was highly suspicious of Bosco's support for the powers of the papacy. Bosco was interrogated on several occasions, but no charges were made. Closure may have been prevented by orders from the king that Bosco was not to be disturbed.
Several attempts were also made on Bosco's life, including a near-stabbing, bludgeoning, and a shooting. Early biographers put that down to the growing influence of the Waldensians in opposition to Catholic clergy.
Foundation of Salesians of Don Bosco |
533_17 | Some of the boys helped by Don Bosco decided to do what he was doing: working in the service of abandoned boys. That was the origin of the Salesian Congregation. Among the first members were Michael Rua, John Cagliero (who later became a Cardinal), and John Baptist Francesca.
In 1859, Bosco selected the experienced priest Vittorio Alasonatti, 15 seminarians, and one high school boy and formed them into the "Society of St. Francis de Sales". That was the nucleus of the Salesians, the religious order that would carry on his work. When the group had their next meeting, it voted on the admission of Joseph Rossi as a lay member, the first Salesian brother. The Salesian Congregation was divided into priests, seminarians, and "coadjutors" (the lay brothers). |
533_18 | Next, he worked with Mary Mazzarello, and a group of girls in the hill town of Mornese. In 1871, he founded a group of religious sisters to do for girls what the Salesians were doing for boys. They were called the "Daughters of Mary Help of Christians". In 1874, he founded yet another group, the "Salesian Cooperators", who mostly lay people who would work for young people like the Daughters and the Salesians but would not join a religious order.
The first Salesians departed for Argentina in 1875. After his ordination, Bosco himself would have become a missionary if his director, Joseph Cafasso, had not opposed the idea. Bosco nevertheless eagerly read the Italian edition of the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and used this magazine to illustrate his Cattolico Provveduto (1853) and his Month of May booklets (1858). |
533_19 | When Bosco founded the Salesian Society, the thought of the missions still obsessed him, but he then completely lacked the financial means. Bosco claimed that in another dream, he was on a vast plain inhabited by primitive peoples, who spent their time hunting or fighting among themselves or against soldiers in European uniforms. Along came a band of missionaries, but they were all massacred. A second group appeared, which Bosco at once recognized as Salesians. Astonished, he witnessed an unexpected change when the fierce savages laid down their arms and listened to the missionaries. It seems the dream made a great impression on Bosco because he tried hard to identify the men and the country of the dream, and for three years, he collected information about different countries. A request from Argentina turned him towards the Indians of Patagonia, and a study of its people convinced him that the country and its inhabitants were the ones that he had seen in his dream. In late 1874, Bosco |
533_20 | received letters from the Argentine consult at Savona requesting that he accept an Italian parish in Buenos Aires and a school for boys at San Nicolas de Los Arroyos. |
533_21 | Bosco regarded it as a sign of Providence and started to prepare a mission. Adopting a way of evangelization that would not expose his missionaries to wild, "uncivilized" tribes, he proposed setting up bases in safe locations at which missionary efforts were to be launched. Negotiations started after Archbishop Aneiros of Buenos Aires had indicated that he would be glad to receive the Salesians. In a ceremony held on 29 January 1875, Bosco was able to convey the great news to the oratory. On 5 February, he announced the fact in a circular letter to all Salesians asking volunteers to apply in writing. He proposed for the first missionary departure to start in October. There were many volunteers.
Salesian Preventive System and other works |
533_22 | In the years that Bosco had spent running his oratory and giving spiritual and practical instruction to the boys he had housed there, he relied on a different approach on education and general instruction, which he believed to be superior to traditional educational methods, which he labelled as a Repressive System of Education. On 12 March 1877, Bosco gave an opening address on the systems of education during the day for the opening of the St. Peter's Youth Center in the new quarters of the Patronage de Saint Pierre in Nice in which he first mentioned the term 'Preventive System'. Upon his return to Turin, Bosco wrote down the address as a polished essay under the title The Preventive System in the Education of the Youth, which was published in 1877 in which he included in the initial draft of the Rule for the Salesian Order. It espoused the values of reason, Religion, and loving kindness with a goal of producing "good Christians and honest citizens". That was the only attempt that |
533_23 | Bosco made at a systematic exposition of his educational system. Though the idea itself was not innovative by any means, Bosco having drawn the inspiration for his system through the contemporary criticisms of the punitive and outdated educational systems prevalent in Europe during his time, and he was one of the first to combat it and to put his criticisms into practice. |
533_24 | Though Bosco's written works were little known outside of his own order and the subscribers of his Salesian Bulletin, which he founded in August 1877, he wrote frequently and voluminously. Though Don Bosco was described as more of a man of action than a scholar, he was an exceptional historian. He penned the 1881 A Compendium of Italian History from the Fall of the Roman Empire, which was translated and continued to the present by John Daniel Morell and was noted by scholars for its cultural importance on the knowledge base of ancient to modern civilization. He was also a skilled biographer. His two most well-known biographies were on his mentor, Joseph Cafasso and one of his students, Dominic Savio, which would later be instrumental in his canonization. |
533_25 | Works
Works in roughly chronological order
Catholic Readings (1853-1884)
1853
Announcements for Catholics
The Instructed Catholic
Historical notes on the miracle of the Blessed Sacrament at Turin
Fact of our times
A dispute between a lawyer and a Protestant minister
Notes on the life of the youth, Luigi Comolli
The conversion of a Waldensian
A collection of strange contemporary happenings
The six Sundays in honour of St Aloysius Gonzaga
The Jubilee
1855
An easy method of learning Sacred History
Talks on Confession
Life of St Martin, Bishop of Tours
The value of a good upbringing
Life of St Pancras
1857
Life of St Peter
Two conferences on Purgatory
Life of St Paul
Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Linus, Cletus, and Clement
Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Anacletus, Evaristus, and Alexander I
Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Sixtus, Telesphorus, and Hyginus
1858
Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherus, Victor, and Zephirinus |
533_26 | (The month of May, consecrated to Mary Immaculate
The Christian's 'Porta Tecum'
Life of the Sovereign Pontiff, Callistus I
1859
Life of the youth, Dominic Savio
Life of the Sovereign Pontiff, Urban I
Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Pontian, Anteros, and Fabian
The persecution of Decius and the pontificate of St Cornelius I
1860
Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs, St Lucian I and St Stephen I
The pontificate of St Sixtus II and the glories of St Laurence
Biography of Fr Joseph Cafasso
1861
A family of martyrs
Biographical note on Michael Magone
The pontificate of St Dionysius
Biography of Silvio Pellico
1862
The pontificates of St Felix I and St Eutychian
The new charm of an old soldier of Napoleon
1863
Historical notes on BI. Catherine De-Mattei
The pontificate of St Caius
1864
The pontificates of SS Marcellinus and Marcellus
Episodes pleasant and contemporary
The little shepherd of the Alps
1865
The house of fortune
Dialogues on the jubilee
The peace of the Church |
533_27 | Life of BI. Mary of the Angels c. s.
1866-1867
Valentine or the opposed vocation
The centenary of St Peter the Apostle
Life of St Joseph
News and stories
1868
Severino, or the adventures of a young alpinist
Marvels of the Mother of God
Life of St John the Baptist
Remembrance of a solemnity
1869
The Catholic Church and its Hierarchy
Association of the devotees of Mary, Help of Christians
The General Councils and the Catholic Church
Angelina, or the little orphan Girl of the Apennines
(1870-1884)
Nine days consecrated to the august Mother of our Saviour
Church History
The Apparition of the Blessed Virgin at La Salette
Pleasing facts from the life of Pius IX
The centenary of St Eusebius the Great
Massimino, or the encounter of a boy with a Protestant
The Jubilee of 1875
Mary, Help of Christians
The little cloud of Carmel
The loveliest flower of the apostolic college
The Catholic in the world
New stories of Luigi Comolli
Series Started by Don Bosco |
533_28 | The friend of youth, a politico-religious paper (1849)
1851
Synoptic tablet (on the Catholic Church)
Flying leaflets
'Il Galantuomo'. A national almanac began (1854)
Salesian Bulletin (1877-current)
Critical Works
the 40 Dreams of St. John Bosco (critical edition published in 1977, originally published as a dream journal in 1855)
The Preventive System in the Education of the Youth (1877)
A Compendium of Italian History from the Fall of the Roman Empire (1881)
Posthumous Works
Memoirs of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales (written between 1815 and 1855, published posthumously in 1989)
The spiritual writings of Saint John Bosco (1984)
Dreams, Visions, and Prophecies of Don Bosco (1999)
The Unpublished Don Bosco (compiled by Mario Balbi and published in 2005) |
533_29 | Death and canonisation
Bosco died on 31 January 1888. His funeral was attended by thousands. Soon, there was popular demand to have him canonized. The Archdiocese of Turin investigated, and witnesses were called to determine if Bosco was worthy to be declared a saint. The Salesians, Daughters, and Cooperators gave supportive testimonies. However, many remembered Bosco's controversies in the 1870s with Archbishop Gastaldi, and some others in the upper Church hierarchy thought him to be a loose cannon and a "wheeler-dealer". In the canonization process, testimony was heard about how he went around Gastaldi to get some of his men ordained and about their lack of academic preparation and ecclesiastical decorum.
Pope Pius XI had known Bosco and pushed the cause forward. Pius XI beatified Bosco on 2 June 1929 and canonised him on Easter Sunday (1 April) of 1934, when he was given the title of "Father and Teacher of Youth". |
533_30 | Pope Pius XII proclaimed him patron of Catholic publishers in 1949. His repertoire of writings and publications consists of over 220 titles collected in 38 volumes. They were printed at his own peerless paper-to-print workshop where boys learned the art of printing and publishing in view of future employment.
Bosco had been popularly known as the patron saint of illusionists, on 30 January 2002, Silvio Mantelli petitioned Pope John Paul II to declare Bosco formally to the patron of stage magicians. Catholic stage magicians who practice gospel magic venerate Bosco by offering free magic shows to underprivileged children on his feast day.
Bosco's work was carried on by an early pupil, collaborator, and companion, Michael Rua, who was appointed rector major of the Salesian Society by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.
He is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 31 January. |
533_31 | In popular culture
Bosco was the subject of the 1935 biopic Don Bosco, directed by Goffredo Alessandrini, and was played by the actor Gian Paolo Rosmino.
Bosco was also the subject of two Italian movies: Don Bosco (1988) and Saint John Bosco: Mission to Love (2004).
An Italian church, St. Giovanni Bosco, is named after him in Montreal, Canada, in the Ville-Émard area. St. Giovanni Bosco is the patron saint of the capital of Brazil, Brasília, which he supposedly foresaw in a prophecy concerning an extraordinary new civilization that would flourish in Central Brazil.
A borough in Quilmes, Argentina, is named after him.
There is a technical college in Mandaluyong, Philippines, that is named for him.
Don Bosco College of Engineering in Goa, India, Don Bosco Technical Institute Makati in Makati City, St. John Bosco Arts College in Liverpool, United Kingdom and St. John Bosco College in Piara Waters, Western Australia, are some of the institutes named after him. |
533_32 | Brooklyn Park in South Australia is home to the St John Bosco Church and St John Bosco Primary School, which were established by the Salesians.
Boy's Town (Engadine) was founded 1939 by Priest Thomas Dunlea, based on and later run by the Salesians, St John Bosco Parish (Engadine) established by the Salesians in 1947. St John Bosco Primary School (Engadine) was founded in 1959 by Salesian Sisters. St John Bosco College (Engadine) was founded in 1978. All were named after him as well.
References
Bibliography
General
Publications of the Holy See
Publications of the Salesians of Don Bosco
Further reading
Publications of the Salesians of Don Bosco
A 7-volume series.
Translation of
External links |
533_33 | 1815 births
1888 deaths
People from the Province of Asti
Clergy from Turin
Founders of Catholic religious communities
Italian Roman Catholic saints
19th-century Christian saints
Incorrupt saints
Salesian Order
Canonizations by Pope Pius XI
Writers from Turin
Anglican saints
Beatifications by Pope Pius XI |
534_0 | A dendritic spine (or spine) is a small membranous protrusion from a neuron's dendrite that typically receives input from a single axon at the synapse. Dendritic spines serve as a storage site for synaptic strength and help transmit electrical signals to the neuron's cell body. Most spines have a bulbous head (the spine head), and a thin neck that connects the head of the spine to the shaft of the dendrite. The dendrites of a single neuron can contain hundreds to thousands of spines. In addition to spines providing an anatomical substrate for memory storage and synaptic transmission, they may also serve to increase the number of possible contacts between neurons. It has also been suggested that changes in the activity of neurons have a positive effect on spine morphology. |
534_1 | Structure
Dendritic spines are small with spine head volumes ranging 0.01 μm3 to 0.8 μm3. Spines with strong synaptic contacts typically have a large spine head, which connects to the dendrite via a membranous neck. The most notable classes of spine shape are "thin", "stubby", "mushroom", and "branched". Electron microscopy studies have shown that there is a continuum of shapes between these categories. The variable spine shape and volume is thought to be correlated with the strength and maturity of each spine-synapse.
Distribution
Dendritic spines usually receive excitatory input from axons, although sometimes both inhibitory and excitatory connections are made onto the same spine head. Excitatory axon proximity to dendritic spines is not sufficient to predict the presence of a synapse, as demonstrated by the Lichtman lab in 2015. |
534_2 | Spines are found on the dendrites of most principal neurons in the brain, including the pyramidal neurons of the neocortex, the medium spiny neurons of the striatum, and the Purkinje cells of the cerebellum. Dendritic spines occur at a density of up to 5 spines/1 μm stretch of dendrite. Hippocampal and cortical pyramidal neurons may receive tens of thousands of mostly excitatory inputs from other neurons onto their equally numerous spines, whereas the number of spines on Purkinje neuron dendrites is an order of magnitude larger. |
534_3 | Cytoskeleton and organelles
The cytoskeleton of dendritic spines is particularly important in their synaptic plasticity; without a dynamic cytoskeleton, spines would be unable to rapidly change their volumes or shapes in responses to stimuli. These changes in shape might affect the electrical properties of the spine. The cytoskeleton of dendritic spines is primarily made of filamentous actin (F-actin). tubulin Monomers and microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) are present, and organized microtubules are present. Because spines have a cytoskeleton of primarily actin, this allows them to be highly dynamic in shape and size. The actin cytoskeleton directly determines the morphology of the spine, and actin regulators, small GTPases such as Rac, RhoA, and CDC42, rapidly modify this cytoskeleton. Overactive Rac1 results in consistently smaller dendritic spines. |
534_4 | In addition to their electrophysiological activity and their receptor-mediated activity, spines appear to be vesicularly active and may even translate proteins. Stacked discs of the smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SERs) have been identified in dendritic spines. Formation of this "spine apparatus" depends on the protein synaptopodin and is believed to play an important role in calcium handling. "Smooth" vesicles have also been identified in spines, supporting the vesicular activity in dendritic spines. The presence of polyribosomes in spines also suggests protein translational activity in the spine itself, not just in the dendrite. |
534_5 | Morphogenesis |
534_6 | The morphogenesis of dendritic spines is critical to the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP). The morphology of the spine depends on the states of actin, either in globular (G-actin) or filamentous (F-actin) forms. The role of Rho family of GTPases and its effects in the stability of actin and spine motility has important implications for memory. If the dendritic spine is the basic unit of information storage, then the spine's ability to extend and retract spontaneously must be constrained. If not, information may be lost. Rho family of GTPases makes significant contributions to the process that stimulates actin polymerization, which in turn increases the size and shape of the spine. Large spines are more stable than smaller ones and may be resistant to modification by additional synaptic activity. Because changes in the shape and size of dendritic spines are correlated with the strength of excitatory synaptic connections and heavily depend on remodeling of its underlying actin |
534_7 | cytoskeleton, the specific mechanisms of actin regulation, and therefore the Rho family of GTPases, are integral to the formation, maturation, and plasticity of dendritic spines and to learning and memory. |
534_8 | RhoA pathway
One of the major Rho GTPases involved in spine morphogenesis is RhoA, a protein that also modulates the regulation and timing of cell division. In the context of activity in neurons, RhoA is activated in the following manner: once calcium has entered a cell through NMDA receptors, it binds to calmodulin and activates CaMKII, which leads to the activation of RhoA. The activation of the RhoA protein will activate ROCK, a RhoA kinase, which leads to the stimulation of LIM kinase, which in turn inhibits the protein cofilin. Cofilin's function is to reorganize the actin cytoskeleton of a cell; namely, it depolymerizes actin segments and thus inhibits the growth of growth cones and the repair of axons. |
534_9 | A study conducted by Murakoshi et al. in 2011 implicated the Rho GTPases RhoA and Cdc42 in dendritic spine morphogenesis. Both GTPases were quickly activated in single dendritic spines of pyramidal neurons in the CA1 region of the rat hippocampus during structural plasticity brought on by long-term potentiation stimuli. Concurrent RhoA and Cdc42 activation led to a transient increase in spine growth of up to 300% for five minutes, which decayed into a smaller but sustained growth for thirty minutes. The activation of RhoA diffused around the vicinity of the spine undergoing stimulation, and it was determined that RhoA is necessary for the transient phase and most likely the sustained phase as well of spine growth. |
534_10 | Cdc42 pathway |
534_11 | Cdc42 has been implicated in many different functions including dendritic growth, branching, and branch stability. Calcium influx into the cell through NMDA receptors binds to calmodulin and activates the Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinases II (CaMKII). In turn, CaMKII is activated and this activates Cdc42, after which no feedback signaling occurs upstream to calcium and CaMKII. If tagged with monomeric-enhanced green fluorescent protein, one can see that the activation of Cdc42 is limited to just the stimulated spine of a dendrite. This is because the molecule is continuously activated during plasticity and immediately inactivates after diffusing out of the spine. Despite its compartmentalized activity, Cdc42 is still mobile out of the stimulated spine, just like RhoA. Cdc42 activates PAK, which is a protein kinase that specifically phosphorylates and, therefore, inactivates ADF/cofilin. Inactivation of cofilin leads to increased actin polymerization and expansion of the |
534_12 | spine's volume. Activation of Cdc42 is required for this increase in spinal volume to be sustained. |
534_13 | Observed changes in structural plasticity
Murakoshi, Wang, and Yasuda (2011) examined the effects of Rho GTPase activation on the structural plasticity of single dendritic spines elucidating differences between the transient and sustained phases.
Transient changes in structural plasticity
Applying a low-frequency train of two-photon glutamate uncaging in a single dendritic spine can elicit rapid activation of both RhoA and Cdc42. During the next two minutes, the volume of the stimulated spine can expand to 300 percent of its original size. However, this change in spine morphology is only temporary; the volume of the spine decreases after five minutes. Administration of C3 transferase, a Rho inhibitor, or glycyl-H1152, a Rock inhibitor, inhibits the transient expansion of the spine, indicating that activation of the Rho-Rock pathway is required in some way for this process.
Sustained changes in structural plasticity |
534_14 | After the transient changes described above take place, the spine's volume decreases until it is elevated by 70 to 80 percent of the original volume. This sustained change in structural plasticity will last about thirty minutes. Once again, administration of C3 transferase and Glycyl-H1152 suppressed this growth, suggesting that the Rho-Rock pathway is necessary for more persistent increases in spinal volume. In addition, administration of the Cdc42 binding domain of Wasp or inhibitor targeting Pak1 activation-3 (IPA3) decreases this sustained growth in volume, demonstrating that the Cdc42-Pak pathway is needed for this growth in spinal volume as well. This is important because sustained changes in structural plasticity may provide a mechanism for the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of memories. The observations made may suggest that Rho GTPases are necessary for these processes.
Physiology |
534_15 | Receptor activity
Dendritic spines express glutamate receptors (e.g. AMPA receptor and NMDA receptor) on their surface. The TrkB receptor for BDNF is also expressed on the spine surface, and is believed to play a role in spine survival. The tip of the spine contains an electron-dense region referred to as the "postsynaptic density" (PSD). The PSD directly apposes the active zone of its synapsing axon and comprises ~10% of the spine's membrane surface area; neurotransmitters released from the active zone bind receptors in the postsynaptic density of the spine. Half of the synapsing axons and dendritic spines are physically tethered by calcium-dependent cadherin, which forms cell-to-cell adherent junctions between two neurons. |
534_16 | Glutamate receptors (GluRs) are localized to the postsynaptic density, and are anchored by cytoskeletal elements to the membrane. They are positioned directly above their signalling machinery, which is typically tethered to the underside of the plasma membrane, allowing signals transmitted by the GluRs into the cytosol to be further propagated by their nearby signalling elements to activate signal transduction cascades. The localization of signalling elements to their GluRs is particularly important in ensuring signal cascade activation, as GluRs would be unable to affect particular downstream effects without nearby signallers. |
534_17 | Signalling from GluRs is mediated by the presence of an abundance of proteins, especially kinases, that are localized to the postsynaptic density. These include calcium-dependent calmodulin, CaMKII (calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II), PKC (Protein Kinase C), PKA (Protein Kinase A), Protein Phosphatase-1 (PP-1), and Fyn tyrosine kinase. Certain signallers, such as CaMKII, are upregulated in response to activity.
Spines are particularly advantageous to neurons by compartmentalizing biochemical signals. This can help to encode changes in the state of an individual synapse without necessarily affecting the state of other synapses of the same neuron. The length and width of the spine neck has a large effect on the degree of compartmentalization, with thin spines being the most biochemically isolated spines.
Plasticity |
534_18 | Dendritic spines are very "plastic", that is, spines change significantly in shape, volume, and number in small time courses. Because spines have a primarily actin cytoskeleton, they are dynamic, and the majority of spines change their shape within seconds to minutes because of the dynamicity of actin remodeling. Furthermore, spine number is very variable and spines come and go; in a matter of hours, 10-20% of spines can spontaneously appear or disappear on the pyramidal cells of the cerebral cortex, although the larger "mushroom"-shaped spines are the most stable. |
534_19 | Spine maintenance and plasticity is activity-dependent and activity-independent. BDNF partially determines spine levels, and low levels of AMPA receptor activity is necessary to maintain spine survival, and synaptic activity involving NMDA receptors encourages spine growth. Furthermore, two-photon laser scanning microscopy and confocal microscopy have shown that spine volume changes depending on the types of stimuli that are presented to a synapse.
Importance to learning and memory
Evidence of importance
Spine plasticity is implicated in motivation, learning, and memory. In particular, long-term memory is mediated in part by the growth of new dendritic spines (or the enlargement of pre-existing spines) to reinforce a particular neural pathway. Because dendritic spines are plastic structures whose lifespan is influenced by input activity, spine dynamics may play an important role in the maintenance of memory over a lifetime. |
534_20 | Age-dependent changes in the rate of spine turnover suggest that spine stability impacts developmental learning. In youth, dendritic spine turnover is relatively high and produces a net loss of spines. This high rate of spine turnover may characterize critical periods of development and reflect learning capacity in adolescence—different cortical areas exhibit differing levels of synaptic turnover during development, possibly reflecting varying critical periods for specific brain regions. In adulthood, however, most spines remain persistent, and the half-life of spines increases. This stabilization occurs due to a developmentally regulated slow-down of spine elimination, a process which may underlie the stabilization of memories in maturity. |
534_21 | Experience-induced changes in dendritic spine stability also point to spine turnover as a mechanism involved in the maintenance of long-term memories, though it is unclear how sensory experience affects neural circuitry. Two general models might describe the impact of experience on structural plasticity. On the one hand, experience and activity may drive the discrete formation of relevant synaptic connections that store meaningful information in order to allow for learning. On the other hand, synaptic connections may be formed in excess, and experience and activity may lead to the pruning of extraneous synaptic connections. |
534_22 | In lab animals of all ages, environmental enrichment has been related to dendritic branching, spine density, and overall number of synapses. In addition, skill training has been shown to lead to the formation and stabilization of new spines while destabilizing old spines, suggesting that the learning of a new skill involves a rewiring process of neural circuits. Since the extent of spine remodeling correlates with success of learning, this suggests a crucial role of synaptic structural plasticity in memory formation. In addition, changes in spine stability and strengthening occur rapidly and have been observed within hours after training. |
534_23 | Conversely, while enrichment and training are related to increases in spine formation and stability, long-term sensory deprivation leads to an increase in the rate of spine elimination and therefore impacts long-term neural circuitry. Upon restoring sensory experience after deprivation in adolescence, spine elimination is accelerated, suggesting that experience plays an important role in the net loss of spines during development. In addition, other sensory deprivation paradigms—such as whisker trimming—have been shown to increase the stability of new spines. |
534_24 | Research in neurological diseases and injuries shed further light on the nature and importance of spine turnover. After stroke, a marked increase in structural plasticity occurs near the trauma site, and a five- to eightfold increase from control rates in spine turnover has been observed. Dendrites disintegrate and reassemble rapidly during ischemia—as with stroke, survivors showed an increase in dendritic spine turnover. While a net loss of spines is observed in Alzheimer's disease and cases of intellectual disability, cocaine and amphetamine use have been linked to increases in dendritic branching and spine density in the prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens. Because significant changes in spine density occur in various brain diseases, this suggests a balanced state of spine dynamics in normal circumstances, which may be susceptible to disequilibrium under varying pathological conditions. |
534_25 | There is also some evidence for loss of dendritic spines as a consequence of aging. One study using mice has noted a correlation between age-related reductions in spine densities in the hippocampus and age-dependent declines in hippocampal learning and memory.
Importance contested
Despite experimental findings that suggest a role for dendritic spine dynamics in mediating learning and memory, the degree of structural plasticity's importance remains debatable. For instance, studies estimate that only a small portion of spines formed during training actually contribute to lifelong learning. In addition, the formation of new spines may not significantly contribute to the connectivity of the brain, and spine formation may not bear as much of an influence on memory retention as other properties of structural plasticity, such as the increase in size of spine heads. |
534_26 | Modeling
Theoreticians have for decades hypothesized about the potential electrical function of spines, yet our inability to examine their electrical properties has until recently stopped theoretical work from progressing too far. Recent advances in imaging techniques along with increased use of two-photon glutamate uncaging have led to a wealth of new discoveries; we now suspect that there are voltage-dependent sodium, potassium, and calcium channels in the spine heads.
Cable theory provides the theoretical framework behind the most "simple" method for modelling the flow of electrical currents along passive neural fibres. Each spine can be treated as two compartments, one representing the neck, the other representing the spine head. The compartment representing the spine head alone should carry the active properties. |
534_27 | Baer and Rinzel's continuum model
To facilitate the analysis of interactions between many spines, Baer & Rinzel formulated a new cable theory for which the distribution of spines is treated as a continuum. In this representation, spine head voltage is the local spatial average of membrane potential in adjacent spines. The formulation maintains the feature that there is no direct electrical coupling between neighboring spines; voltage spread along dendrites is the only way for spines to interact. |
534_28 | Spike-diffuse-spike model
The SDS model was intended as a computationally simple version of the full Baer and Rinzel model. It was designed to be analytically tractable and have as few free parameters as possible while retaining those of greatest significance, such as spine neck resistance. The model drops the continuum approximation and instead uses a passive dendrite coupled to excitable spines at discrete points. Membrane dynamics in the spines are modelled using integrate and fire processes. The spike events are modelled in a discrete fashion with the wave form conventionally represented as a rectangular function. |
534_29 | Modeling spine calcium transients
Calcium transients in spines are a key trigger for synaptic plasticity. NMDA receptors, which have a high permeability for calcium, only conduct ions if the membrane potential is suffiently depolarized. The amount of calcium entering a spine during synaptic activity therefore depends on the depolarization of the spine head. Evidence from calcium imaging experiments (two-photon microscopy) and from compartmental modelling indicates that spines with high resistance necks experience larger calcium transients during synaptic activity. |
534_30 | Development
Dendritic spines can develop directly from dendritic shafts or from dendritic filopodia. During synaptogenesis, dendrites rapidly sprout and retract filopodia, small membrane organelle-lacking membranous protrusions. Recently, I-BAR protein MIM was found to contribute to the initiation process. During the first week of birth, the brain is predominated by filopodia, which eventually develop synapses. However, after this first week, filopodia are replaced by spiny dendrites but also small, stubby spines that protrude from spiny dendrites. In the development of certain filopodia into spines, filopodia recruit presynaptic contact to the dendrite, which encourages the production of spines to handle specialized postsynaptic contact with the presynaptic protrusions. |
534_31 | Spines, however, require maturation after formation. Immature spines have impaired signaling capabilities, and typically lack "heads" (or have very small heads), only necks, while matured spines maintain both heads and necks.
Clinical significance
Cognitive disorders such as ADHD, Alzheimer's disease, autism, intellectual disability, and fragile X syndrome, may be resultant from abnormalities in dendritic spines, especially the number of spines and their maturity. The ratio of matured to immature spines is important in their signaling, as immature spines have impaired synaptic signaling. Fragile X syndrome is characterized by an overabundance of immature spines that have multiple filopodia in cortical dendrites. |
534_32 | History
Dendritic spines were first described at the end of the 19th century by Santiago Ramón y Cajal on cerebellar neurons. Ramón y Cajal then proposed that dendritic spines could serve as contacting sites between neurons. This was demonstrated more than 50 years later thanks to the emergence of electron microscopy. Until the development of confocal microscopy on living tissues, it was commonly admitted that spines were formed during embryonic development and then would remain stable after birth. In this paradigm, variations of synaptic weight were considered as sufficient to explain memory processes at the cellular level. But since about a decade ago, new techniques of confocal microscopy demonstrated that dendritic spines are indeed motile and dynamic structures that undergo a constant turnover, even after birth.
References
Further reading
External links
Spiny Dendrite - Cell Centered Database
Neurohistology
Computational neuroscience |
535_0 | Julien Anfruns is a French business executive. He is the Director of Corporate Affairs for Philip Morris, France and a member of the Executive Committee. Formerly a French senior civil servant, Julien Anfruns was nominated in September 2013 to serve as a member of the Council of State, “Conseil d’Etat” (France) as a supreme court judge.
Between 2008 and May 2013, Julien Anfruns was the Director General of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). On the occasion of the 2010 World Expo (Expo 2010) in Shanghai, China, ICOM held its 22nd General Conference between 7 and 12 November, during which Julien Anfruns welcomed among others, the former President of France, Jacques Chirac, as well as the former President of Mali, Alpha Oumar Konaré.
In September 2013, he was nominated to serve as a member of the French Council of State both specializing in tax and economics laws in the ninth chamber and advising the government on Defense and Civil Service as rapporteur for bills and decrees. |
535_1 | Julien Anfruns was educated at the National School of Administration (École nationale d'administration, ENA) and EDHEC Business School. He was the Director of Administration, for Financial and Legal Affairs (C.F.O. and General Counsel) at the Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre) between 2005-2008, where he was involved in the strategic development of the Louvre both in France and abroad, notably for the project Louvre Abu Dhabi. He has also previously occupied several diplomatic posts including at the United Nations in New York, as well as in Finland and Estonia.
He is also actively involved as a member of several think tank groups, including the Global Agenda Council on the Role of the Arts in Society for the World Economic Forum (Davos). In April 2013, he was nominated as a member to the French national commission of the European Heritage Label. |
535_2 | Julien Anfruns also engages in forums bringing together culture and business and participates on panels such as the Forum d'Avignon and is a member of the Nouveau Club de Paris, which supports Knowledge Economy. He served as a trustee for the European Museum Forum between January 2010 and February 2013. He is a member of the Advisory Board of EDHEC Business School. |
535_3 | International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) |
535_4 | Following the second World War (World War II), UNESCO adopted the Hague Convention (1954) creating rules to protect cultural goods during armed conflicts. This Convention was the first international treaty aimed at protecting Cultural heritage in the context of war and which highlighted the concept of Common heritage. The International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) is stated in the protocol of the Hague Convention and was created as the equivalent for Heritage of what the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) represents for Humanitarian actions. ICBS incorporated museums and archives, audiovisual supports, libraries, and monuments and sites. It brings together the knowledge, experience and international networks of the following non-governmental organisations dealing with cultural heritage: ICA, International Council on Archives, ICOM, International Council of Museums, IFLA, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, ICOMOS, International |
535_5 | Council on Monuments and Sites and CCAAA, Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations. |
535_6 | Julien Anfruns was President of the International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) between 2009 and 2013. In 2016, ICBS amalgamated with the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS) to become The Blue Shield. |
535_7 | Conferences and contributions
Julien Anfruns is invited to participate at many conferences and contributes on numerous to several international projects. His most recent contributions: |
535_8 | Rencontres économiques d'Aix-en-Provence, "What place for companies in transformation of society?" (7 July 2018)
International conference in Tunis on the status of Judges (29-30 March 2017), European Commission, programme TAIEX
International Legal Symposium in Indonesia with the United Nations Development Program, the EU Sustain Program and the Indonesian Judicial Commission, Jakarta (9-11 November 2016)
World Economic Forum, Summit on the Global Agenda, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (18–20 November 2013)
Conference on Intangible Heritage and Territories Attraction, French Ministry of Finance, Paris, 17 October 2013
World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland) from du 23 to 27 January 2013
First Congress of the northern committees of the ICOM Latin America and Caribbean Alliance in Guatemala (10–12 December 2012)
Forum d'Avignon (France) from 15 to 17 November 2012
Summit of the World Economic Forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (12–14 November 2012) |
535_9 | Annual Conference of NEMO (Network of European Museum Organisations) in Dublin, Ireland from 2 to 4 November 2012
Symposium for the French-speaking Sub-Saharian area’s heritage (Paris, 26 October 2012)
AVICOM Conference (International Committee for Audiovisual and New Image and Sound Technologies in Museums) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada from 9 to 11 October 2012
The Best in Heritage Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 27 to 29 September 2012
ICOMOS and ICAHM Regional Conference in Greece about heritage protection in times of economic crisis (23–25 May 2012)
The IBA Art, Cultural institutions and Heritage Law Committee’s conference about "New Art: New Legal Challenges" at the MAXXI (Roma, 17–18 May 2012)
The 2012 Council of Europe Museum Prize at a Ceremony held in Strasbourg on 25 April 2012
The International Fair of Agriculture for the conference of museums of agriculture on 2 March 2012
The Irish Museums Association’s conference on 25 February 2012 |
535_10 | Jury of the contest entitled Musées (em)portables in Paris in January 2012
First International Conference of ICBS in Seoul in December 2011
International Bar Association (IBA) Annual Conference in Dubai in October 2011
The Best in Heritage Excellence Club at EXPONATEC COLOGNE in November 2011 |
535_11 | Bibliography
Le soft power, un atout exceptionnel pour la France, Le Cercle Les Echos, 17/04/2018
Les Musées sont-ils les ambassadeurs de nos sociétés, in Histoire d'une Passion, Luxembourg Museum's Friends ans Julien Anfruns (co-author), 2017
Patrimoine culturel et conflits armés, Julien Anfruns, Encyclopédia Universalis, 201536
Art Collecting Legal Handbook, Préface Julien Anfruns, Bruno Boesch et Massimo Sterpi (editors), 2013,
Julien Anfruns: The Best in Heritage 2012 Publication, Julien Anfruns’ keynote speech Ethics for the heritage sector, Web
André Desvallées, François Mairesse: Dictionnaire encyclopédique de muséologie, Préface Julien Anfruns, Armand Colin, 2011,
Capital immatériel et middle market, Julien Anfruns, Didier Dumont et Dominique Latrilhe, DFGC, Deloitte, 2008
References
External links
New Club of Paris - Website for the knowledge economy
Living people
Directors of the Louvre
French diplomats
Year of birth missing (living people) |
536_0 | Manawatū-Whanganui (; spelled Manawatu-Wanganui prior to 2019, and often simply called the Manawatū) is a region in the lower half of the North Island of New Zealand, whose main population centres are the cities of Palmerston North and Whanganui. It is administered by the Manawatū-Whanganui Regional Council, which operates under the name Horizons Regional Council.
Name
In the Māori language, the name is a compound word that originates from an old Māori waiata (song). The waiata describes the search by an early ancestor, Haunui-a-Nanaia, for his wife, during which he named various waterways in the district, and says that his heart () settled or momentarily stopped () when he saw the Manawatu River. |
536_1 | Whanga nui is a phrase meaning "big bay" or "big harbour". The first name of the European settlement at Whanganui was Petre (pronounced Peter), after Lord Petre, an officer of the New Zealand Company, but the name was never popular and was officially changed to "Wanganui" in 1854. In the local dialect, Māori pronounce the wh in Whanganui as , a voiced labiovelar approximant combined with a glottal stop, but to non-locals the name sounds like "Wanganui" and is hard to reproduce. |
536_2 | In 1991 the New Zealand Geographic Board considered demands from some local Māori to change the name of the river to Whanganui. After widespread controversy for many years, in September 2019 the New Zealand Geographic Board announced that from 18 October 2019 the name of the Manawatu-Wanganui region, and the regional council, would incorporate both the letter "h" and a macron, becoming "Manawatū-Whanganui". This became the official spelling of the name on 18 October, although the Manawatū-Whanganui Regional Council would continue to use the trading name of Horizons Regional Council.
See Controversy over Wanganui/Whanganui spelling |
536_3 | Government
The region covers all or part of ten territorial authority areas. Parts of five of these are covered by five other regions of New Zealand, the most of any region. In descending order of land area the territorial authority districts are Ruapehu, the major parts of Tararua District and Rangitikei, Manawatū, Whanganui, Horowhenua, and small parts of Stratford, Waitomo, and Taupō. The largest city is Palmerston North, with a population of 85,300 (June 2012 estimate). It is the only territorial authority in the region to be administered by a city council. |
536_4 | The governing body of the regional council consists of 12 councillors from 6 constituencies across the region, elected by the public; from the north: Ruapehu (1 councillor), Whanganui (2), Manawatū-Rangitikei (2), Palmerston North (4), Horowhenua (2), Tararua District (1). It sits in Palmerston North. It has the responsibility for managing natural and physical resources, providing flood protection and monitoring environmental problems and fresh air, clean water, productive land and natural eco-systems. It is also responsible for public transport. |
536_5 | Geography |
536_6 | The region is dominated and defined by two significant river catchments, the Whanganui and the Manawatu. The Whanganui River, in the northwest, is the longest navigable river in New Zealand. The river was extremely important to early Māori as it was the southern link in a chain of waterways that spanned almost two-thirds of the North Island. It was one of the chief areas of Māori settlement with its easily fortified cliffs and ample food supplies. Legends emphasise the importance of the river and it remains sacred to Whanganui iwi. Māori along the coast and lowland plains grew kumara and other crops. The Manawatu River runs across the centre of the region, from rolling hill country in the east to the fertile Manawatu Plains in the west. The main city of Palmerston North is located on these plains, and is an important service city for the southern North Island as a whole. This river is unusual, in that it passes from hill country to plains through a gorge cut into much higher country, |
536_7 | an indication that the hills have risen since the river formed. |
536_8 | To the southeast, a further, more sparsely populated area of the Tararua District lies between the sources of the Manawatu River near Norsewood and the Pacific coast. This area, often historically connected with both the Hawke's Bay Region to the north and the Wairarapa to the south, was historically simply known as Bush, a name which still survives in some businesses and organisations, most notably the Wairarapa-Bush Rugby Football Union. |
536_9 | The two river catchments have very different natures. While the open Manawatu Plains became more densely settled by Europeans, inland Ruapehu, Rangitikei and Whanganui remained more Māori-dominated, remote and independent, and is still heavily forested. As late as the 1950s the Whanganui River remained a river of mystery. Since then exploitation of the river's commercial potential has opened up the area, often causing friction with local Māori, who have long-standing grievances. Manawatū-Whanganui as a whole is one of the most important pastoral areas in New Zealand, its status recognised when the government opened the Massey Agricultural College in the 1920s. |
536_10 | Much of Manawatu-Wanganui was fertile and bush-covered when Europeans arrived and developed the area as a source of timber. Saw milling and flax milling dominated the 19th century, followed by an influx of sheep farmers who exploited the newly cleared ground. Deforestation, burn-offs of timber and scrub and large scale drainage combined with overgrazing, resulted in considerable environmental degradation. In the early 1900s authorities realised that careful management was needed to maintain this important agricultural area. |
536_11 | Topography
Manawatū-Whanganui takes up a large proportion of the lower half of the North Island. It is the second-largest local government region in the North Island and the sixth-largest in New Zealand, totalling 22,215 km2 (8.1% of New Zealand's land area). The region stretches from north of Taumarunui to south of Levin on the west coast, and across to the east coast from Cape Turnagain to Owhanga. It borders the Waikato, Taranaki, Hawke's Bay and Wellington regions and includes river catchment areas that run from the volcanic plateau to the sea. The Pacific Ocean is the eastern boundary and the Ruahine Ranges form a natural boundary with Hawke's Bay. |
536_12 | The area includes a variety of landscape formations. Districts close to the Volcanic Plateau are higher and more rugged, often subject to harsh temperatures in winter. The Manawatu District has a much gentler topography, consisting mainly of the flat, tree-studded Manawatu Plains that run between the ranges and the sea. The land was under the sea till about 500,000 years ago and still has a very thick layer of marine sediment, which is about five or six million years old. A block faulting system underneath the thick sediment has raised a series of domes and gentle depressions. These structures can provide natural storage areas for oil and some of the Manawatu domes have been drilled. The domes have shaped the course of the Manawatu River, giving it a meandering path which, uniquely among New Zealand rivers, begins close to the east coast and exits on the west coast. The Manawatu River begins just inside the Hawke's Bay Region, then flows through a deep gorge to the Manawatu Plains |
536_13 | before exiting in the Tasman Sea. The river is also unique in New Zealand (and rare worldwide) in that this gorge (the Manawatu Gorge) is a water gap through recently uplifted rock, causing the river to flow from relatively low-lying land along an eroded course through higher terrain. The Whanganui District is more rugged, with canyon-like valleys and gorges carved out of the soft rock by rivers and ocean waves. |
536_14 | The region includes a series of mountain ranges, notably the Tararua Range and the Ruahine Range and the three major active volcanoes of the North Island. Mount Ruapehu at 2,797 m is the tallest mountain in the North Island, Ngauruhoe 2,291 m and Tongariro 1,968 m. During the last 100 years Ruapehu has experienced six significant eruptions, and last erupted in 1995 and 1996.
Three major rivers divide the region: the Whanganui (290 km), Manawatū (182 km) and Rangitikei (241 km). The Whanganui is the second-longest river and has the second-largest catchment in the North Island, draining most of the inland region west of Lake Taupō. There are few roads in this area, which contains some of the largest surviving areas of native bush in the North Island. |
536_15 | Soil and climate
Soils are productive with the addition of fertiliser. In the Manawatū and Horowhenua Districts there are sandy soils and swampy hollows around the coast with loess-covered terraces and river flats inland. These river flats and swamp areas contain fertile alluvial and organic soils. On the drier terraces inland yellow-grey earths predominate. The flatter more fertile soils suit intensive sheep farming and cropping while the hill country of Rangitikei favours semi-intensive sheep and beef farming. Areas close to the volcanic plateau consist largely of pumice soils which lack some essential trace elements but within the region much of this land is occupied by national parks. |
536_16 | The region has a comparatively mild climate with greater climatic extremes inland. Chateau Tongariro experienced the lowest temperature recorded in the North Island, falling to -13.6 °C on 7 July 1937. In summer the region is warm, with a maximum mid-summer daily average of between 20.1 and 22.9 °C. Sunshine hours approximate the national average for much of the region (1,800-2,000 hours per annum) but Palmerston North is defined as cloudy with an average of 1,725 sunshine hours. In the winter the minimum mid-winter daily average for coastal areas is 4.0 to 7.9 °C, while inland areas are considerably colder. Waiouru has a minimum mid-winter daily average of 0.1 °C.
Rainfall on the plains is slightly below average, with Palmerston North receiving 960 mm, while the rest of the region receives the New Zealand average rainfall of 1,000-2,000 mm. |
536_17 | Conservation and parks
The region contains areas of great ecological significance, reflected in the designation of approximately a seventh of its land area as part of the nation's conservation estate. Tongariro National Park is the largest park in the region (795.98 km2) and is the oldest national park in the country, established in 1887. The volcanoes Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe are sacred to Māori and were given to the nation by Te Heuheu Tukino IV, paramount chief of Ngati Tuwharetoa. They form the nucleus of the park, which is designated a world heritage area.
Whanganui National Park is slightly smaller (742.31 km2) and was established 99 years later when a series of reserves were incorporated into one area and given national park status. There are two state forest parks in the rugged, bush-clad Ruahine Range and Tararua Range. The four parks offer skiing, tramping, jetboating and white-water rafting and the opportunity to appreciate the environment. |
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