Selling the colonial spa town: The contested therapeutic landscapes of Lisdoonvarna and Te Aroha

The spa town is one of the foundational sites in the study of therapeutic. As settings in which health informs the production of place and in place is shaped by reputational associations with healing, spa towns have health and historical geographies. Drawing on a comparison between spa towns, Te Aroha in New Zealand and Lisdoonvarna in Ireland, a number critical therapeutic landscapes themes are explored. Two themes in particular studied in empirical depth, the first being the commodification of health and within common spa town narratives from the mid-nineteenth century to the - to mid-twentieth century. A second core theme concerns itself with the identities of the watering-place, in relation to the relative importance of over social identities and in framing native inhabitations against wider place productions. In the tangled narratives of both towns’ health, we argue there is much to be learned about spatial similarities and in a process whereby place is commodified and sold on its reputational characteristics. This is a process with local socio-cultural variation but an additional potential for global-local narratives which moves beyond the town to wider watering-place forms.