‘You don’t ditch your girls’: young Māori and Pacific women and the culture of intoxication

Abstract

Māori and Pacific Peoples experience a disproportionate burden of alcohol-related harm relative to other ethnic groups, yet little is known about the context in which this drinking occurs. Few studies have explored how and why young Māori and Pacific women drink. Therefore, this article aims to develop a more nuanced and detailed account of Māori and Pacific young women’s drinking practices. The following article reports on an ethnographic study of young Māori and Pacific women aged 18–30. Five Māori participants and six Pacific participants were selected and asked to become researchers within their social groups. Nine female researchers also became participants in the study, accompanying recruited participants to drinking occasions and events. Participants were each given a ‘drinking diary’ to document drinking occasions, which formed the data-set for the project. Three levels of thematic analysis were undertaken. The first noted broad themes with the second and third levels exploring more nuanced themes and identifying intersections across themes. The study demonstrated that Māori and Pacific young women’s engagement with New Zealand’s culture of intoxication is complex: Māori and Pacific women drink for pleasure or to achieve a ‘buzz’ and to be social. Drinking practices are deeply affected by ethnic and peer group collectives (‘the girls’), traditions and expectations. Harm reduction initiatives need to take account of the many pathways specific to how Māori and Pacific young women engage with alcohol use. Additionally, the wider context in which alcohol-related harm occurs needs to be considered in policy and harm reduction debates.

Keywords:

• Māori
• Pacific
• young women
• alcohol
• harm reduction

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Sailau Suaalii-Sauni, Shirleyanne Brown and Metua Bates for their comments on this article as Māori and Pacific health advisors and researchers.

Notes

1. Māori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. They are a diverse population affiliated to different Iwi (tribes/tribal group). Māori make up 14.9% of the NZ population (Statistics New Zealand, 2013).

2. ‘“Pacific Peoples” (as opposed to “Pacific People”) is used to accentuate plurality and acknowledge that many Pacific communities who are linguistically, culturally and geographically distinctive from each other are grouped together when this umbrella term is used. However, while the term “Pacific Peoples” embraces commonalities, the use of this collective term is not intended to negate the individual characteristics, beliefs and behaviours of each specific Pacific community’ (Cagney & Alliston, 2009, p. 3.2).

3. As Wickham (2012) notes there is no standard definition of the night-time economy (NTE). For the purposes of this article the NTE is defined as ‘the areas of towns and cities in which licensed premises are most densely concentrated’ (Hadfield, 2006, p. 2). This leisure zone often contains a variety of places that sell alcohol such as bars, restaurants, nightclubs and so on. The NTE is identified as a space where ‘leisure experiences are fuelled by recreational drugs, principally alcohol’ (Hadfield, 2006, p. 2). In New Zealand cities such as Wellington and Auckland, the development of the NTE has been fuelled by the 1989 Sale of Liquor Act which increased the availability and access to alcohol, as well as a burgeoning tourist market (see Hutton, 2009).

4. Neoliberalism refers to the values of individualisation, control and responsibility that are argued to have come to the fore in the last 30 years or so. In relation to the NTE these values of neoliberalism are argued to exist alongside an increasingly consumerist hedonistic social context, creating tensions for those who consume alcohol and other drugs in this arena.

5. Identified studies are Brooking (1999), Kupenga (1984), Stuart (2009), National Council of Māori Nurses and University of Auckland (1988).

6. The phrase ‘Pacific’ is commonly used in New Zealand to refer to people who self-affiliate with one or more of the Island nations in the Pacific : Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelu, Tuvalu and Tahiti (Suaalii-Sauni, Samu, Dunbar, Pulford, & Wheeler, 2012, p. 2). Pacific peoples are a diverse population that make up 7.4% of the New Zealand population (Statistics New Zealand, 2013).

7. Being a good host in Pacific and Māori cultures refers to values such as respect and generosity – a good host is obliged to provide plentiful food and alcohol for guests and would be socially shamed if they did not.

8. This is a Niuean word and it is worth noting that most Pacific research using the term gifting would use the Samoan term meaalofa, presumably because 50% of Pacific Peoples are of Samoan origin, the largest Pacific population in New Zealand.