The Neoliberal State and the Uses of Indigenous Culture

Abstract

The strong public support for displays of Maori culture since the mid-1980s in New Zealand under biculturalism appears paradoxical. Cultural values of respect for tradition, community, hierarchy, and attachment to place are promoted abroad and incorporated into public institutions at home at the same time as neoliberal economic policies emphasize individualism, self-reliance, rational behavior, and mobility. This article argues that Maori cultural practices supply the values of communal belonging and solidarity that were previously associated by the public with the New Zealand state. Thus, they support a postmodern conception of national identity and guarantee the legitimacy of the neoliberal state.

Notes

1. See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10875938 (accessed 5 June 2013).

2. For a translation of Krarup's comments, see http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2013/04/danish-mp-apologises-over-calling-powhiri-grotesque-mocking-free-rider-nz-defence/comment-page-1/ (accessed 7 June, 2013).

3. See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10876083 (accessed 7 June 2013).

4. See http://www.warrenandmahoney.com/en/portfolio/new-zealand-pavilion-shanghai-world-expo-2010/ (accessed 21 May 2013).

5. Philip Gibson, New Zealand Commissioner for the 2010 Expo, quoted at http://www.newzealand.com/travel/media/press-releases/2010/5/events_nz-pavilion-at-expo-2010_press-release.cfm (accessed 21 May 2013).

6. The recommendation has not yet been enacted into law. For the report, see Ko Aotearoa Tenei, Waitangi Tribunal Report (Wellington: Legislation Direct, 2011).

7. See Katherine Smits, “The Politics of Biculturalism,” in Raymond Miller, ed., New Zealand Government and Politics, 5th ed. (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2010), 66–76; Katharine Curchin, “Pakeha Women and Maori Protocol: The Politics of Criticizing Other Cultures,” The Australian Journal of Political Science 46(3): 375–88 (2011).

8. David Pearson, “The Ties That Unwind: Civic and Ethnic Imaginings in New Zealand,” Nations and Nationalism 6(1): 95 (2000).

9. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 183.

10. See, for example, Jane Kelsey, A Question of Honour: Labour and the Treaty, 1984–1989 (Wellington: Allen and Unwin, 1990).

11. See, for example, Dominic O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism: the Politics of an Indigenous Minority (Wellington: Huia, 2007), 18–21.

12. Jacqui True and Charlie Gao, “National Identity in a Global Political Economy,” in Raymond Miller, ed., New Zealand Government and Politics, 5th ed. (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2010), 42.

13. Anthony Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998), 224–25.

14. G. A. Cohen, “Functional Explanation, Consequence Explanation and Marxism,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 25(1): 27–56 (1982).

15. We might note that Cohen argues that the superstructure is more limited than often argued and did not, for Marx, include forms of noneconomic social phenomena such as artistic creation. In this case, however, we are addressing state policies of cultural support.

16. Kelsey, A Question of Honour, 46–47.

17. Report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare, Puao-te-ata-tu (Wellington: Department of Social Welfare, 1986).

18. Richard Mulgan, Maori, Pakeha and Democracy (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1989), 10.

19. O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism, 3.

20. A. Fleras and J. L. Elliott, The Nations Within: Aboriginal-State Relations in Canada, the United States and New Zealand (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998).

21. Mason Durie, Te Mana, Te Kawanatanga: The Politics of Maori Self-Determination (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998).

22. Tom O’Reilly and David Wood, “Biculturalism and the Public Sector,” in Jonathan Boston, John Martin, June Pallot, and Pat Walsh, eds., Reshaping the State: New Zealand's Bureaucratic Revolution (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1991), 320–42.

23. O’Sullivan, Beyond Biculturalism, 21–22.

24. See http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0511/S00008.htm (accessed 26 May 2013).

25. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983).

26. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 49.

27. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 84–88.

28. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 57.

29. David E. Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

30. Ibid., 110.

31. Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 183.

32. See Jurgen Habermas’ summary of this process in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 1–3.

33. Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 27–57.

34. Charles Taylor, “Nationalism and Modernity,” in Ronald Beiner, ed., Theorizing Nationalism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 222.

35. Pearson, “Ties that Unwind,” 94.

36. Ibid., 95.

37. Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 25.

38. As quoted in Debra A. Castillo, “Postmodern Indigenism: Quetzalcoatl and All That,” Modern Fiction Studies 41(1): 35 (1995).

39. Jeremy Waldron, “Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative,” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 25(3&4): 754 (1991–92).

40. David Simon, “Development Reconsidered: New Directions in Development Thinking,” Geografiska Annaler 79B(4): 184 (2003). For essays on the neoliberal modernizing experience in Latin America, see Lynne Phillips, ed., The Third Wave of Modernization in Latin America: Cultural Perspectives on Neoliberalism (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1998).

41. Brent McClintock, “Whatever Happened to New Zealand?: The Great Capitalist Restoration Reconsidered,” Journal of Economic Issues 32(2): 497–503 (1998).

42. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 85.

43. For a close comparison, see John Brohman, “Universalism, Eurocentrism and Ideological Bias in Development Studies: From Modernization to Neoliberalism,” Third World Quarterly 16(1): 121–40 (1995).

44. Simon, “Development Reconsidered,” 187.

45. Jane Kelsey, Economic Fundamentalism (London: Pluto Press, 1995), 18–19.

46. Ibid., 2–3.

47. Allen Schick, “Why Most Developing Countries Should Not Try New Zealand's Reforms,” The World Bank Research Observer 13(1): 124 (1998).

48. Jonathan Boston, “The Theoretical Underpinnings of Public Sector Restructuring in New Zealand,” in Jonathan Boston, John Martin, June Pallot, and Pat Walsh, eds., Reshaping the State (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1991), 8–10.

49. See, for example, Kelsey, Economic Fundamentalism; Francis Castles, Rolf Gerritsen, and Jack Vowles, eds., The Great Experiment: Labour Parties and Public Policy Transformation in Australia and New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996); Roger Douglas, Unfinished Business (Auckland: Random House, 1993).

50. John Morrow, “Neo-liberalism,” in Raymond Miller, ed., New Zealand Government and Politics (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2001), 521–32.

51. Kelsey, Economic Fundamentalism, 336.

52. D. Barber, “A Servant of Two Masters,” The Listener, 12 March 1990.

53. As quoted in Kelsey, Economic Fundamentalism, 323.

54. For a well-documented assessment that they were not, see Paul Dalziel, “New Zealand's Economic Reforms: An Assessment,” Review of Political Economy 14(1): 31–46 (2002).

55. Penelope Carroll et al., “The Widening Gap: Perceptions of Poverty and Income Inequalities and Implications for Health and Social Outcomes,” Social Policy Journal of New Zealand 37: 1–12 (2011).

56. Martin Holland, “Engineering Electoral Success: Electoral Reform and Voting Behaviour under the Fourth Labour Government,” in Martin Holland and Jonathan Boston, eds., The Fourth Labour Government: Politics and Policy in New Zealand, 2nd ed. (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1990), 41–61.

57. J. Vowles and P. Aimer, Voters’ Vengeance: The 1990 Election in New Zealand and the Fate of the Fourth Labour Government (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993); Cited in Louise Humpage, “Radical Change or More of The Same?: Public Attitudes Towards Social Citizenship in New Zealand Since Neoliberal Reform,” The Australian Journal of Social Issues 43(2): 217 (2008).

58. Humpage, “Radical Change,” 215–30.

59. Ibid., 220–21.

60. Ibid., 222.

61. Ibid., 223.

62. Ibid., 224.

63. Ibid., 225.

64. Louise Humpage, “What Do New Zealanders Think About Welfare?,” Policy Quarterly 7(2): 12 (2011).

65. Ibid., 12.

66. D. Robinson, ed., Social Capital and Policy Development (Wellington: Institute of Policy Studies, 1997).

67. Patrick Fitzsimons, “Neoliberalism and ‘Social Capital’: Reinventing Community” (Paper delivered at the AREA Symposium “Neo-liberalism, Welfare and Education: The New Zealand Experiment,” New Orleans, 2000).

68. Lindsey Te Ata O Tu MacDonald and Paul Muldoon, “Globalisation, Neoliberalism and the Struggle for Indigenous Citizenship,” Australian Journal of Political Science 41(2): 211–12 (2006); see also Ann Sullivan, “Maori Affairs and Public Policy,” in Raymond Miller, ed., New Zealand Government and Politics (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2001), 479.

69. Jane Kelsey, “Aotearoa/New Zealand: The Anatomy of a State in Crisis,” in Andrew Sharp, ed., Leap Into the Dark: The Changing Role of the State in New Zealand Since 1984 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1994), 198.

70. Allan Hanson, “The Making of the Maori: Culture Invention and Its Logic,” American Anthropologist 91(4): 894 (1989).

71. Ibid., 896. For a critique of the exhibition's projection of Maori identity as an exercise in cultural essentialism, see Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, 184–87.

72. Nicholas Thomas, Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 228.

73. Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 245.

74. Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 3.

75. On the popularity of fundamentalist Christianity in New Zealand in this period, see Bruce Jesson, “The Frenzy of Fundamentalism,” in Andrew Sharp, ed., To Build a Nation: Collected Writings 1975–1999 (Auckland: Penguin, 2005), 148–50.

76. Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 11.

77. Ibid., 23–24.

78. Ibid., 17.

79. Theodor W. Adorno, “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,” in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, eds., The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Continuum, 1998), 270–99.

80. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon, 1944).

81. Indigenous culture is not the only source of comfort and compensation. Bruce Jesson discusses the popularity of fundamentalist Christianity in New Zealand in the wake of economic restructuring, in “The Frenzy of Fundamentalism,” in Andrew Sharp, ed., To Build a Nation: Collected Writings 1975–1999 (Auckland: Penguin, 2005), 148–50.