Crafting the normative subject: queerying the politics of race in the New Zealand Health education classroom

Abstract

This article explores the potential of queering as a mode of critique by problematising the ways in which liberal politics of race shape normative understandings of health in a high school classroom. Drawing on findings from an Australian and New Zealand (NZ) research project designed to respond to religious and cultural difference in school-based sexuality education programmes, we critically queer how the Māori concept of hauora is deployed in the intended and operational NZ Health curriculum to shape the raced subject. Despite the best intentions of curriculum developers and classroom teachers to utilise Māori ways of knowing to meet their obligations within a bicultural nation, we argue that the notion of hauora is domesticated by being aligned with normalising individualistic notions of well-being that reflect the Eurocentric neoliberal individual enterprise subject. Palatable notions of Māori epistemologies as cultural artefacts and iconography drive that ‘inclusion’. The ‘cunning politic’ of (bicultural) recognition legitimates Māori ways of knowing in ways which privilege whiteness – reproducing rather than disrupting networks of power and dumbing down Māori epistemologies.

Keywords:

• queer theory
• Māori epistemologies
• race
• school-based health education
• New Zealand

Notes

1. In NZ, schools are ranked from deciles 1 to 10 according to the socio-economic status (SES) of the community from which the young people are drawn, with 1 being the lowest. Kauri College is a decile 3 school, indicating that it is situated within a low SES community.

2. Pākehā is the term for a New Zealander of European descent.

3. While the students were identified demographically in these ways, most of them felt ambivalent about personally identifying themselves as belonging to those racial groups.

4. The separation of health and physical well-being reflects European rather than indigenous epistemologies (Heaton, 2011).

5. Māori meeting house.

6. To read more about these terms in the context of the NZ curriculum see: http://health.tki.org.nz/Teaching-in-HPE/Curriculum-statement/Underlying-concepts/Well-being-hauora.

7. Whanaungatanga: building relationships; manaakitanga: an ethic of caring; and kotahitanga: an ethic of bonding (MacFarlane, 2004).