The Systematisation of Tradition: Maori Culture as a Strategic Resource

In this article I discuss the systematisation of Maori tradition in New Zealand during the 1970s and 1980s. More particularly, my focus is on the politicisation and rationalisation of Maori tradition within the New Zealand state, these processes occurring partly in response to calls by Maori leaders for a dismantling of colonial and monocultural structures in New Zealand and reactive objectifications of Maori tradition which challenged the legitimacy of the post-colonial state administration. I begin with a consideration of the main objectives towards which the systematisation of tradition has been directed over the past two decades, and I examine the way in which priorities have shifted in response to reactive politicisations of ethnic identity. I then draw upon a number of specific examples to illustrate the ethnicisation and rationalisation of Maori tradition as aspects of the systematisation process within the New Zealand state.     

The Swinging Gate: Katherine Mansfield's Missionary Vision

At the age of thirteen, Mansfield wrote “I want to be a Maori missionary” in her Book of Common Prayer. “The Swinging Gate: Katherine Mansfield's Missionary Vision” by Richard Cappuccio argues that Mansfield's initial diary entry is a lens through which one can read her interests in, rebellion against, and modifications of her Anglican background. The article discusses close readings of her poems “The Sea Child,” “The Butterfly,” and “To L.H. B.” as well as two of her stories — “Prelude,” and “How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped.” In addition it draws on journals and letters to focus on a relationship between Maori systems of belief, her affinities with Frank Harris's “A Holy Man (After Tolstoi),” and her final observations about G. I. Gurdjieff.     

Licensed Native Interpreter:

Many of the cross-cultural intermediaries who figure in the New Zealand historiography operated in ‘middle ground’ situations. However, in New Zealand as elsewhere in the Pacific, intermediaries also had roles to play in settings where the authority of the colonial state was more or less assured. Working from government records and the 1920 diary of the Pakeha interpreter Ben Keys, this article examines the sorts of cross-cultural expertise involved in negotiating sales and leases of Maori land and probes the relationship between such instrumental uses of knowledge of Maori culture and the ethnographic interests that this work nurtured. For some settlers, Keys included, amateur ethnographic inquiry constituted the active intellectual work of being a New Zealander. By examining the work of an intermediary and amateur ethnographer in an age of automobiles and cinemas, I seek to demonstrate — in a modest, textured way — how the colonization of New Zealand was an ongoing, twentieth-century process in the sphere of economics and law as well as culture and identity.     

Gendering resistance: British colonial narratives of wartime New Zealand

In 1850s New Zealand, the British Crown forced the purchase of indigenous Maori land at Taranaki, an event that hastened the brutal land wars of the 1860s. A group of British church and government officials and their wives voiced their opposition to this land confiscation, participating in what became known as the «pamphlet war» over Taranaki. The authors compare the anti-colonial writings of a number of prominent colonial men and women, drawing out the significance of both ideological and embodied gendered differences and the discursive representations of place produced out of them. In addition to differences and similarities in genre, content, and audience, the authors highlight the significance—and spatiality—of anti-colonial Maori testimony that appeared in one of the pivotal texts.     

Gender,Work and Fears of a ‘Hybrid Race’ in 1920s New Zealand

The 1929 New Zealand Committee of Inquiry into the Employment of Maori on Market Gardens affords insight into the ways in which masculine fears of racial degradation through miscegenation – of a ‘hybrid’ Chinese/Maori race – operated within a hierarchy of race, gender and Iwi (tribal) interests. The participation of Maori men in national politics contributed to a new articulation of ‘National Manhood’, in which Maori men and white men combined to express fears about women's work and sexuality and young women's potential to undermine a fragile and contested hierarchy of racial purity. Maori women, silenced in the cacophony of voices lamenting their plight, were at the centre of debates between Maori men, Pakeha (white New Zealander) employers, Chinese market gardeners, Anglican and Methodist interests and Pakeha women's groups. I argue that the Inquiry was about commerce, both in a business and a sexual sense. As a historical episode, it also serves to complicate the picture of New Zealand as a historically bicultural society, made up only of Maori and Pakeha, by signalling the importance of the Chinese in debates about national belonging.     

Maori Hapu as a Whole Way of Struggle: 1840s–50s Before the Land Wars

Research in Maori land history, burgeoning under the influence of the Waitangi Tribunal since the mid-1980s, promises a better understanding of the history of Maori kinship as well as New Zealand political economy. It has often been merely assumed, for instance, that contemporary hapu are a (or the) traditional form. I argue that Maori kinship and especially hapu or their equivalent need to be better understood in historical perspective. This essay examines some evidence and issues arising from the first few decades of colonisation before the land wars of the 1860s.     

Maori Tribalism and Post‐settler Nationhood in New Zealand

In this article I begin by sketching the main events in a recent dispute over the allocation of fishing quota among Maori. I seek to shed some light on the ideological grounding of this dispute in the simultaneous individualisation and tribalisation of Maori society since the late 19th century. Because the New Zealand nation is now imagined as an essentially binary one (bicultural, or treaty‐based) there is no secure place for urban indigeneity which constitutes a third voice. The inability of urban Maori Authorities to gain a share of the fishing quota is a reflection of this binarism.     

Maori Socio-Political Organization in Pre- and Proto-History

At present it is widely assumed that the socio-political organisation of Maori society is made up of four structural levels: the ‘extended family’, the ‘sub-tribe’, the ‘tribe’ and the ‘super-tribe’, each of which, in turn, corresponds with a certain type of Maori leader. It is rarely realised that a consensus about this framework for understanding Maori socio-political organisation did not emerge until the 1930s, approximately 150 years after colonial contact had begun. This raises the question to what extent the standard model of Maori socio-political organisation is based on the same a-historic and objectivist assumptions that were held around the turn of the century when it was developed. The extent to which these assumptions may have influenced the ethnohistorical and ethnographic analysis of Maori society in past and present also requires examination. It is argued that an essentialist model of Maori tribal organisation hampers the understanding of the dynamics of socio-political practices in Maori society.     

Pastoralism and politics: reinterpreting contests for territory in Auckland Province, New Zealand, 1853–1864

As colonial frontiers expanded in the nineteenth century, contests over access to land suitable for farming between pastoralists, small farmers and indigenous populations were the inevitable result. In colonial Auckland, this contest was particularly vigorous, firstly because the young settlement's economic survival was at stake, since environmental constraints largely prevented its participation in the lucrative New Zealand wool industry, and secondly, because the economic and military prowess of indigenous Maori meant that settlers had little room to move in. Auckland's wealthy pastoralists pinned their hopes on the occupation of Maori land to the south of Auckland, since this was more suitable for sheep than the settlement's immediate environs, but this required dispossessing the Maori population by force. Initially, this obstacle gave small farmers a political advantage over the pastoralists, but as firstly arable markets, and then plans for small farmers and Maori to rear sheep themselves, all faltered, the pastoralist cause became increasingly difficult for colonial authorities to resist. When these authorities finally turned against the Maori communities south of Auckland, and launched an imperial war against them, the pastoralists successfully lobbied for the lands they most coveted to be confiscated from Maori, an event that radically altered New Zealand's future economic geography.     

Anthropology, ‘Native Schooling’ and Maori: the Politics of ‘Cultural Adaptation’ Policies

This paper examines three policies of ‘cultural adaptation’ formulated in colonial contexts in the 1920s and 1930s — that of the British Colonial Office for education in Africa, that of the New Zealand Native Schools and that of Maori leaders. While clearly inter-related, these policies were developed and promoted by their respective proponents to serve widely different political goals. Particularly significant is the role played by anthropology in that context. Proponents of all three policies looked to anthropologists for insights and scientific validation of their political agendas. Anthropologists, in turn, not only accepted this role but, particularly in the case of the British Colonial education policy, actively claimed it, involving themselves in the processes of colonial control.     

Visiting Tieke Kāainga: the Authenticity of a Maori Welcome

ABSTRACT Whanganui National Park is one of New Zealand's leading tourist attractions. Tieke Kainga (Tieke settlement) is a Department of Conservation camp site in the middle reaches of the river that was occupied in the mid‐1990s by members of Tamahaki an indigenous group who claim that the land was taken from them illegally. Although a modus vivendi currently exists whereby the Department and Maori group co manage the site, Tamahaki's struggle for exclusive ownership of it continues. Part of the strategy they adopted to solidify their claim involves welcoming tourists and government officials to Tieke Kāinga in a manner that accords with Maori tradition. Such welcomes establish dramatically that Tamahaki own Tieke and that the guests formally acknowledge by their participation in the performance that they are visitors. This paper questions the authenticity of the welcomes performed there and concludes that they are real for good reason. Authentic Maori welcomes solidify Tamahaki's occupation of Tieke and broadcast the morality of their claim to the site.     

Nostalgia for ‘innocent homely pleasures’: The 1964 New Zealand Controversy over Washday at the Pa

In 1964, the New Zealand Department of Education withdrew and destroyed 38,000 copies of Washday at the Pa, a booklet depicting Maori family life, at the request of the Maori Women’s Welfare League. This essay explores the raced and gendered context of the ensuing uproar in the press, which debated aspects of New Zealand identity. It situates the Washday controversy in the context of post-war housing and differential standards of living experienced by Maori and pakeha. It argues that the League upheld claims to both modernity and tradition, while many pakeha used the occasion to express nostalgia for mother–centred domesticity.     

The Treaty of Waitangi in Contemporary New Zealand Politics

This paper identifies three discourses that are prominent in contemporary Treaty of Waitangi policy debate, each with significantly different implications for Maori political status within the modern nation-state. At one extreme the Treaty's significance is exaggerated by overemphasis on partnership as an implicit Treaty principle. At another extreme the Treaty's significance is understated by an assimilationist position that denies the Treaty's relevance to Indigenous rights which, in turn, imposes serious constraint on the extent to which partnership can actually develop into comprehensive policy practice. An alternative position is one that sees the Treaty, which is supported in international law, as affirming a twofold conception of citizenship as the basis of both individual and collective Maori rights.     

The “Science” of Policy Development During Administrative Rulemaking

The legitimacy of government agencies rests in part on the premise that public administrators use scientific evidence to make policy decisions. Yet, what happens when there is no consensus in the scientific evidence—i.e., when the science is in conflict? I theorize that scientific conflict yields greater policy change during administrative policymaking. I assess this claim using data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I identify policy change—what I refer to as “policy development” in this article—between the FDA's draft and final rules with a novel text analysis measure of shifts in regulatory restrictions. I then go on to find that more policy development does occur with scientific conflict. Moreover, using corresponding survey data, I uncover suggestive evidence that one beneficiary of such conflict may be participating interest groups. Groups lobby harder—and attempt to change more of the rule—during conflict, while an in‐survey experiment provides evidence of increased interest group influence on rule content when scientific conflict is high.     

Daily,Immediate Conflicts: an Analysis of Villagers' Arguments about a Multinational Nickel Mining Project in New Caledonia1

Local communities are not the homogenous entities, unanimously opposed to industrial development, that academic and popular literature often portray them to be. In this paper, I discuss my research in New Caledonian villages near a potential mining project. I analyse the diversity of individuals' responses to industrial activities, the intra‐community conflicts that this development triggered or exacerbated, and the discourses that people implemented to support their positions. Specifically, people's statements — and, presumably, beliefs — about dangers from ecological damage and ancestral anger reflected their expectations of the project's consequences for their sub‐group's social status. I argue that, through their interactions with the mining company, what many if not most of these villagers primarily sought was respect of their social positions and control of their own destinies. They especially aspired to determine what happened to their land, the source of their identity and dignity.     

Excavating Racial Capitalism in London's West India Docks

Focusing on the construction of London's West India Docks in 1802, I argue that this project established a feedback loop with conditions of production in the Caribbean. Through an analysis of committee minutes, letters, parliamentary papers and visual art, I move beyond economic accounts of slavery's impact to demonstrate how geographies of security and surveillance—first developed on the sugar plantation—were imported into the design and function of London's port. As such, I argue that London's docks produced a geography of segregation which offers a unique insight into the workings of racial capitalism and its exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities. Positioning my discussion alongside London's contemporary landscape, I excavate Britain's repressed memories of slavery to illustrate how they still scar the urban environment.     

The Relevance of Cassirer and the Rewriting of Intellectual History

Summary

This essay aims to discuss the historiographical implications and premises of Peter Gordon's masterly book Continental Divide, in which he re-evaluates the Davos meeting between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger. This impressive reminder of the prospects of intellectual history deserves to be paid serious attention, particularly in European philosophy departments. Gordon's book exemplifies how problems of systematic philosophy can be clarified by a detour through history.

I want to highlight three aspects of Gordon's book that fundamentally transform and deepen our understanding of intellectual history in general and the Davos meeting in particular. First, I highlight one of the main merits of Gordon's study: his emphasis on the plurality behind the term ‘continental philosophy’. This opens up a whole new perspective on a seemingly well-known event within the history of twentieth-century philosophy. Second, I address Gordon's methodological premises, which challenge and fundamentally transform our understanding of intellectual history. Third, I attempt to summarise, from an intellectual history perspective, Gordon's argument about Cassirer's relevance. Here we are faced with the task of realigning and legitimising philosophy in a radically historicised world. To adumbrate the core of my comment I should say that I am thrilled by Gordon's book. I agree with nearly everything he says apart from his conclusions. In a closing remark I will try to explain the reasons for this surprising divergence.     

SEAGULLS! ON MARTIN HÄGGLUND'S THIS LIFE: SECULAR FAITH AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

In this review essay, I examine Martin Hägglund's This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, a book that argues on behalf of democratic socialism on the basis of an atheistic confrontation with the fact of our mortality. Hägglund's book includes readings of Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Karl Marx, and Martin Luther King Jr. and is best assessed as a literary and philosophical, rather than historical, study of the relation between mortality and social action. Simply put, Hägglund believes that, from the standpoint of an atheistic confrontation with our mortality, our time itself should be our ultimate measure of value. He furthermore believes that democratic socialism is the political and economic form that most naturally follows from this, allowing us to honor, defend, and enhance one another's mortal time and freedom to make choices—and that, by comparison with atheism, religion offers only the false coin of otherworldly salvation. Although sympathizing with Hägglund's existential and political orientations, I criticize his account of religion, which I find to be historically weak. But I also criticize his approach to the problem of valuation, or the issue of how we make choices in relation to our limited time. Whereas Hägglund believes that mortal creatures like ourselves must make choices in a spirit of commitment—the “secular faith” of his subtitle—I observe that, despite our mortality, we humans make our choices in a variety of psychological states, and that asking us to occupy only one such state—one of zealous resolve—actually undermines our “spiritual freedom,” another one of Hägglund's key terms.