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Being Explicit About Culture: Māori, Neoliberalism, and the New

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Being Explicit About Culture: Māori, Neoliberalism, and the New ILANA GERSHON Being Explicit about Culture: Maori,¯ Neoliberalism, and the New Zealand Parliament ABSTRACT In this article, I explore how people use the culture concept in legislatures to understand the minorities they legislate for and about. I focus on recent debates in the New Zealand parliament over whether the indigenous Maori¯ are a cultural group or a racial group. A Westminster parliament system encourages these debates, in which political parties argue that Maori¯ are either cultural or racial but not both. For the ruling Labour Party and its allies, Maori¯ are cultural; for their opposition, the National Party and its allies, Maori¯ are a racial group. This division is possible only because of the legislators’ neoliberal assumptions about identity categories. To complicate these political divisions, Maori¯ MPs currently belong to political parties from all parts of the political spectrum, and their effectiveness as culture bearers in a parliamentary context can disrupt the terms of this debate. [Keywords: democratic representation, indigeneity, culture concept, legislatures, New Zealand] HEN ANTHROPOLOGISTS turn their ethno- legislative action. Each category contains its own legisla- W graphic attention to how the culture concept tive possibilities and constraints. I use a limited form of dis- travels, they find that institutional contexts configure what course analysis to analyze the competing classifications po- counts as cultural and what counts as acultural. In do- litical parties use to discuss legislation and policies viewed ing so, these institutions also determine the consequences as addressing Maori¯ concerns (see Chock 1991, 1996 for of classifying with the culture concept, both for the peo- parallel analyses of classificatory categories used in the U.S. ple who apply the concept and for those to whom it Congress). The parliamentary debates surrounding Maori¯ gets applied (Briggs 2001; Dusenbery 1997; Handler 1988; as cultural are heavily influenced by the neoliberal assump- Santiago-Irizarry 1996; Taylor 2003). For example, Vilma tion that culture is a useful skill set that can assist people in Santiago-Irizarry recounts how culture becomes “an ar- their market relations, an idea voiced by some members of ray of psychologized symptoms” (Santiago-Irizarry 1996:3) all political parties with the exception of the Maori¯ Party. I when psychiatrists use culture as a lens for understand- discuss how these debates are neoliberal and then address ing mental illnesses among their patients, affecting how how the presence of Maori¯ members of parliament (MPs) the psychiatrists treat those patients they interpret as cul- complicates these debates. ture bearers (Santiago-Irizarry 1996). Similarly, Bonnie Urci- From 2003 to 2006, the New Zealand parliament ex- uoli finds that administrators in liberal arts colleges under- plored the hazards of making culture an explicit basis stand experience with culture, and more specifically with for legislation in debates between the ruling Labour Party cultural diversity, to be part of a skill set that these col- and its allies and the opposing National Party and its al- leges can now provide students (in press). In this article, I lies.1 New Zealand ethnographers have discussed the ways turn to legislatures and explore how members of the New culture has been essentialized for different New Zealand Zealand/Aotearoa parliament deploy culture and race as op- publics (Fleras and Spoonley 2000; Goldsmith 2003; Mur- posing classificatory categories when debating policies af- ray 2000; Sissons 1993; Webster 1998). Michael Goldsmith fecting the indigenous Maori.¯ has pointed out the costs of adopting “culturespeak” in New The act of legislating often raises a difficult question: Zealand institutions (Goldsmith 2003). In parliament, the How should one classify a group so as to make it into an recent ways people essentialize culture has changed how appropriate legislative object? People enlist culture, along culture and race as terms are interwoven. Often when cul- with race, ethnicity, and similar identity categories, when ture is a term linking people and their practices, it is used in framing their constituents as members of groups requiring mutually constitutive relationships with other terms such AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 110, Issue 4, pp. 422–431, ISSN 0002-7294 online ISSN 1548-1433. C 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00075.x Gershon • Being Explicit about Culture 423 as race or class (Segal 1998; Urciuoli 1996; Wetherell and represented but also how Maori¯ are understood legisla- Potter 1992). Typically it is impossible to make reference tively to be constituted as social groups. The New Zealand to race without implicitly also making reference to culture parliament is a historically rich site for examining how (Wade 1993). What is intriguing about the 2003–06 de- people use the culture concept in democratic representa- bates in the New Zealand parliament is that the two major tion as well as for analyzing the conundrums of classifi- political parties no longer exhibited this tendency to imply cation that often accompany political representation. New culture when speaking about race, or vice versa. The Labour Zealand/Aotearoa has the longest history of indigenous self- Party, traditionally liberal, insisted on viewing Maori¯ as cul- representation in a national legislature. In 1867, four seats tural, a definition also referring to Maori’s¯ historical cen- were reserved in the House of Representatives for Maori¯ trality in founding New Zealand/Aotearoa as a nation. In to represent themselves, a number that increased when particular, the Labour Party and its allies described Maori¯ the government switched to mixed member proportional as a cultural group with special status as the indigenous representation in 1996. The recent 2005 election gave 21 partner to the Crown under the Treaty of Waitangi, a doc- seats to Maori¯ out of 120 total seats, with the Maori¯ Party ument signed in 1840 in which Maori¯ granted the Queen in control of four of these seats. In addition, since 1975, (contested) authority in exchange for various protections Maori¯ politicians have also been regularly elected to gen- over land, fisheries, and taonga (lit., treasures).2 The Na- eral seats that are not decided by votes from the Maori¯ tional Party, traditionally conservative, shifted in its under- electoral roll (Wanna 2005). Maori¯ presence in parliament standing of how to engage with New Zealand/Aotearoa’s has been influential over the past 140 years in shaping leg- origins legislatively, the better to oppose Labour. They as- islation that supports one of the more successful indige- serted that culture has no place in construing a legisla- nous rights movements. Maori¯ MPs intervene significantly, tive object and advocated that legislation should be with- influencing parliamentary debates about Maori¯ as a popu- out reference to race or culture. In this sense, culture and lation, an object of public policy, and a group with unique race mutually constitute each other in New Zealand par- claims on the government. Most recently, Maori¯ MPs have liamentary debates as opposing concepts with political had to figure out how best to advocate for their Maori¯ con- consequences. stituents when faced with various neoliberal definitions of The paradoxes of democratic representation ensure culture. that the current division between culture and race is un- I have divided this article into three parts. First, I dis- stable. Legislators attribute Maoriness¯ to Maori¯ discussed in cuss literature on indigenous self-representation. Second, I Parliament in different ways than they attribute Maoriness¯ focus on how culture is mobilized to describe Maori¯ as a to Maori¯ who speak in Parliament. The Maori¯ discussed legislative object in a neoliberal context. Finally, I move might be either cultural or racial, depending on one’s polit- beyond the discussion of the political debates surrounding ical affiliations. But Maori¯ who speak will only accept being whether Maori¯ are a culture or a race, asking what hap- culture bearers, speaking for an otherness that carries with pens when Maori¯ figure not simply as a population under it political obligation. This is one of the few political stances discussion but also as political consociates with whom one that Maori¯ from all political parties seem to agree on. Maori¯ debates and compromises. MPs rarely speak with a unified voice, as there is little agree- mentaboutwhatisinMaori’s¯ best interests. But all Maori¯ MPs seem to agree that Maori¯ MPs are representing a cul- THE CONSTRUCTION OF REPRESENTATION tural group when they speak for Maori¯ and that they, as What do anthropologists bring to questions surrounding representatives, share with their Maori¯ constituents a nu- democratic representation?3 One helpful intervention has anced and distinct perspective. The presence of the newly been to point out that the categories themselves—gender, formed Maori¯ Party has only serves to cement this stance, race, and culture—are not givens but, rather, are constantly as I discuss later. Having Maori¯ speaking in Parliament, in- constructed in the moment of their performance in legisla- sisting that their parliamentary consociates acknowledge tures (see Chock 1991, 1996). To ask how minorities repre- and legislate based on Maori¯ MPs’ own understanding of sent themselves is also to ask how that particular identity what it means to be Maori,¯
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