Avril Bell

Dilemmas of settler belonging: roots, routes and redemption in New Zealand national identity claims

This paper explores the identity markers and rules used in the process of national identity construction by young adult New Zealanders, drawing on empirical data from qualitative interviews with members of the majority culture of ‘Pakeha’ or ‘European’ New Zealanders. While these young New Zealanders draw on the markers of ‘birth’, ‘blood’ and ‘belonging’ identified in other studies, their claims to identity and belonging are troubled by the settler origins of their ancestors. The dilemmas these origins create for these young New Zealanders are identified along with the strategies they deploy as they seek to resolve them. The existence of these dilemmas suggests that a distinct identity rule is at work for this group that has not previously been identified in earlier studies. Thus, this analysis provides further evidence for the deployment of a common set of markers and rules as well as highlighting some of the ways in which these differ in different national contexts.

Bifurcation or entanglement? Settler identity and biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand

This quote from New Zealand comedian Ewen Gilmore perfectly captures the ontological status of settler subjects as ‘human hinges’ (Morris, 1992, p. 471), ‘suspended between “mother” and “other”’ (Lawson, 1995, p. 25). Although Gilmore is making a joke, like a lot of humour it has the ring of truth. Of course, settler peoples have constructed themselves identities in the form of nationalism: they are ‘New Zealanders’, ‘Australians’, ‘Canadians’ and so on. It is through nationalism, and its narratives of the relation between people and place, that they have consolidated their rights to belong, and to rule, in the colonies they founded. Even so, these nationalist assertions frequently remain uncertain, as Gilmore indicates. In this paper I focus on the uncertainty that surrounds assertions of settler identity in Aotearoa New Zealand. I argue that uncertainty offers an opportunity for selfreflection that is currently being squandered. Rather than reflect on how settlers came to be these ‘human hinges’ and what that means for contemporary New Zealanders, official representations of national and settler identity in Aotearoa New Zealand work to elide the sources of unease in New Zealand history. Since the 1980s the dominant rhetoric of New Zealand nationalism has been of a bicultural nation with two

Recognition or ethics? De/centering and the legacy of settler colonialism

White settler peoples inherit a legacy of colonial domination and Enlightenment belief in the possibilities of western universalism. This legacy makes it difficult for us to co-exist with the cultural difference of our indigenous neighbors. In this paper I search for a political practice that might co-exist with rather than deny indigenous difference. I consider the case of Aotearoa New Zealand and explore Taylors politics of recognition and Lévinasian ethics for the guidance each offers to the practice of non-dominating modes of interaction. I argue that recognition theory does not live up to its claims for reciprocity and equality in cross-cultural engagement. Further, no political prescription can provide adequate guidance to these engagements. Rather, the ethical interruption of politics as prescribed by Lévinas provides the necessary underpinning for a non-dominating engagement with cultural difference. How ethics might productively interrupt politics is illustrated with reference to analyses of a pedagogical experiment in a culturally diverse university classroom.

Being ‘at home’ in the nation: Hospitality and sovereignty in talk about immigration

The discourse of hospitality is widely used as a way of making sense of the relationships between ‘natives’ and ‘newcomers’ established by immigration. While at first glance this seems a generous and benign system of meaning to apply to relations of immigration, the reality is more complex than this initial view suggests. Relations of hospitality are power relations in which the sovereignty of the host and their possession of the national ‘homeland’ are asserted over new arrivals. These relationships are complicated further in the case of settler societies, such as New Zealand, where the role of host has been usurped by the settler community. Drawing on the analysis of interview data with young white New Zealanders, in this article I highlight the power relations of hospitality and draw attention to both the value and limitations of this discourse in making sense of relations of immigration in the longer term.

A Conversation through History: Towards Postcolonial Coexistence

This paper takes the form of a three-part exploration of the uses and limitations of the Hegelian Master–Slave for the analysis of colonial and post-colonising subjectivities in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Hegel, the subjectivities of Master and Slave are socially constituted via a struggle for recognition that one ‘wins’ and the other ‘loses’. Subsequently their relations are mediated through Things. The first part of this paper demonstrates how struggles over colonial history (here the Hegelian Thing) constitute ‘Pākehā’ and ‘Māori’ as Master and Slave. This is not the end of Hegels difficult story however. The second section explores the resulting dissatisfactions of the colonising subject and the possibilities for autonomy of the colonised. Finally, I outline the ultimate limitations of the Hegelian framework, identifying a number of significant ways in which ‘Pākehā’, ‘Māori’ and ‘History’ all escape the confines of the Master–Slave–Thing triad, suggesting possibilities for a reconceived postcolonial relationship.

New Zealand or Aotearoa? The Battle for Nationhood in the English Curriculum

ABSTRACT Raymond Williams argued that education was centrally concerned with establishing and transmitting a ‘selective tradition’. He identified three discourses that shape these processes of selection. This paper argues for the existence of a fourth discourse – ‘education for nationhood’. The author outlines the concept of national identity and, using the history of schooling in New Zealand, argues that historically this discourse has been important in shaping educational curricula and practices. The paper focuses particularly on the role of literature in English as a subject, tracing the debate over the literature component in the latest revision of the 6th and 7th Form (senior secondary school) English curriculum in Aotearoa/New Zealand and arguing that this debate provides insight into the struggle taking place over the construction of nationhood in Aotearoa/New Zealand. [1] ‘Aotearoa’ (trans. ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’) is the name the Maori ‐New Zealands indigenous inhabitants – gave the count...

Decolonizing conviviality and ‘becoming ordinary’: cross-cultural face-to-face encounters in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT This paper explores convivial culture in a settler society. The paper draws on interview data from ethnographic research exploring how Māori and Pākehā worked together on a building project in a rural community. Both Māori and Pākehā participants reported their pleasure in engagements with each other that centred on Māori tikanga (protocols). In these encounters, Māori ‘difference’ was the catalyst for the development of new, convivial relationships. The paper argues that such everyday conviviality contributes to the process of decolonizing Māori–Pākehā relations at the level of everyday life. Through decolonizing conviviality Pakehā ‘become ordinary’ in Māori cultural contexts, and are offered the opportunity to come to understand themselves as embedded in colonial relationalities. Crucial to the development of such conviviality is the opportunity for face-to-face, embodied encounters with Māori in contexts where Māori cultural difference matters.

Empire to nationhood: heroism in natural disaster stories for children

Purpose – Natural disaster stories narrate unsettling natural events and proffer scripts for social action in the face of unforeseen and overwhelming circumstances. The purpose of this study is to investigate stories of natural disasters recounted for New Zealand school children in the School Journal during its first 100 years of publication.Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis is used to categorise the disaster event and to identify two distinct periods of disaster stories – imperial and national. Textual analysis of indicative stories from each period centres on the construction of social scripts for child readers.Findings – In the imperial period tales of individual heroism and self‐sacrifice predominate, while the national period is characterised by stories of ordinary families, community solidarity and survival. Through this investigation of natural disaster stories for children, the paper identifies the shifting models of heroic identity offered to New Zealand children through educational ...

Migration, gender and economic integration: international scholarship (2006–09) and an Aotearoa New Zealand research agenda

Abstract This paper follows from the findings of the 2006 review of research on women, gender and migration published in International Migration Review. We begin by discussing three international trends in contemporary migration flows: diversification, bifurcation and feminisation; and examine their significance for New Zealand. We then review the research on gender and economic integration of migrants in developed countries in relation to three aspects: the characteristics of migrants; the strategies migrants use during settlement; and the contexts of reception in receiving communities. We identify insights and omissions in this scholarship relevant to New Zealand policy-oriented migration research. We argue that the gendered nature of migration cannot be ignored, and that while human capital approaches to economic integration are important, they are insufficient for understanding complex migrant outcomes. Rather, comprehensive, integrated and local research is required to understand migrant experience and outcomes and to assess the effectiveness of immigration policy settings.

Moving Roots A “Small Story” of Settler History and Home Places

In the early stages of research into the life of my great-great-grandfather, George Graham, I have repeatedly come across scraps of his life story relating to trees in various central city locations in Auckland, New Zealand, locations now abutting and on the university campus at which I work. These trees and places directly link me with George in powerful ways, becoming channels into affective responses of pride and excitement that also connect me viscerally to George’s role in the colonization of Auckland and dispossession of Māori. Here, I explore these affective states and the ways they provoke my thinking about being a descendant of settler colonizers and about my relation to my settler homeland. These material connections to colonial history “thicken” my relationship to Auckland and to the colonial story, and I use these experiences to point to the possibility of a different, “alter-colonial” form of settler relation to place.