Being Explicit about Culture: Māori, 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 Ma¯ ori are a cultural group or a racial group. A Westminster parliament system encourages these debates, in which political parties argue that Ma¯ ori are either cultural or racial but not both. For the ruling Labour Party and its allies, Ma¯ ori are cultural; for their opposition, the National Party and its allies, Ma¯ ori are a racial group. This division is possible only because of the legislators’ neoliberal assumptions about identity categories. To complicate these political divisions, Ma¯ ori 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