Post by Kiwi Frontline on Jul 2, 2021 12:57:16 GMT 12
ETHNO-NATIONALISM OR DEMOCRATIC-NATIONALISM: WHICH WAY AHEAD FOR NEW ZEALAND? - Elizabeth Rata
Displaying an astonishing confidence, the authors claim that "We consider Aotearoa has reached a maturity where it is ready to undertake the transformation to restructure governance to realise rangatiratanga Maori (self-determination)". I hope that this 'maturity' can accommodate the vigorous debate that is certainly needed if we are to abandon democracy - for what exactly? While each sentence of the Report deserves scrutiny I will confine myself to two points. The main one is the Report's premise of the political category as an ethnic one. The second concerns judicial activism in constitutional change.
He Puapua envisages a system of constitutional categorisation based on ancestral membership criteria rather than the universal human who is democracy's foundational unit. Ancestral group membership is the key idea of 'ethnicity'. This slippery term refers to a combination of culture - what we do and how we understand ourselves - and genetic inheritance. The word entered common usage from the 1970s followed by 'indigenous' in the 1980s. 'Ethnicity' was an attempt to edit out the increasingly discredited 'race'. However changing a word does not change the idea. Ethnicity does not mean culture only. It has a genetic, biological - a race, component. Although race is an unscientific concept it retains social currency with whakapapa often used to soften the racial connotation of ancestral belonging.
Whatever term is used - ethnicity, race, culture, whakapapa - the issue is the use of ancestral membership for political status. Liberal democracy can accommodate identification with the ancestral group in the civil sphere. Inclusive biculturalism allows for the evolving social practice of a hybrid Maori and settler-descendant culture, one enriched by diverse migration. Exclusive biculturalism, on the other hand, takes those ethnically or racially categorised groups into the constitutional sphere of legislation and state institutions. It is here that we see the effects of five underpinning beliefs of ethno-nationalism.
The first belief holds that our ethnic or racial identity is our primary and determining personal identity. This denies the fact that identity in the modern democratic world is individual identity.......
www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/06/opinion-ethno-nationalism-or-democratic-nationalism-which-way-ahead-for-new-zealand.html
Displaying an astonishing confidence, the authors claim that "We consider Aotearoa has reached a maturity where it is ready to undertake the transformation to restructure governance to realise rangatiratanga Maori (self-determination)". I hope that this 'maturity' can accommodate the vigorous debate that is certainly needed if we are to abandon democracy - for what exactly? While each sentence of the Report deserves scrutiny I will confine myself to two points. The main one is the Report's premise of the political category as an ethnic one. The second concerns judicial activism in constitutional change.
He Puapua envisages a system of constitutional categorisation based on ancestral membership criteria rather than the universal human who is democracy's foundational unit. Ancestral group membership is the key idea of 'ethnicity'. This slippery term refers to a combination of culture - what we do and how we understand ourselves - and genetic inheritance. The word entered common usage from the 1970s followed by 'indigenous' in the 1980s. 'Ethnicity' was an attempt to edit out the increasingly discredited 'race'. However changing a word does not change the idea. Ethnicity does not mean culture only. It has a genetic, biological - a race, component. Although race is an unscientific concept it retains social currency with whakapapa often used to soften the racial connotation of ancestral belonging.
Whatever term is used - ethnicity, race, culture, whakapapa - the issue is the use of ancestral membership for political status. Liberal democracy can accommodate identification with the ancestral group in the civil sphere. Inclusive biculturalism allows for the evolving social practice of a hybrid Maori and settler-descendant culture, one enriched by diverse migration. Exclusive biculturalism, on the other hand, takes those ethnically or racially categorised groups into the constitutional sphere of legislation and state institutions. It is here that we see the effects of five underpinning beliefs of ethno-nationalism.
The first belief holds that our ethnic or racial identity is our primary and determining personal identity. This denies the fact that identity in the modern democratic world is individual identity.......
www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/06/opinion-ethno-nationalism-or-democratic-nationalism-which-way-ahead-for-new-zealand.html