Kulturalpolitik

I tried to permalink this, but it went astray.

Che Libby on Nation building

So if that don’t work, then try this and look for…

Nations and nation-building | Nov 08, 2004 13:30

Once again my shameless editorial emphasis and comment… and Che, I do like your post, really!

Nations and nation-building | Nov 08, 2004 13:30
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As I said earlier, there's a conventional wisdom in the public sphere that automatically equates nation with population and/or citizen. What this means in practical terms is that when Helen says 'in the interests of the nation', she's implying everybody. This always kind of pisses me off though, because you only really have to scratch the surface of any nation-state world wide to see that the word nation is always a limiting term.

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Now, regardless of the country, the type of government, the size of the population or its place in the hierarchy of nation-states, every sovereign state has a group that calls the shots. In some countries this group is politically contested by another group that doesn't recognise its legitimacy (Spain and the Basques), in some this group dominates other group's right to belong (Fiji and Fijian Indians), and in some this group is small in relation to the overall population (South Africa under Apartheid). But, there's always that one group, and that's the nation.

How and why nations exist was a hotly contested subject, but was largely settled in the academic world by the late 1980s after this guy called Benedict Anderson wrote a book called 'Imagined Communities', which radically transformed the way the boffins understood nations. Its most important contribution to the debate was to indicate that nations aren't exclusively maintained by ethnic or familial links, but instead exist in people's imaginations. This doesn't mean that they are imaginary, but more that like other abstract concepts, they don't have any real form.

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There is one truth in all this relativity though, and that is the link between 'the nation' and 'the state'. If you're a member of a nation and live in a democracy you get to influence the structure of the state. Voting for social reform and representatives to run things for us is all about belonging to the nation. If you are excluded from belonging, for instance by only having partial citizenship, like temporary residency, then you have no say in the shape of the state.

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If and when this debate into 'Treaty and constitutional' issues kicks off, Wellington is going to have to ensure that the parameters of the arguments being laid out are sufficiently inclusive. My concern here is that if the National Party's pitch to the redrubberneckers at Orewa is anything to go by, they'll try and define a New Zealand that excludes Māori society in favour of some kind of 'South Pacific melange'.

And frankly, that's just not going to cut it.

Much like the old-school authors who freaked out about ethnicity, trying to exclude Māori society because of some misguided concern about 'ethnic conflict' or a penchant for a 'one-nation' mythology is both foolish and petty. If a constitutional debate is to take place, it has to occur within a framework that recognises the equality and ongoing relevance of both Māori and mainstream society.

I think I'm running out of space here, so I'll try and wrap this up by saying that nation-building does not have to imply that a single type of national individual exists in a nation-state. Instead, nation-building is all about bolstering the ability of minority and majority alike to contribute to the ongoing development of how 'the nation' is imagined by individual citizens.

Excluding Māori society by trying to close down the nation-building that has already occurred around the role of the Treaty on the political landscape is a marked step backwards. Or, put another way, when Helen uses the phrase 'the nation' and this does not include a politically active and vibrant Māori society, we have made a grave mistake.

I wrote my last piece before Auntie Helen announced the Select Committee process. Unlike some, and there are a few, I am not at all disappointed at the approach she is taking.

ANY change to the constitutional structures of this nation require full and careful debate before even approaching implementation.

For the likes of Brash Donny to suggest that it is a simple machiavellian machination to remove Te Tiriti from the election campaign next year is short-sighted at best; self defeating at worst. Even if this constitutional reform process announcement had been made six months after the last election, the same accusation would probably have been made. Why? Simply, because to do the process of consultation, study and report with any measure of fairness to the importance of the subject it is going to take all or most of three years to achieve. If there are expectations on the part of any involved that this is not true then the hopes of all “republicans” are dashed here and now.

But, I want to go one step further than Che has done. I raised the question in my last post of the role that religion should have in our nation/state. Che has raised another aspect – that of culture. I fear that her “South Pacific melange” might no be far from the truth, irrespective of the makers of the final proposals for a new Constitution. But I fear it from another point of view – that “culture” will be hard-wired into a Constitution, rather than being allowed to develop in its own unique way from the Constitution.

So, should “culture” also form a part of a nation’s founding document, in the way that some will propose that religion should?

I treasure this country’s secular government. That alone removes the stench of constitutional stultification and stagnation caused by the direct involvement of religion in nations such as USofA, and the “radical religious” Islamic nations.

And so I argue, in exactly the same manner, that no one culture should have supremacy over all others. It has taken the 50 plus years of my life to see the emergence of Kohanga reo, the acceptance of Te Reo as one of the “official languages”, to see Maori artists held up as the pinnacle of creativity and cultural advancement, to see the end of the paternalistic colonial administration attitudes in the governance of the Maori people in this country.

If there were a word relating to culture giving the same relationship that “secular” does to “religion” then I would use it.

It is NOT “multi-culturalism. That states the inclusion of all cultures. That is not a bad thing, but inclusion implies order and order eventually implies supremacy. That is where the “inclusion” of religion in the American Constitution (in the form “One Nation Under God”) despite the opposing sentiments of freedom of religion has been interpreted as the supremacy of one religion – Christianity - over all others. In the same way that freedom of religion comes from its exclusion, total exclusion, from the present NZ Constitution, so should total freedom of culture be allowed by leaving out all matters cultural. There are already debating points well upon the wind at present, and the details are not debatable here. However, I do recognise the clash of culture highlighted by the insistence of one person on wearing traditional dress when it creates problem in legal process. I only point out that there is no difference between a Maori insisting on being tried in “a Maori Court” and a follower of Islam asking for Shia law to be applied in his hearing. There have to be limits to the application of “culture”, and the formulation of those limits must be by due process within a Constitution, not hard-wired into that document.

So, should Te Tiriti to stand as a major foundation for any new Constitution. I have no problem with that; I agree that it should. It is not a “cultural” statement, although it does give Maori the right to their culture as a taonga. I see it as a simple statement of intent – that two very different peoples will live together. That there have been breaches of that covenant is indisputable – that does not destroy Te Tiriti’s importance in the history and the future of this nation.

I do, however, have a problem with the idea that that inclusion should give Maori some form of cultural supremacy. It should not. Nor should any other “culture” have Constitutional supremacy, either by direct statement or by implication.