Maori at work : the shaping of a Maori workforce within the New Zealand state 1935 - 1975 : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social and Cultural Studies, Massey University
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Date
2007
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Massey University
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Abstract
This thesis examines the dynamics of the shaping of a Maori workforce within the
New Zealand nation 1935 - 1975 as a significant outcome of colonial and
postcolonial engagements under the introduced capitalist system. It is argued that
this was part of a larger process of acculturation and assimilation of Maori.
That Maori labour formed a second stage in the incorporation of three indigenous
components into the New Zealand domain of a global capitalist market system is
accepted conditionally with some modification. Essentially, the first stage (from
about 1840) was the need for land for the production of farm commodities; the
second stage (from about 1935) was the need for industrial labour power for
manufacturing production; and the third stage (from about 1975) was the
appropriation of socio-cultural values as instruments to be utilized in social and
economic administration by the State.
The focus is on the second stage of this process. The central objective is to assess
the outcomes of this process on Maori, socially, economically and culturally. Two
broad assumptions are interrogated: first, that pools of surplus Maori labour were
created as an outcome of the expansion of capitalism on pre-capitalist economies;
second, that the incorporation of this surplus labour via migration from about 1935
arose from patterns of capital accumulation that created excess labour demand in
urban secondary industries.
Successive government policies of racial amalgamation, assimilation, adaptation
and integration from 1840 through to the early 1970s, assumed that civilisation and
integration were one-way processes. Government policies were predicated on
concepts of assimilation and individualisation in a plethora of government
initiatives in health, education, housing and social welfare, most of which were
unilaterally justified on the grounds of progress and modernisation. These policies,
which came to be called 'integration' in the decade of the 1960s, were perceived
by government to be for the benefit of Maori and the whole nation, Pakeha and
Maori. Arguably, the Hunn Report of 1960/61 marked the high point of this postcolonial
ideology.
The narrative of the key developments in government policies is inter-woven with
an account of race relations and Maori affairs. It is emphasised that these policies
were instituted during a period of enormous changeĀ· in Maori society and in the
configuration of relationships between Maori and Pakeha. The focus is shifted in
the last section of the thesis to the response by Maori to government policies. The
retreat by Maori from issues of class deprivation to the promotion of issues that
centred on loss of land, language and culture is traced. It is noted that the concern
with class that marked the rhetoric of many similar global protest movements was
remarkably mild in the Maori protest litany. This thesis marks a first attempt to
discuss the shaping of a Maori workforce by taking an approach which recognises
that the separation between culture and political economy is itself culturally
constructed by the dominant actor in the nation-state.
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Keywords
Maori workforce, Assimilation, Government policy