Meaningful Inconsistencies: Bicultural Nationhood, the Free Market, and Schooling in Aotearoa/New Zealand 9781845459338

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
TABLES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
1 SHIFTING TERRAINS Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Changing Nationhood
2 CATEGORIZING Changing Official Regimes of Difference in Aotearoa/New Zealand Statistical Publications
3 INHABITING WAIKARAKA HIGH SCHOOL Daily Life at Waikaraka High School and Fieldwork Experiences
4 SORTING The Tracking System and Production of Meanings
5 CALLING IT SEPARATIST On Conflating Two Regimes of Difference
6 IMAGINING “FAILURE” The Illusion of Māori Underachievement and Institutional, Ethnic, and Academic Regimes of Difference
7 LAUGHING Language Politics in the Classroom
8 LAUGHING GLOBALLY Creation of Alliances and Globally Homologous Regimes of Difference
9 DANCING Cultural Performance and Nationhood
10 CONCLUSION AND DEPARTURE
GLOSSARY
REFERENCES
INDEX

Citation preview

Meaningful Inconsistencies

MEANINGFUL INCONSISTENCIES Bicultural Nationhood, the Free Market, and Schooling in Aotearoa/New Zealand

% Neriko Musha Doerr

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

Published in 2009 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

©2009 by Neriko Musha Doerr

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Doerr, Neriko Musha, 1967Meaningful inconsistencies : bicultural nationhood, the free market, and schooling in Aotearoa/ New Zealand / Neriko Musha Doerr. p. cm.—(Studies in public and applied anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-609-2 (alk. paper) 1. Maori (New Zealand people)—Education (Secondary) Zealand—Whangarei District.

2. Education, Secondary—New

3. Multicultural education—New Zealand—Whangarei District.

4. Bilingual education—New Zealand—Whangarei District. 5. Zealand—Whangarei District.

High school students—New

I. Title.

LC3501.M3D64 2009 373.93'16—dc22 2009013509 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper 978-1-84545-609-2 hardback

For Toshimitsu and Tazuko Musha, my parents, in love and gratitude

C ONTENTS

% List of Tables

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction

1

1

Shifting Terrains: Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Changing Nationhood

25

2

Categorizing: Changing Official Regimes of Difference in Aotearoa/New Zealand Statistical Publications

40

Inhabiting Waikaraka High School: Daily Life at Waikaraka High School and Fieldwork Experiences

68

4

Sorting: The Tracking System and Production of Meanings

92

5

Calling It Separatist: On Conflating Two Regimes of Difference

115

6

Imagining “Failure”: The Illusion of MĀori Underachievement and Institutional, Ethnic, and Academic Regimes of Difference

138

7

Laughing: Language Politics in the Classroom

156

8

Laughing Globally: Creation of Alliances and Globally Homologous Regimes of Difference

173

Dancing: Cultural Performance and Nationhood

183

3

9

viii

•

Con t e n t s

10 Conclusion and Departure

205

Glossary

209

References

211

Index

225

T ABLES

% Table 1.1

Kinds of New Zealand Schools

Table 1.2

Number of Form Classes and Their Labels at Waikaraka High School

Table 2.1

Regimes of Difference during 1840–1866

46

Table 2.2

Regimes of Difference during 1867–1883

47

Table 2.3

Regimes of Difference during 1884–1924

53

Table 2.4

Regimes of Difference during 1925–1949

56

Table 2.5

Regimes of Difference during 1950–1965

58

Table 2.6

Regimes of Difference during 1966–2006

63

Table 2.7

Transformations of Regimes of Difference in (Aotearoa)/New Zealand

65

Table 3.1

Year Structure at Waikaraka High School

72

Table 3.2

Number of Periods Spent as a Form Class and Separately (by Electives)

72

Number of Upper- and Lower-Track Classes in Mainstream

94

Table 4.1 Table 5.1

2 3

Consideration of (Not) Joining the Bilingual Unit (Year 10)

120

Table 6.1

Number of Classes and Their Labels

140

Table 6.2

Answers to the Question “Do You Think Cultural Background Matters in the Streaming [Tracking] System?”

143

Table 6.3

Overlooked Conflation of Regimes of Difference When Talking About Tracking (1)

145

x

•

Tab l e s

Table 6.4

Overlooked Conflation of Regimes of Difference When Talking About Tracking (2)

146

Regime of Difference Evoked When Talking About Tracking

146

Evoked Regimes of Difference Partially Conflated with Each Other

146

Conflation of Regimes of Difference underlying the Discourse

147

A New Regime of Difference Created by Talking About Tracking

148

Intersection between the Regimes of Difference of Bilingual vs. Mainstream Class/Students [A] and the Regime of Difference of Upper- vs. Lower-Track Class/Students [B]

151

Table 9.1

Parents’ Views on the Fee-Paying Student Program

191

Table 9.2

Teachers’ Views on the Fee-Paying Student Program

191

Table 6.5 Table 6.6 Table 6.7 Table 6.8 Table 6.9

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

% I finished this book with the support of many people whom I would like to mention here to show my gratitude. John Borneman constantly reminded me through his actions of the meaning of working hard, being professional, being kind, and, most of all, being excited about writing. Benedict Anderson always gave me warm advice and sparks that turned everything into fascinating riddles to ponder. Jane Fajans opened doors to the world of Oceania for me and offered me a generous guiding hand. During my write-up, Hervé Varenne also generously let me join his writers’ group and gave me unique angles from which to analyze the educational world. He also generously reviewed the manuscript of this book for Berghahn Books and provided kind, insightful, and constructive advice in revising an earlier draft. The members of the writers’ group at Cornell University— Julie Hemment, Larry Barnett, Erick White, Smita Lahiri, Sara Friedman, and Thamora Fishel—always provided very constructive critiques of my drafts. Yuri Kumagai, Miyuki Fukai, Shinji Sato, and Mariela Nuñez-Janes also offered generous and constructive critiques of various drafts of this book. Joanne Alexander at Statistics New Zealand assisted me with many of the inquiries that I made. I could not have done my fieldwork without the welcoming hearts and kind support of people at Waikaraka High School. Because of the concern for anonymity, I list here the names alphabetically without specifying their positions: Akuhata Akuhata, Ray and Helen Baker, James Barry, Graeme Baumgart, Pat Berrett, James Buckland, Cathie Bull, Gaye Campbell, Mel Cooper, Llew Ellis, Anne Hagan, Karen Hamilton, John Harris, Keremihana Heke, Elaine Hepburn, Janet Hunter, Maureen Jensen, Rex Kerr, Janice King, Robert Lynch, Alistair Murchie, Queenie Rikihana Hyland, Jan Szydlowski, Rochelle Telfer, Jenny Titshall, Paul Wehipeihana, Pat and Judy Whitaker, Hine Wilson, Barbara Wiseman, and Brian Woolhouse.

xii

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Ac k n owl e d g me n t s

I cannot name here all the Year 9 and Year 10 students whose friendly smiles, sensitivity, empathy, and energy pushed me to go to Waikaraka High School day after day. Many of their parents took time to answer my survey and interview questions despite their busy schedules. I enjoyed special friendship with Marama Baily, Jill Bevan-Brown, Annette Hodgson, Judith Holloway, Hohi and Ken Jones, Annabelle, Daryl, and Esther McLaren, Daphne Meyer, Carma, Jim, Madeline, James, and Skye Simpson, Wendy Tahu, Pania Te Maro, Owen Doren, and Rebecca, Daniel, and Waikari Te Maro. I received much warm support from Michael Goldsmith, Paul Spoonley, David Pearson, Jock Phillips, Peter Cleave, and people at Te Wānanga, Waikaraka Citizen’s Advice Bureau, and the Waikaraka Visitor Information Centre. My fieldwork was financially supported fully by a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and Cornell University’s Sage Fellowship funded my writing. Jolisa Gracewood and Michelle Elleray not only shared with me insightful discussions and fun times but also kindly proofread my works at various stages and forms. Michelle Elleray proofread the earlier draft manuscript for this book. Marion Berghahn, the editor of Berghahn Books, guided me throughout the publication process and beyond. Ann Przyzycki and Melissa Spinelli at Berghahn Books assisted me and Jaime Taber provided a thorough copy editing. My parents, Toshimitsu and Tazuko Musha, have guided, stimulated, and encouraged me ever since I can remember. Without their support, none of this could have happened. My older sister and brother, Yuniko Terasaki and Mitsuru Musha, have been sources of inspiration also. My partner, Christopher Doerr, supported me with encouragement, much patience, and checking of English grammar in numerous drafts, including the final one, of this book. The smiles and energy of our children, Hanako and Joey, have been sparks in my daily life. I am grateful to all these people who supported me in producing this piece. The text’s deficiencies are wholly my responsibility.

A BBREVIATIONS

% ANZAC: ANZUS: BIP: EEC: ERO: ESL: NCEA: NZOY: NZQA: PAT: SNZ: SNZCCP: TACSA:

Australian and New Zealand Army Corps Australia, New Zealand, United States Security (treaty) Business Immigration Policy European Economic Community Education Review Office English as a Second Language National Certification of Educational Achievement New Zealand Official Yearbook New Zealand Qualification Authority Progressive Achievement Test Statistics of New Zealand Statistics of New Zealand for the Crown Colony Period Te Aute College Student Association

I NTRODUCTION

% Changing Subjectivity “How’s racism in the States?” asked one of a pair of Māori students as they passed me in a school corridor. It was my third week at Waikaraka High School (all names are aliases) in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where I did nine months of fieldwork in 1997–1998. The question was tossed out like a casual greeting. The pair never stopped walking, and by the time I mumbled “okay,” they were already a few yards away. I had visited their bilingual class a couple of times before this incident, so they knew that I was visiting from the United States to do my fieldwork. They knew that I had been born and raised in Japan and was doing my graduate work at an American university. I paused in the middle of the corridor, thinking about what had just happened. Perhaps because I grew up feeling like part of the mainstream culture in Japan, I did not see myself as a minority and certainly not as a potential victim of racism even when I was a member of minority group, either in the United States or in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I had sympathized with victims of racism as an opponent, not as a co-victim, of racism until this incident. Students and teachers who are Māori—an indigenous, and now minority, group of Aotearoa/New Zealand—interpellated1 or positioned me as a co-victim of racism many times during my fieldwork. Experiences at Waikaraka High School, including the one introduced above, changed my subjectivity. Meaningful Inconsistencies investigates and analyzes daily actions at Waikaraka High School that place students, teachers, and even a researcher into certain subject positions. A special focus is devoted to the effects of the school’s bilingual program, which uses the Māori language (Te2 Reo Māori, or Te Reo for short) and English. School produces categories, assigns students to these categories, and directs their actions accordingly. Students and teachers produce each other’s subjectivities by supporting, resisting, or disrupting such orders in school. The

2

I n t r odu c t i on

•

presence of the bilingual program constitutes an important part of how people make each other different through daily interactions. Meaningful Inconsistencies investigates such cultural politics around bilingual education. Categorization of individuals in ethnic terms wreaked havoc around the world in the twentieth century. Its effects on how individuals view themselves and are viewed by others in the educational arena are especially stark in societies that recognize their bi- or multicultural makeup. Such categorization has been affected throughout the world by recent neoliberal reforms, especially the prioritizing of market forces as the prime agent in transforming our institutions. The small town of Waikaraka in Aotearoa/New Zealand is a prime example, given Aotearoa/New Zealand’s current official biculturalism and extensive free-marketization of schooling. In the microcosm of a secondary school in Waikaraka with a bilingual program, this book examines the everyday effects of multiple and inconsistent intersections of market forces and other forces that categorize individuals in ethnic, linguistic, and academic terms.

Schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Waikaraka High School Compulsory education in Aotearoa/New Zealand is divided into primary, intermediate/middle, and secondary education. The school year starts in January and consists of four terms with a couple of weeks of vacation in between. Children who start school between July and December of their first school year, usually on their fifth birthday, are referred to as Year 0. A child who starts school between January and July is classified as Year 1. The Year number rises by an increment of one each year after that. As shown in Table 1.1, primary education is from Year 0 to Year 8. Years 7 and 8 may be spent either in a separate intermediate school (Type A) or as part of a primary (Type B), secondary (Type C), or composite/area school (Type D). Secondary education is from Year 9 to Year 13 (Statistics New Zealand 1997).

Table 1.1 Kinds of New Zealand Schools Year Type A Type B Type C Type D

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Intermediate school

Primary school Full primary school

9

10

11

Secondary school (Years 9–13) Secondary school (Years 9–13) Secondary school (Years 7–13)

Primary school Composite/Area school

12

13

Introduction

•

3

Most state (public) schools are co-educational, though there are several singlesex private schools. While most schools use English as a medium of instruction, Te Reo–English bilingual schools, or programs within schools, appeared in the late 1970s. Te Reo immersion schools controlled by Māori communities began in the mid 1980s (Walker 1990a). Students can attend any state school, although most attend the one closest to where they live. Waikaraka High School is a co-educational state secondary school that enrolls 560 Year 7 to Year 13 (ages twelve to eighteen) students (Type C in Table I.1). It is located at the edge of suburban sprawl in the North Island of Aotearoa/ New Zealand. Waikaraka High School institutionally categorizes students in many ways, creating multiple subjectivities of students. Students are categorized by age into different Years and learn class content according to their Year. Year 7/8 is a mixed-age Year. Within a Year, students are categorized into Form classes (homeroom classes), which are created according to certain criteria, as shown in Table 1.2. For example, Form classes are categorized by the language of instruction—either Te Reo-English bilingual (“bilingual”3) or English monolingual (“mainstream”)—up to Year 10. The bilingual unit was formed in 1981 in order to raise Māori students’ self-esteem and revitalize Te Reo. There is a bilingual class for each Year from 7/8 to 10. All bilingual students join the mainstream class as of Year 11 (I call such students “ex-bilingual” students, and I use the term “bilingual” to denote the institutional belonging rather than the linguistic ability of students throughout this book). Mainstream classes use only English as the medium of instruction. Within the mainstream, students are categorized by “academic achievement” via tracking, but at the time of fieldwork there was no tracking in the bilingual unit. Starting in 1998, Year 11 was tracked by subject in compulsory subjects (English, mathematics, and science). Table I.2 below describes the number of Form classes and their labels. Table 1.2 Number of Form Classes and Their Labels at Waikaraka High School Bilingual class

Mainstream class

Total

Upper-track

Lower-track

Year 7/8

1

1

6

8

Year 9

1

1

2

4

Year 10

1

1

2

4

Year 11 (until 1997)

0

1

4

5

Year 11 (from 1998)

0

Subject tracking

5

Year 12

0

No tracking

5

Year 13

0

No tracking

1

4

•

I n t r odu c t i on

Because I was researching how the existence of the bilingual unit affected the subjectivities of students, during my nine months of fieldwork I followed a set of both bilingual and mainstream Year 10 students as they transitioned to Year 11, when all bilingual students joined the mainstream classes. During my fieldwork in 1997, there were seventeen students in the Year 10 bilingual class. In three mainstream classes, there were seventy-two students altogether. The mainstream upper-track class had twenty-nine students and the two lower-track classes had twenty-five and eighteen students. I regularly observed social studies classes when those students were Year 10, and English, mathematics, and geography classes when they became Year 11. I also regularly observed classes of other Years—the Year 7/8 Japanese language class and Year 9 social studies classes—as well as occasionally visiting various classes of all Years. I conducted 219 interviews with Year 9 and 10 students (sixty-five students, thirty-nine of them twice), teachers (thirty-five teachers out of thirty-nine), school administrators4 (four out of four), and parents (seventy-six parents, or parents of fifty-five out of eighty-nine Year 10 students). The bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School is similar to what Colin Baker (2006) calls the “maintenance/heritage language” model of bilingual education, which Baker characterizes as being for a language minority with the aim of maintaining the minority language and fostering pluralism. However, whereas Baker maintains that the “maintenance/heritage language” education emphasizes the students’ first language, in the case of Te Reo–English bilingual education in Aotearoa/New Zealand the students’ first language is not necessarily Te Reo. Because one of the aims of this kind of bilingual education is to revitalize Te Reo, and because English is the dominant language in Aotearoa/New Zealand, English is the first language of the students or is at least one of them. In comparison to transitional bilingual education that aims at assimilating language-minority students (common in the United States), maintenance/heritage language bilingual education aims at bilingualism and biliteracy. The bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School follows the mainstream curriculum. One bilingual teacher, whose class I observed regularly, taught social studies in both bilingual and mainstream classes (some bilingual teachers did teach some mainstream classes) in a very similar way, with some Te Reo words but mainly in English. Other bilingual teachers taught the mainstream curriculum but from a Māori perspective. For example, a bilingual teacher in a social science class (he had moved from the bilingual unit to mainstream several years prior, but he taught a Year 10 bilingual class during my fieldwork) explained the position of Palestinians by likening it to that of the Māori, framing them both as indigenous peoples struggling for decolonization. In contrast, a mainstream teacher taught the same curriculum module by comparing Israel and Aotearoa/New Zealand in terms of climate and the size of the territory and population.

Introduction

•

5

Up until the end of Year 10, the difference between bilingual and mainstream students was strongly felt in daily life. Bilingual and mainstream students occupied separate classrooms as well as different parts of the schoolyard. Also, the bilingual students, with their reputation for being “sporty,” often dominated the gym during recess and lunchtime. Mainstream students tended to gather in the fields, on benches along the wall of mainstream buildings, and at picnic tables in the mainstream area. They were also found in the gym, but often in the audience seats. Bilingual and mainstream students’ views about each other became apparent as misperceptions only retrospectively, when they reached Year 11 and began befriending one another. As one bilingual student told me, “I used to think that the mainstream students are ballheads [skinheads]. Now I think they are all right. Some are ballheads, though.” One mainstream Year 11 student told me that “before [mixing with the bilingual students in class in Year 11], people told me ‘don’t mess with bilingual students because they’ll bring their friends and they’ll beat you up.’ A lot of my friends were scared of them. But now, I think they are not like that.” “Separatist” was what some mainstream parents, as well as some mainstream teachers, called the bilingual unit, because, they argued, it divides students into opposing groups, Māori vs. Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent)5. In fact, given the generations of intermarriage between Māori and Pākehā, the students’ self-identification as Māori or Pākehā was strongly influenced by their institutional membership in the bilingual unit or mainstream class. Bilingual students, regardless of their degree of Māori ancestry, tended to identify themselves, and be identified by others, as Māori. In contrast, mainstream students with Māori ancestry often identified themselves, and were identified by others, as Pākehā. However, some acknowledged that they “have Māori in them.” Some mainstream parents who called the bilingual unit separatist resented the existence of the bilingual unit. However, others who did support the bilingual unit, saying that it raised the self-esteem of Māori students, called the bilingual unit separatist nonetheless for various reasons: one Pākehā mother’s son was scared of Māori students when they were in a group; one Pākehā mother’s children were excluded from it; one Pākehā mother who married a Māori had two children—one in the bilingual class and the other in the mainstream class—who fought over alleged different rules for students in these programs (for example, bilingual students can have some time off from school to attend a Māori-style funeral but mainstream students cannot) (see chapter 5 for details). While many mainstream parents problematized the division between bilingual and mainstream students, some of these same parents praised the differentiation of uppertrack vs. lower-track students within the mainstream. Few parents problematized other kinds of divisions among students—for example, Year and extra-curricular sport teams—that socially divided students at school.

6

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I n t r odu c t i on

“There are not many Māori in the [upper-track] stream class.” This was another commonly heard comment by mainstream teachers and parents. It suggested their view of and concern about Māori students’ underachievement. However, some bilingual parents and students perceived it differently. As one parent of a bilingual student, Norma, said: “[T]o be in the bilingual unit and to be in the [upper-track] stream class is an either-or choice at Waikaraka High School.” This was why there were not many Māori students in the mainstream upper-track class. However, some Year 10 bilingual students moved out of the unit to join the mainstream upper-track class. Such moves created the impression among bilingual students that the bilingual unit was not good enough for achieving students. Thus, among both mainstream and bilingual students, parents, and teachers, perceptions that Māori students are underachieving prevailed. I show in this book, however, that this was a misperception (see chapter 6 for details). It is worth noting here that the operation of tracking was difficult to grasp, because there were competing interpretations of how it worked and because it operated slightly differently depending on the Year. Also, not all the parents were informed about the existence of tracking. Knowing how tracking worked and understanding how to successfully threaten the school were important steps toward sending their children to the upper-track class (see chapter 4 for details). Specific images of bilingual students held by teachers were also expressed in my interviews: they are difficult to teach as they “lack discipline and motivation” and do not have “respect for teachers”; they intimidate mainstream students; they look after each other, especially younger and weaker ones, within the bilingual unit; and they are “arrogant” and think that Māori culture is superior to Pākehā culture (see chapter 7 for details). One of the things mainstream teachers noted about the bilingual students was that they routinely laughed at the mispronunciation of Te Reo words by mainstream teachers. Many mainstream Pākehā teachers could not pronounce Te Reo words—for example, names of Māori students and Te Reo titles of books. (Ex)-bilingual students’ laughter at mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo words often created moments of tension and a reversal of authority, to which each teacher responded differently: some felt belittled by it, some ignored the laughter and continued on as if nothing had happened, and others asked the bilingual students, “Do I laugh at you when you make mistakes in mathematics or English?” That is, they responded differently to being interpellated as ignorant of Te Reo: they accepted it, ignored it, or resisted it, respectively (see chapter 7 for details). Some ex-bilingual students even laughed at a mainstream teacher’s mispronunciation of my Japanese name, bringing me into their language politics at a very personal level. At the same time, I was challenged by another ex-bilingual student to read a Te Reo name, thus myself becoming a potential target of laughter (see chapter 8 for details).

Introduction

•

7

Dance performances at school also interpellated individuals into certain subject positions. There were two kinds of dance performances at Waikaraka High School. One was by visiting Asian students. At Waikaraka High School, there were a small number (for example, five in 1997) of students from abroad, mainly Asian countries, who paid one hundred times more in school fees (for example, $7,500.00 (NZ) per year compared to $75.00 (NZ) for Aotearoa/New Zealand citizens) for the English as a Second Language (ESL) education that Waikaraka High School provides. Being able to afford high fees, these “fee-paying” students from Asia were often considered wealthy by other students. Except for separate ESL instruction twice a week, they joined regular mainstream classes, staying from a year to several years. Besides these long-term fee-paying students, there were short-term (two to three weeks) fee-paying students from Thailand who came twice each year to Waikaraka High School. These short-term fee-paying students performed Thai dance concerts for the school community. The place of Asians in Aotearoa/New Zealand has been ambiguous, especially in relation to Aotearoa/New Zealand’s current official biculturalism (Māori and Pākehā cultures). In the bicultural formulation, Asians were sometimes included on the Pākehā side and sometimes not on either side. In the Thai dance performance, their culture was placed in opposition to “Western” culture—a Waikaraka High School student performed Gershwin’s “Summertime,” an American song representing Aotearoa/New Zealand as “West.” There was no mention of Māori culture in representing the Aotearoa/New Zealand side to the Thai visiting students. Bilingual students often performed a dance called kapa haka for the school community. However, their dance performance was framed very differently from the Thai performances because it was part of a Māori ceremonial greeting that consists of Te Reo speech and performance of Māori song and dance. Bilingual students performed kapa haka to welcome official guests to Waikaraka High School. Here, bilingual students represented Waikaraka High School just as Māori represent Aotearoa/New Zealand in various national occasions (Bell 1996; Mead 1997). The dance performance interpellated Waikaraka High School students as people being represented by Māori culture. During my fieldwork, bilingual students and Thai students never staged their dance side by side (see chapter 9 for details). I observed and was drawn into these daily practices of interpellation as a Japanese, someone from the United States, a researcher, a quasi teacher aide (although I made clear that I was doing research in classrooms, I ran errands for teachers and answered students’ questions), and a graduate student. My past experiences in Aotearoa/New Zealand—all in all twenty-three months by the time I began my fieldwork for this book—also had some influence. I first came to Aotearoa/New Zealand when I was eighteen and in my last year of high school, as a Rotary Club International Exchange Student in a town neighboring Waikaraka in 1986–1987.

8

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I n t r odu c t i on

I lived with host families who were Rotary Club members and attended a local public high school as a Year 13 student for a year. While I did socialize with Māori, Fijian, and Samoan students in class, most of my close friends and host siblings were Pākehā. I tried to take a Te Reo class (there was no bilingual unit in that school at that time), but there was no beginner class for my age. I came back to Aotearoa/New Zealand for a month in 1990 in order to do fieldwork for my Japanese bachelor’s thesis on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between Māori chiefs and the representative of the British Crown (see chapter 1 for details). I came back again for nine months in 1992 to do research for my master’s thesis—on the Māori concept of hapū (subtribe) and Māori land ownership—in a town a day’s drive away from Waikaraka. During that fieldwork, I regularly attended meetings at the local marae (Māori meeting place) and helped out in the marae kitchen. The leader of the marae asked me to teach Japanese to local Māori people because at that time Japanese was considered the language of the tourist industry, and I agreed to do it. However, some elders opposed the idea, saying that Māori people should learn Te Reo first, as many Māori people knew little Te Reo due to past assimilation policies. As a compromise, I taught Japanese for a short while, but outside the marae. This experience gave me the perception that Māori and Japanese cultures, while they are often compared as both non-Pākehā, can compete against each other. I then went to the United States for my PhD program and returned to Aotearoa/New Zealand for a month in 1995 for preliminary fieldwork and for nine months in 1997–1998 for fieldwork for my PhD dissertation. This book is based on the fieldwork of 1997–1998. This time, I had an additional subject position as a resident of the United States, where I had been living for four years, three of them in a small college town. Meanwhile, by the mid 1990s an influx of new wealthy Asian immigrants had arrived in Aotearoa/New Zealand and created a perception of “invasion” by wealthy Asians (Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Kelsey 1995), as I will explain in chapter 1. During my 1997–1998 fieldwork, I was sometimes categorized in this subject position as well: for example, one bilingual student asked me if I was rich because I am Asian. Through examining the ways by which students, teachers, and parents interpellated each other in various subject positions, Meaningful Inconsistencies investigates what kinds of subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand these interpellations produced via the existence of a bilingual unit. This book asks: Given many divisions among students, how and with what effects did these parents single out the bilingual unit, a program that is created to revitalize a minority language, and refer to it with a term that evokes the injustice of South African apartheid? How was it that these very parents, forgetting that most Māori students are in the bilingual unit, worry about the absence of Māori students in the mainstream upper-track class as a sign of Māori underachievement? How and with what effects did these bilingual students laugh at

Introduction

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the mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo, and even Japanese, words? What are the effects of Thai dances and kapa haka being staged separately? This volume is by no means a critique of the efficacy of the bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School or a critique of the actions of people in the mainstream part of Waikaraka High School. Rather, Meaningful Inconsistencies seeks to examine and analyze various practices, hegemonic and counterhegemonic, that are spawned and shaped in the contemporary cultural politics of Aotearoa/New Zealand and its changing nationhood. Politicization of culture and transformation of nationhood and international alliances are part of wider changes around the world in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Practices that I analyze in this book—calling the bilingual unit separatist, worrying about minority students’ underachievement, responding to mispronunciation of minority language, performing cultural dance—are features that can be seen in many parts of the world with bilingual education. Through an in-depth analysis situated in a particular context of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Meaningful Inconsistencies offers analyses that will be useful in investigating cases of bilingual education in other settings.

Aotearoa/New Zealand and Global Connections Aotearoa/New Zealand was known until the 1960s as an “England in the South Seas,” created as a “pastoral paradise” for industrialized Britain in the mid-nineteenth century (Comaroff 1989; Phillips 1990). In the 1970s Aotearoa/ New Zealand’s nationhood began to be redefined in two ways. First, it changed from a British settler society to a Pacific country due to Great Britain’s joining the then European Economic Community (EEC), severing economic as well as symbolic ties with Aotearoa/New Zealand. Second, Aotearoa/New Zealand changed from a monocultural (Pākehā) society to a bicultural (Māori and Pākehā) society due to the intensification of protests by Māori against their cultural marginalization, breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, and various forms of institutional racism. The disparity between Māori and Pākehā in economic levels and educational attainment also attracted public attention in the early 1970s. The prevailing official and academic interpretation of the disparity was that it was caused by social alienation due to a loss of “cultural identity.” Thus, it was suggested that officially promoting and affirming aspects of Māori culture among Māori as well as the wider public would reduce such a disparity (Sissons 1993). However, the disparity between Māori and Pākehā did not disappear, and in the mid 1980s Māori began seeking autonomy in various arenas, especially education (Sissons 1993; Walker 1990a). These shifts are transformations into what Comaroff and Comaroff (2004) call a policultural nation-state: a postcolonial nation-state characterized by its cultural plurality and its politicization of culture. Aotearoa/New Zealand is “post-”

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colonial in the sense that its tie to Britain as its symbolic “mother country” was severed and Aotearoa/New Zealand was forced to redefine itself as a country in the Pacific and, later, in the Asia-Pacific region (Dale and Robertson 1997; Fleras and Spoonley 1999). This shift toward biculturalism occurred against the backdrop of increasing demand for the recognition of cultural difference around the world (Taylor 1994). In many societies, we have witnessed the institutionalization of cultural differences in nearly every arena—legal, political, economic, and educational—increasing the importance of couching arguments in cultural terms (Clifford 1988; Keesing 1982a, 1982b, 1989; Linnekin 1990; Povinelli 1998; also see Dominy 1995; Webster 1995). As will be detailed in chapter 1, biculturalism became the government’s official position in the mid 1980s. The name of the country changed from “New Zealand” to “Aotearoa/New Zealand” by adding a Māori name for New Zealand at the front to symbolize its new bicultural nationhood6 (Sissons 1993). Revitalization of Te Reo, which had suffered under past assimilation policies, became a focal point of biculturalist efforts. Bilingual schools and programs that use both Te Reo and English as media of instruction in state schools began in the late 1970s, as mentioned. Waikaraka High School’s bilingual unit is one such program. Because all Māori spoke English by that time, bilingual programs helped revitalize Te Reo, create Te Reo–English bilingual people, and establish the selfesteem of Māori students. In the 1980s, when Māori autonomy became the focus of efforts for Māori empowerment, a Māori-controlled Te Reo–immersion kindergarten, Te Kōhanga Reo, was established. Elementary schools (Kura Kaupapa Māori) and secondary schools (Whare Kura) were established soon after to cater to the graduates of Te Kōhanga Reo. Revitalization of Te Reo, especially the establishment of the Māori-controlled schools, is a highly politicized movement (Irwin 1990; G. Smith 1990a). While Te Reo was still marginalized in Aotearoa/ New Zealand during my fieldwork in the late 1990s (Benton and Benton 2001; Chrisp 1997), its revitalization has been considered among linguists to be a success because of the increase in the number of Te Reo speakers and the Māori selfcontrol in the area of education (Henze and Davis 1999; May 2001). Te Reo revitalization and other government-supported shifts toward biculturalism met with resistance, however. Monoculturalists wanted to maintain Pākehā hegemony (McDonald 1985; Scott 1995), and multiculturalists wanted other minority cultures to be included in the framework of nationhood (Ip 1998; Loomis 1991). Descendants of immigrants from Pacific Island states (for example, Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji) in the post–World War II era constituted a major ethnic minority group, accounting for 5 percent (one could choose several affiliations) of the total population of 3,681,546 in 1996, around the time of my fieldwork (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 124). Also, an increase in Asian immigration as of the late 1980s, due to a change in the immigration policy that eliminated the nationality criteria and prioritized business investment, created

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a small but well-publicized presence of Asians. Together with descendants of Asians who had immigrated during the late nineteenth-century gold rush, Asian New Zealanders constituted 4 percent of the total population in 1996. Māori were 14.5 percent and “New Zealand European and other European” (Pākehā) made up 83.8 percent7 (Statistics New Zealand 1997:124). Another major transformation of Aotearoa/New Zealand society began in the mid 1980s with neoliberal reforms in various domains that turned this welfare state into a society run by market-based ideologies (Belich 2001; Kelsey 1995). Most important for this book is the 1989 education reform that significantly changed the way school is run. One major shift was that schools became more like businesses, focused on attracting students for government per-pupil funding and selling services such as ESL education to noncitizen (fee-paying) students from abroad for high fees (Gordon 1997; Lauder and Hughes 1999). Consequently, the relationship between school and parents changed from one between experts on education and parents of learners to one between providers and consumers of services. Under such circumstances, the presence of strong Māori cultural activities in school, including the bilingual unit, sometimes attracted students. However, in some schools the presence of “underachieving” Māori students caused “white flight” by those who sought “schools without disruptive students” (Gordon 1997). The discourse of Māori underachievement thus continued as an alibi for “high achievers” (both Māori and Pākehā) to move to another school (Gordon 1997) or as a critique of a schooling system that failed Māori students (Sissons 1993; Spoonley 1988). Aotearoa/New Zealand’s neoliberal reforms of the mid 1980s were part of an “international consensus” (Cox 1996) of the time. While Aotearoa/New Zealand followed the neoliberal reforms of Great Britain, other parts of the world have also experienced various types of neoliberal reforms (Giroux 2004; Harvey 2005; Ong 2006). The worldwide shifts that the Aotearoa/New Zealand case reflects—emergence of a policultural state and neoliberal reform—are often analyzed as a globalization process, because ideologies are introduced from some areas to other areas. Current research on the movements and settlements of ideologies around the globe suggests that ideologies spread not so much like a flow of water (Appadurai 1990) as a channeled movement along certain paths as a result of individuals’ and groups’ active seeking of linkages to globality (Broad and Orlove 2007). The movement of ideologies may encounter friction, as they may be interrupted or resisted (Tsing 2005). The links between diverse, globally available ideologies may be forged in the process of constructing “global assemblages” (Collier and Ong 2005; Dunn 2005; Ong 2005). Some ideologies that enter into a particular configuration in a society may get incorporated in the local ideologies while others may not, which Philips (2004) calls an “ecology of ideas,” just as certain plants take root in certain locales while others do not. Meaningful Inconsistencies’ examination of production of subjectivities at school is, then, an investigation

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of the effects of various forces that exist globally—postcolonial politics of recognition and neoliberalism—as they played out in a specific historical setting of Aotearoa/New Zealand, especially the Te Reo revitalization movement. Addressing the issues of subject formation at school with a special focus on bilingual education, this book is written for those who are interested in bilingual education and its effects on the formations of subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood, as well as for those who are interested in effects of being exposed to multiple ways of categorizing individuals, the power of categorizations in education, and effects of neoliberalism, postcolonial nationhood, and cultural politics on such categorization processes.

On the “Bi” of Bilingual Education This book is about what happens at a school with a bilingual program. “Bilingual education” is diverse in its scope and implementation—from transitional bilingual education, which aims to help immigrant children learn the language of the mainstream society, to maintenance bilingual education aimed at nurturing linguistic-minority students’ first language, to enrichment bilingual education aimed at teaching mainstream students a foreign language (Baker 2006). Waikaraka High School’s bilingual unit is based mainly on maintenance/heritage language bilingual education, as mentioned. Bilingual education assumes the existence of two languages. Sociolinguists argue that languages understood as homogeneous and bounded units positioned side by side were “invented” by dividing the linguistic continuum digitally and naming the units. Makoni and Pennycook (2007) liken the distinguishing of one language from another to the measurement of flowing time into hours and minutes. Language ideologies divide the continuum of language diversity into digitalized units through three semiotic processes (Irvine and Gal 2000): erasure, which renders invisible practices that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme, transforms them to match the scheme, and/or explains them away (for example, diverse linguistic practices of people are erased when a “national language” is represented as a homogeneous language); fractal recursivity, which projects relationships at one level onto another level (for example, a hierarchical political relationship between two groups of people is projected onto the relationships between their ways of speaking; that is, the politically powerful group’s language variety is called “standard” and the politically weak groups’ language, “dialect”); and iconization, which indexes certain groups or activities as iconic representations of the whole society (for example, indexing speakers of the “standard” language of the nation-state as iconic representations of the whole society). In daily activities, individuals reproduce the border between “languages” by noticing certain linguistic elements such as phonemes, lexemes, and syntactic

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or morphological rules as locational markers of “language” or “accents” and regarding the flow across such “borders” as “mixing,” suggesting that a “pure” and “unmixed” state exists otherwise (Urciuoli 1995). This digital view of language is a very “modern” view, supported by the rise of the modern nation-state and its ideology of “one nation, one language” (Balibar 1988; Bauman and Briggs 2000; Pennycook 1994). Naoki Sakai (1997) calls this digital view a “schema of co-figuration,” in which the unity of a national or ethnic language assumes the existence of other languages, each of which constitutes a unity. Fundamental to Meaningful Inconsistencies is the complicity of bilingual education in the reproduction of this schema of co-figuration. Existing research on the struggle around schooling, including the debate about bilingual education, often uses a framework in which individuals’ ethnic identifications are considered to be stable (for a similar critique, see McCarthy 1993). For example, a debate in educational research that is centered around analyzing and correcting the “underachievement” of ethnic minority students is built on the assumption of a preexisting cultural difference between minority groups and the dominant group (the latter being reflected in school culture), whether the difference is considered as a “lack” on the part of the former (Deutsch 1967) or mere mismatch (Erickson 1993; Vogt, Jordan, and Tharp 1993). Shifting the focus away from the comparison of different cultures based on the stable link between individual and culture, Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne (1995) ask the question of how these boundaries between cultures are made and maintained. That is, McDermott and Varenne focus on how dominant and minority groups come to be treated differently. They examine a condition and product of making certain differences among people count, but not others. For example, those without hearing become disabled less by their physical condition than by the arrangement that notices and makes it consequential. Such an arrangement, which McDermott and Varenne call “cultural” arrangement, is a product of collective actions that emerge from the existing political and economic institutions (McDermott and Varenne 1995: 331). In Meaningful Inconsistencies, I build on McDermott and Varenne’s theoretical framework in analyzing how the “bi” in the bilingual education is constituted and further supported through bilingual education. That is, this book investigates how the distinction between two languages (Te Reo and English) as well as two “linguistic groups” (Māori and Pākehā; the former speak Te Reo on top of English and the latter do not) is created through practices around bilingual education. School is an institution that produces not only a labor force but also citizens, serving as a significant site from which nationhood and ethnic relations are imagined and contested (Bigler 1999; Giroux 2000; Heller 2003; Hill 2001; Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997; Pollock 2004). Debates on various forms of multicultural education (Goldberg 1994; Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997; May 2001) as well as

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bilingual education (Baker 2006; Cummins 1996, 2000; Schlesinger 1991) occur on this terrain. Similarly, bilingual education at Waikaraka High School raises the question of ethnic relations and nationhood, often overlapping with the debate around official biculturalism and changing relations of dominance.

Bilingual Education and Relations of Dominance Language education is really about relations of dominance (Bourdieu 1991; Cummins 1996, 2000; Fishman 1991). Relations of dominance in society are often reflected in the school culture, which subordinates the experience, knowledge, and beliefs of minority cultures (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Cummins 1996; Giroux 1989; Giroux and McLaren 1989). For example, Guadalupe Valdes (1996) illustrated how it is differences in values between Mexican families and white middle-class teachers, not language difficulties, that put Mexican-origin students behind their peers in the teachers’ eyes (Valdes 1996). Even when the minority language is being taught, the language practices can be placed in the matrix of the dominant language, sending a covert message about the inferior and marked status of the minority language, overriding the overt support for the minority language and perpetuating the hierarchy between languages as well as their speakers (Meek and Messing 2007). What is at stake in bilingual education, then, is often the disruption of the homologies between the relations of dominance outside and inside school in the hope of changing the former (Cummins 1996). Researchers aim at empowering the ethnic minority or working-class students by raising “academic achievement” via various approaches, including teaching them culture that they lack (the cultural deprivationist approach; for example, Deutch 1967) or incorporating elements of minority cultures into the classroom in order to reduce minority students’ resistance to schooling (the cultural difference approach; see Jacob and Jordan 1993). However, such practices often end up supporting assimilation of these students into mainstream norms by measuring their “success” by the mainstream standard, instead of refiguring the mainstream structures that define what counts as “knowledge” (Olneck 2000; G. Smith 1990a). We need instead a critical inquiry into who set the criteria to measure “success” and what allowed them to set the criteria. Without such an analysis, using the criteria uncritically to measure “effectiveness” perpetuates the structure of domination and hegemony. Alternatively, some schools create discourses that counter the mainstream discourses regarding what counts as knowledge, intelligence, and success (Olneck 2000; G. Smith 1990a) and how the ethnic diversity of students is viewed (Nieto 2002). One such attempt was examined by Rebecca Freeman (1998) based on her research at the Oyster Bilingual School in the United States, which aims at producing equal social relations between Spanish and English speakers through

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dual-language education in which linguistic-minority (Spanish) and majority (English) students alike learn in both Spanish and English. Recognizing that social positions are created in discourses, the Oyster Bilingual School rejects the mainstream US discourse, in which Spanish is considered inferior and subject positions for ethnically minority students are reduced to either assimilating to the mainstream norm and “succeeding” or keeping their culture and “failing.” Instead, the Oyster Bilingual School views Spanish and English as equals and provides a third option for minority students: maintaining their culture as well as mainstream culture and “succeeding.” This discourse not only contests the legitimacy of monolingualism in Standard English as the unquestioned norm in the mainstream American schools but also elevates the status of Spanish and its speakers. This language-planning is also what Freeman calls a “social identity project.” Freeman argues that being socialized in such an alternative discourse allows students to (1) recognize a discourse that positions him/her or others negatively, (2) refuse that discourse, and (3) reposition him/herself or others favorably in an alternative discourse that views both types of language speaker as equal. However, Freeman argues, one problem was that the mainstream discourse “leaked” into the Oyster Bilingual School, thus interfering with the promotion of the counterdiscourse. Freeman’s work is meaningful in that it illustrates vividly how bilingual education can serve as a challenge to the existing relations of dominance. This is also what Meaningful Inconsistencies seeks to illustrate. But whereas I agree with the analytical focus on how bilingual education helps challenge relations of dominance, I differ from Freeman’s theoretical positions in four ways. By way of comparison with Freeman’s work because of the aim that it shares with Meaningful Inconsistencies, I illustrate below four tenets of Meaningful Inconsistencies. The last tenet is the main focus of this volume. First, unlike Freeman, I contend that there is no clear-cut binary opposition between mainstream and alternative discourses. There is no single “mainstream” discourse: multiple discourses exist in the mainstream, and people contest which discourse is to prevail within the mainstream. Political debate between liberals and conservatives, the left and right, the religious and secular are such examples (Apple 2001). What appears to be a mainstream discourse can work to resist marginalization of minority groups (Nuñez-Janes 2002). Also, the alternative discourse, evoked to challenge discriminatory mainstream discourse, may itself discriminate against other groups of people. For example, Monica Heller (2003) illustrates how French school in English-dominant Ontario supports an alternative discourse that challenges the English dominance outside the school, but hierarchizes different varieties of francophones. Gloria Ladson-Billings (2003) further argues that certain discourses, such as racism, are so enmeshed in the fabric of the social order in the United States that they appear normal and natural, thus rendering meaningless the distinction between mainstream and counter

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discourses. Given the multiplicity and complexity of the relationships between mainstream and counter discourses, what I suggest in this book is a focus not only on ways to counter “mainstream” discourses that marginalize minority groups but also on ways to create alliances with certain mainstream discourses in order to counter other mainstream discourses. Second, contrary to what Freeman suggests, students may not automatically be socialized into the discourse that school offers (even without leakage of discourses from outside) because the same discourse can be interpreted differently by various individuals and in different contexts. Individuals are traversed and constituted as subjects by contradictory interpellations throughout their life, resulting in multiple and layered subject positions. Past interpellations affect present ones, structuring and limiting the repertoire of “decoding” strategies available to them. Therefore, individuals with diverse histories are interpellated differently by the same discourse (Frankenberg 1993; Hall 1985; hooks 1992; Morley 1980; P. Smith 1988). For example, when bilingual students greeted me with “How’s racism in the States?” my self-perception that I am nonwhite led me to be interpellated, albeit by surprise, as a co-victim of racism. Had I perceived myself to be an “honorary white” and felt superior to other nonwhite groups (see Pollack 1993), I could have been interpellated differently—perhaps as a racist— by the same statement. Also, mainstream teachers reacted differently—accepted, ignored, or resisted—to (ex)bilingual students’ interpellation of them when the students laughed at their mispronunciation of Te Reo words. Third, I argue that students are active agents whose daily practices are active explorations of their worlds, influenced and guided by the school’s institutional settings, education philosophies, and teaching practices, but not determined by them. Freeman’s research, as well as other studies on bilingual education, tends to treat students as vessels that merely respond to the school administrators’ and teachers’ initiatives on how to educate them. Research on bilingual education often focuses on its effectiveness, which is measured by outcomes such as students’ academic achievement, language and literary proficiency, or sociocultural integration. In such studies, students’ practices are seen as responses to the input, which is the bilingual teaching. That is, students’ practices serve as proof of the effectiveness (or its limitation) (see Brisk 2006). Meaningful Inconsistencies, on the other hand, illustrates how students experience various discourses in and out of the bilingual unit and find ways to maneuver among these discourses for their own ends, sometimes going beyond what the school administrators and teachers anticipated. For example, ex-bilingual students perceived and interpellated mainstream teachers who mispronounced Te Reo as culturally insensitive and disrespectful. Such a perception was not taught but learned by comparing bilingual teachers who cared about correctness in Te Reo and mainstream teachers who cared less about it (for details, see chapter 7).

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Lastly, I argue that exposure to multiple discourses does not necessarily result in “leakage” of the dominant one in such a way as to ruin the alternative ones, as Freeman suggests. When students are exposed to diverse ways to hierarchize groups—in and out of school, in various domains within school, or in different programs such as bilingual and mainstream classes within Waikaraka High School—students become aware of their positionalities, the meanings that each language carries, and access that it grants to various cultural capitals in the society, become able to broker different language and value systems, and become able to challenge the one that marginalizes them (Heller 2003; Rampton 1995; also see Dufva and Alanen 2005). Sometimes, as Lisa Sun-Hee Park (2005) shows with her concept of “boundary work,” conflict in one regime of difference (for example, mother vs. daughter) might be worked out by reinterpreting the relationship in terms of another regime of difference (for example, business owner vs. business manager in the mother’s restaurant). Meaningful Inconsistencies focuses on the complex ways in which students, teachers, and parents relate these discourses and illustrates how subjectivities are produced not only at the intersections of these discourses but also at the nonintersections of—in the gaps between—such discourses. Thus does Meaningful Inconsistencies contribute to the literature on bilingual education, as well as to research on the production of subjectivities in general. In order to elaborate on this point, I use the concept of “regime of difference,” which I explain below.

Bilingual Education and Regimes of Difference By “regimes of difference,” I mean the ways individuals are categorized in relation to others. For example, my research distinguished a regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream classes and, within the mainstream, a regime of difference of upper-track vs. lower-track classes. The concept of regime of difference is very similar to the concept of discourse as used by Freeman above, in the sense that in each discourse, social positions of Spanish speakers and English speakers were created as opposites, placed in relation to each other in certain ways, hierarchically or otherwise, and given meanings. The notion of regime of difference is similar to what others have called the structure of difference (Wilk 1995), chain of signification (Hall 1985), schemata of classification (Bourdieu 1989), or schemata of co-figuration (Sakai 1997). These notions suggest a certain way to differentiate people or things based on the idea that one’s subjectivity is created in relation to that which one is not. For example, it was in contrast to lower-track students that teachers often talked about characteristics of upper-track students. Talking about one’s subjectivity triggers the understanding of the others from whom one is differentiated (Hall 1996). Through regimes of difference at school,

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students’ subjectivities become intelligible to others as well as to themselves. These subjectivities guide the future dreams of students, create self-fulfilling prophecies, and steer the camaraderie they form with others. The notion of “regime” in the “regime of difference” emphasizes the relations of dominance that underlie acceptance of a certain regime of difference. Pierre Bourdieu (1989) argues that to impose schemata of classification (that is, regimes of difference) favorable to oneself is to reproduce one’s domination over others. In other words, it is to impose one’s vision (and division) of the world on others. Thus, the schemata of classification are what is at stake in political struggle (Bourdieu 1989). The term “regime” emphasizes this aspect. For example, as illustrated in chapter 2 of Meaningful Inconsistencies, in the nineteenth century some Māori iwi (tribes) resisted census-taking by the state agencies, saying, among other things, that their Māori king had already taken a census of them and that they refused to be counted along with their pigs (census forms often counted the farm animals also). These Māori were resisting not only the state’s authority but also its categorization of people, which treated people and farm animals in a similar way. The concept of “regime” in the “regime of difference,” then, allows us to analyze diverse ways in which individuals relate to regimes of difference— resistance, strategic submission, disruption, acceptance, and so forth. While regimes of difference are often institutionally produced, they are also discursively (re)produced without clear agencies that promote them. Thus, Meaningful Inconsistencies traces not only processes and effects of institutionally constructed regimes of difference, which may be a result of contestation among school administrators and teachers, but also discursive construction of regimes of difference by school administrators, teachers, parents, and students themselves. A regime of difference becomes materialized through the act of citing it or evoking it as a meaningful frame to understand the act or person under discussion (Butler 1993). Regimes of difference were evoked in various statements and “between the lines.” Problematizing the division between bilingual and mainstream students and worrying about “Māori underachievement” are based on and suggest certain regimes of difference, interpellating people. Actions are often louder than words in positioning the individuals involved into regimes of difference. Laughing at certain actions—mispronunciation of Te Reo or Japanese names—divides individuals in the classroom into those who could be laughing and those who could potentially be laughed at. Performing a dance on stage—for whom, and on what occasion— often suggests regimes of difference. Such citing of regimes of difference may go unnoticed in the macro-level analysis of school reforms and policy analysis. It is worth noting here that these discursive practices operate on an uneven terrain that is becoming more complex due to the neoliberal reforms: as the wealthy parents who can afford to send their children to other schools gain power as free-choosing “customers” of schools, their practices, as well as their

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children’s, gain more ground, while school administrators and teachers struggle to keep their positions as “experts on education.” The regime of difference, like the Althusserian concept of ideology (Althusser 1971), constitutes concrete individuals as subjects through hailing or interpellating them. For example, when the two bilingual students greeted me with the question about racism in the United States, that greeting positioned me as a potential victim of racism in a regime of difference of white vs. nonwhite: they interpellated me as a nonwhite. Here, an individual is a subject in a double sense: both subjected to regimes of difference by being hailed or interpellated by them, yet also having a sense of acting by one’s own free will as a subject who is the author of, and responsible for, his or her actions. That is, individuals are interpellated as subjects who subject themselves “freely” to a regime of difference (Althusser 1971; also, see Hall 1985). Nevertheless, unlike Althusser, I do not take individuals to be always already a subject nor inescapably interpellated. As Hervé Varenne and Mary Cotter (2006) suggest, individuals may “go along” with the regime of difference, even when they feel there are some contradictions. Also, as the earlier Māori resistance to census-taking shows, experiencing multiple and competing regimes and their regimes of difference—a Māori king that treats humans as separate from farm animals and a New Zealand state that counts both human and animals at the same time—allows individuals to choose between regimes of difference, creating meta-regime awareness about their subjectivities. That is, one ceases to see one’s subjectivity as the inevitable one; instead, one sees various possible subjectivities for oneself and chooses one or some of them (for example, the cited Māori people had a choice of subjectivities offered by the Māori king or the New Zealand government) (see Heller 2003; Dufva and Alanen 2003). Meaningful Inconsistencies’ main focus is thus on the effects of being exposed to multiple regimes of difference. Unexpected meanings are created at the intersections of various regimes of difference, which cannot be understood by examining a single regime of difference. Stuart Hall (1985) argues that each regime of difference of race/ethnicity, class, and gender, with its own history and its own mode of operation for dividing the world in different ways, connotes or summons up another regime of difference in articulating the distinctions drawn in each regime of difference in a particular society. For example, being black in Great Britain connotes being lower class (Hall 1985). Also, regimes of difference of race/ethnicity, class, and gender intersect with each other to create meanings of each category (Collins 1999; Crenshaw 1992; Frankenberg 1993; hooks 1989, 1992; Lott 1995; McClintock 1995; Roediger 1991, 1994; Stoler 1995; Wiegman 1995). Competing regimes of difference create “discursive repertoires” from which individuals learn, draw upon, and enact their strategies for thinking through the categories (Frankenberg 1993). To such known understandings of the effects of having multiple regimes of difference, Meaningful Inconsistencies adds new understandings: the production

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of subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood in the gaps between regimes of difference and by the act of evoking homologous regimes of difference and singling out a regime of difference from among many. Meaningful Inconsistencies illustrates such processes as summarized below. Subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood were produced in the gaps between various regimes of difference. The illusion of Māori underachievement was produced in the gap between conflating and not conflating two regimes of difference: bilingual vs. mainstream students and Māori vs. Pākehā. In other words, when the mainstream teachers and parents were talking about tracking, they did not see Māori students in the mainstream upper-track class (conflation of these regimes of difference). At the same time, when problematizing the small number of Māori students in upper-track class, they erased their view that all Māori students were in the bilingual unit and all Pākehā students were in mainstream classes (non-conflation of these regimes of difference). Otherwise, the absence of Māori students in the mainstream upper-track class is not a concern (because all Māori students are in the bilingual unit). It was in the gap between these two perceptions—conflation and non-conflation—that the illusion of Māori underachievement emerged, which then interpellated Māori students (chapter 6). Ex-bilingual students noticed and laughed at mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo words from the gap between the regime of difference of language in the bilingual unit (Te Reo and English as equally respected) and that in the mainstream class (English prevailing over Te Reo to the degree that Te Reo words were anglicized or incorrectly pronounced). I argue, following Barbara Johnson (1982), that for the students, the difference in the messages sent by two different kinds of teachers (bilingual and mainstream) is a springboard for learning about things that neither kind of teacher intended to teach—in other words, that ignorance is not innocent but reflects what is considered as worthwhile knowing based on the hegemonic relationships between cultures (chapter 7). Nationhood was produced in the gap between regimes of difference suggested in the dance performances at Waikaraka High School. Kapa haka performances suggested the regime of difference of Māori vs. all New Zealanders, in which the former represented the latter. Thai dance performances evoked the regime of difference of Asian vs. New Zealanders (as West). As these two kinds of performances were staged separately, the lack of intersections between, and thus the gap between, these regimes of difference produced a postcolonial nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand: Pacific (represented by Māori) yet Western (opposite of Asia) (chapter 9). What I would like to stress in focusing on the gap between regimes of difference is its diverse effects, sometimes hegemonic, sometimes counterhegemonic. In the case of construction of an illusion of Māori underachievement, the gaps between the ways regimes of difference are related can marginalize minority groups. In the case of ex-bilingual students’ noticing and challenging the disrespect in Te Reo mispronunciation, the gap between regimes of hierarchically related languages can

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create a “third space” (Mirza and Reay 2000) or “outsider within” (Collins 1998; Harrison 2008) from which hegemonic practices can be recognized and subverted. In the case of separately staged dance performances, the gap between regimes of difference can suggest a nationhood that supports hegemonic national imagining. Meaningful Inconsistencies examines and elaborates on such diverse effects sprung from the ways individuals and institutions relate regimes of difference. Subjectivities are created, I argue, in the homologies of regimes of difference. When ex-bilingual students laughed at a mainstream teacher’s mispronunciation of my Japanese name, after they laughed at mispronunciation of Te Reo names, they evoked the hierarchized regime of difference of English (dominant language) vs. Japanese (minority language), in which the correctness of the latter was considered trivial. It was when it was juxtaposed with another hierarchized regime of difference of English (dominant language) vs. Te Reo (minority language) that the homology between these regimes of difference became apparent and drew me on a personal level into the Māori struggle to gain a respected place for Te Reo in Aotearoa/New Zealand. A globally shared regime of difference—what Richard Wilk (1995) called a Global Structure of Common Difference—of dominant language vs. dominated language was evoked through such homology (chapter 8). Subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood were also produced through the act of singling one regime of difference out from among many. Parents called the bilingual unit “separatist,” singling out one regime of difference—of bilingual vs. mainstream students (conflated with that of Māori vs. Pākehā) as creating problematic divisions—from among many other regimes of difference at school—by Year, gender, academic achievement, sports preference, etc.—that created divisions among students. That act emphasized ethnicity as an important part of individuals’ subjectivity as well as of nationhood (chapter 5). From these analyses, I will argue that, in order to understand the development of subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood, we need to examine the ways in which meanings of categories are produced, not only at the intersections but also at such non-intersections of multiple, competing, and sometimes contradictory regimes of difference. This book argues for analyses that pay close attention to (1) discursive workings of multiple regimes of difference that intersect the bilingual programs and (2) individuals’ active workings on such discursive workings, which are rooted in exposure to these sometimes contradictory multiple regimes of difference. This book’s angle puts the focus on effects that are often overlooked in analyses of single regimes of difference.

Structure of the Book The first half of this book describes the fieldsite of Aotearoa/New Zealand in general and Waikaraka High School in particular and my fieldwork method, while

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introducing some of my theoretical arguments in action. Chapter 1, “Shifting Terrains: Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Changing Nationhood,” will provide a wider background of the research by detailing the aforementioned social transformations that have taken place in Aotearoa/New Zealand since the 1970s. Chapter 2, “Categorizing: Changing Official Regimes of Difference in Aotearoa/New Zealand Statistical Publications,” will trace the historical transformation of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s regimes of difference by focusing on the ethnic categorizations used in statistical publications. Chapter 2 lends a historical depth to the regimes of difference from the 1990s discussed in the rest of the book, illuminating how the current regimes of difference are but a phase of changing regimes of difference. Chapter 3, “Inhabiting Waikaraka High School: Daily Life at Waikaraka High School and Fieldwork Experiences,” will introduce Waikaraka High School and show how I carried out the fieldwork. I describe the establishment and development of the bilingual unit, the ways bilingual students were related to the mainstream students in daily life at school, and the ways neoliberal reform affected school life during my fieldwork in 1997–1998. Chapter 4, “Sorting: The Tracking System and Production of Meanings,” will seek to describe the tracking system at Waikaraka High School. This chapter emerged out of the problem I encountered while trying to understand the tracking system in Waikaraka High School: the information various teachers and school administrators gave me was inconsistent and sometimes contradictory. I will point out that these inconsistencies are also the ways by which the meanings of the regimes of difference based on academic achievement—upper- vs. lowertrack students—were produced and contested. I also examine how students lived and created meanings of the regime of difference produced by tracking. The second half of the book will analyze various practices, introduced in the first part of this chapter, that emerged through the bilingual unit at school. Chapters 5 and 6 will analyze practices that revolve around the relationships between the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and that of Māori vs. Pākehā. Chapter 5, “Calling It Separatist: On Conflating Two Regimes of Difference,” will examine the claim made by some mainstream parents that the bilingual unit is separatist and suggest a way to respond to and reduce such a claim. Chapter 6, “Imagining ‘Failure’: The Illusion of Māori Underachievement and Institutional, Ethnic, and Academic Regimes of Difference,” will analyze three ways by which the illusion of Māori underachievement was produced through the intersections as well as in the gap between the regimes of difference of the bilingual vs. mainstream, upper- vs. lower-track, and Māori vs. Pākehā. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 will involve questions of respect, bicultural nationhood, and the place of Asians as results of bilingual education. Chapter 7, “Laughing: Language Politics in the Classroom,” will analyze the effects of the bilingual students’ laughter at mainstream teachers’ mispronunciations of Te Reo names.

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Chapter 8, “Laughing Globally: Creation of Alliances and Globally Homologous Regimes of Difference,” will extend the argument of chapter 7 and analyze three cases in which ex-bilingual students used laughter to make, control, and avoid alliances with me—a researcher from Japan serving also as a quasi teacher aide— in Year 11 mainstream classes. Chapter 9, “Dancing: Cultural Performance and Nationhood,” will analyze the subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood suggested by the dance performances at school by Asians (fee-paying students and myself) and bilingual students. Chapter 10, “Conclusion and Departure,” will summarize how each chapter supported the main theme of the book from various angles: how subjectivities, ethnic relations and a sense of nationhood were created via the various ways regimes of difference were related with each other. It will then summarize three routes of proactive practices promoting social justice that are suggested by the arguments in Meaningful Inconsistencies: through alliance-making, through clarifying misperceptions that were caused by certain ways regimes of difference were related with each other, and through a proactive pedagogy to involve students in developing ways to effectively respond to and challenge others’ insensitivities, which devalue their culture in daily life. This book draws on cases from Aotearoa/New Zealand, whose extensive social restructuring over the past several decades was conducive to the proliferation of multiple and competing regimes of difference. The case of Aotearoa/ New Zealand is specific, but as Rebecca Freeman (1998) argues, the specificity is something that we need to pay attention to. Beyond such specificity, we can find approaches that may be helpful in analyzing other cases of bilingual education and the effects of the inconsistent ways multiple regimes of difference relate to each other. It is my hope that the analytical framework suggested in Meaningful Inconsistencies will spawn new discussions on the current politics of difference and affect the articulation of relationships among people so as to promote social justice.

Notes 1. The notion of “interpellation” that I use throughout the book is drawn from the work of Louis Althusser (1971). I use this notion rather than the notion of “categorization” because, as will be discussed later in this chapter, it encourages one to think about power relations in categorizing and the role of the individual as a subject in a double sense: being subjected to categorization, while being the subject (the doer) of one’s identificatory actions. 2. “Te” is an article in Te Reo equivalent to “the” in English. However, the meaning of “te” is conventionally ignored when used in English sentences. For example, one might say “the Te Reo class.” 3. The bilingual and mainstream students name the bilingual unit and mainstream classes in various ways (see chapter 3 for details). Throughout this book, I use the terms “bilingual unit” and “mainstream” for convenience and consistency.

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4. The borderline between school administrators and teachers was blurred at Waikaraka High School because both deputy principals used to teach at Waikaraka High School as regular teachers and continued to teach some subjects while being deputy principals. Also, the principal taught some regular classes. Throughout the book, I call these administrators “teachers” for this reason, unless the distinction is necessary. 5. Pākehā is a Māori term that denotes New Zealanders of European descent. However, there has been much debate as to what the use of such a term connotes (see Bell 1996; Nairn 1986; Pearson 1989; Spoonley 1991a, 1995). Throughout this book I use the term Pākehā for consistency and convenience. 6. I use the terms “New Zealand” to denote the monoculturalist nation before the 1970s and “Aotearoa/New Zealand” to denote the nation after biculturalist efforts began. 7. Official statistics’ division of people into “ethnic groups” is not an “objective” act of describing population on these islands but a political act that suggests certain views of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s nationhood, which will be discussed in detail in chapter 2.

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S HIFTING T ERRAINS Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Changing Nationhood

% Introducing Aotearoa/New Zealand Aotearoa/New Zealand offers highly appropriate case studies for research of relations between regimes of difference because its extensive social restructuring over the past forty years—the changing imagining of its nationhood, its institutionalization of biculturalism, and its extensive neoliberal reforms—was conducive to the proliferation of competing regimes of difference. In this chapter, I introduce these social transformations. Aotearoa/New Zealand is a former British settler colony in the South Pacific established by the Treaty of Waitangi, which was signed by Māori chiefs (it bears a total of 540 signatures but lacks some of the prominent chiefs’, and some chiefs signed more than once) and representatives of the British Crown in 1840. The treaty, though it was progressive at the time, caused misunderstandings mainly due to differences between the Te Rao and English versions. The Te Rao version gives the British Crown kawanatanga—governorship—but in the English version the Crown has “sovereignty.” In the Te Rao version, it guarantees the Māori chiefs tino rangatiratanga—chieftainship—which in the English version is “possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries, and other properties.” In both versions the Māoris are made into British subjects, and the queen of England gained preemptive rights to the purchase of land (Orange 1987; Walker 1990a). While this treaty legitimated the presence of British settlers in New Zealand, the New Zealand government failed to honor promises in the treaty for over a century (Temm 1990; Walker 1990a). In the 1980s, however, the treaty became the focal point of a new bicultural nationhood based on a partnership of Māori and Pākehā. The New Zealand government began to respond to claims addressing the breach of the treaty (Durie 1989; Temm 1990). Biculturalism was the official policy during my fieldwork in 1997–1998 and is so to this day

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(2008). It is so despite the existence of more than the two “ethnic groups” recognized in official statistics: in 1996, a year before my fieldwork, the total population of 3,681,546 was 83.8 percent “New Zealand European and other European,” 14.5 percent “Māori,” 5 percent “Pacific Island ethnic groups,” and 4 percent “Asians” (one could choose several affiliations) (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 124). What set the stage for the shift toward biculturalism and neoliberal reforms that I elaborate in this chapter is Aotearoa/New Zealand’s changing place in the world, which forced redefinition of its nationhood. Aotearoa/New Zealand’s chief international allies changed from its former mother country, Great Britain, to the Pacific and Asian countries. New Zealand’s gradual shift away from Britain after World War II accelerated in the 1970s, when Britain joined the then European Economic Community (EEC), which New Zealand viewed as not only an economic act (given the EEC’s protectionist economic policies) but also a symbolic one. This shift implied a change in the regime of difference important to Aotearoa/New Zealand: from Great Britain vs. Aotearoa/New Zealand to Aotearoa/New Zealand vs. other nations in Asia-Pacific. The nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand changed from an “England in the South Seas” to a Pacific country and, by the mid 1990s, a part of Asia-Pacific. While Aotearoa/New Zealand sees the Pacific region as a source of labor, it also capitalizes on its Asian neighbors as an area for wealth creation and economic growth through capital flows and investment. For example, the 1986 Business Immigration Policy (BIP), which prioritized an investment proposal over the country of origin as a component of an application, lured wealthy immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan (Dale and Robertson 1997; Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Henderson 1984; Kelsey 1995; Larner and Spoonley 1995; Pearson 2005). This new emphasis on New Zealand’s link to Asia-Pacific set the stage for the shift toward bicultural and neoliberal reforms, which I describe in the next two sections.

The Shift Toward Biculturalism Official Biculturalism The shift toward bicultural nationhood was initiated in the 1970s with the intensification of well-publicized Māori protests regarding breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, their rights regarding wrongly taken lands, racism, and cultural marginalization. They inherited resistance against Pākehā dominance from early Māori leaders and were inspired by various contemporary postcolonial and civil rights movements in other parts of the world. These Māori protests challenged the national assumption of ethnic/racial harmony in New Zealand (Sharp 1990; Walker 1990a). One of the Māori communities’ grassroots initiatives toward

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bicultural nationhood aimed at revitalizing Te Reo, which had suffered under decades of assimilation policies, through alternative schools. The concept of biculturalism dates back at least to the early twentieth century, when Sir Apirana Ngata, a prominent Māori leader, encouraged Māori to be bicultural: “Turn your hands to the tools of the Pākehā for the well-being of your body. Turn your heart to the treasures of your ancestors as a crown for your head” (quoted in Walker 1990a: 194). More recently, in 1968, the anthropologist Eric Schwimmer introduced the term biculturalism to mean a relationship of understanding and equality between Māori and Pākehā within Aotearoa/New Zealand, although the word was not widely accepted until the 1980s (Sissons 1995). New Zealand’s new nationhood—no longer a small England (monoculturalism) but a nation-state in the Pacific—was conducive to this newly elevated status of Māori and their culture. Biculturalist demands varied from what Andrew Sharp (1990) called “bicultural reformism” (reformation of Pākehā institutions to meet Māori concerns without equal sharing in the decision-making process) to “bicultural distributivism” (development of separate Māori institutions based on the idea of Māori sovereignty). An example of the latter is Kaupapa Māori (Māori objectives): a call for Māori control of Māori lives. It challenged the Pākehā-centered education system imposed on Māori children (G. Smith 1990a), the Pākehā-led research on Māori (Bishop 1996), and the Pākehā appropriation and mockery of Māori culture (Mead 1997; Walker 1990a). It was argued that without Māori control, biculturalism could become a Pākehā institution (Maxwell 1998). There were two important background contexts of the shift toward biculturalism. One was the public acknowledgement in the early 1970s of a disparity between Pākehā and Māori in various arenas, such as economic conditions and educational attainment, and subsequent attempts to change the situation. Māori underachievement in schools was interpreted as the outcome of an institutional arrangement—the systematic denial of Māori identity and hence the undermining of Māori self-esteem within the education system. This led to more presence of Māori culture in schools from the mid 1970s to 1980s in the hope of raising the self-esteem and academic achievement of Māori students. Marae-based courses about Māori culture were held for school principals and senior teachers in the late 1970s and mid 1980s. All seven teachers’ colleges established Māori courses in 1973. Taha Māori (literally, “Māori side” but often translated as the “Māori dimension”) began to be included in all aspects of school life, from curriculum to attitudes and organization, in the mid 1980s. “1985: A Starter Kit for Māori in Schools,” a publication issued by New Zealand Department of Education and the New Zealand Educational Institute, stressed the importance of Te Reo for national identity, cultural tolerance, and Māori personal identity and self-worth (Sissons 1993). Another important background for the shift toward biculturalism was Aotearoa/New Zealand’s institutional reforms in the 1970s to accommodate

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various cultural differences as the notion of minority rights being manifested in separate treatment for members of various cultures as came to dominance in international discourses. These reforms were an expression of minority groups’ right to autonomy, an attempt to equalize their condition, and reparation for the wrongs of the monoculturalist arrangements (Kymlicka 1995; Sharp 1990). The relationship between biculturalism and multiculturalism is complex in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In the 1980s, some Māori demanded revision of multiculturalism by arguing for a biculturalism that recognizes special status of Māori as an indigenous people and as a signatory of the Treaty of Waitangi, and therefore in a partnership of equal weight with the Pākehā majority (Belich 2001; Pearson 1995; Sharp 1990; Walker 1990a). David Pearson (1991) contended that biculturalism [bicultural distributivism] in Aotearoa/New Zealand calls for fundamental realignments of state arrangements and nationhood, with the Treaty of Waitangi as the focus, whereas the multiculturalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand suggests giving minorities greater access to positions of power within the existing institutions. For this reason, some advocates of Māori rights (Spoonley 1988; also, see Mead 1997; Pearson 1990; Simon 1989; Walker 1996) call for postponement, if not rejection, of multiculturalism, arguing that the demand for multiculturalism is a shield for deflecting bicultural demands, and a way to pit minority groups against one another. Biculturalism nurtures a tolerance for cultural differences that would eventually pave the way for multiculturalism, they argue (Benton 1981; Spoonley 1988). Conservative Pākehā argue for multiculturalism in lieu of biculturalism. Some view this position by Pākehā conservatives to be an effort to undermine the Māori’s special status in biculturalism (see Mead 1997; Pearson 1990; Simon 1989; Spoonley 1988; Walker 1996). This is a peculiar situation in which a call for multiculturalism serves to undermine indigenous people’s claims. Currently, official biculturalism is laced with the multiculturalist concept of social equity applied to other minorities (Sharp 1990). Thus, there is a main regime of difference, of Māori vs. Pākehā, coexisting with regimes of difference that include New Zealanders of Asian and (non-Māori) Pacific descent in various combinations (see chapters 2, 8, and 9). Official recognition of biculturalism came in 1982, when the “race relations conciliator” appointed by Aotearoa/New Zealand’s governor general proposed that “[a] New Zealand national identity must be based on a firm foundation of biculturalism through which multi-culturalism can emerge” (cited in Sissons 1995: 61). The empowerment of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1985, however, marked the real beginning of more substantial official biculturalism, reinvesting moral and legal authority in the Treaty of Waitangi. The Waitangi Tribunal had been established in 1975 to hear grievances of the contemporary breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, investigate them, and make recommendations to the government. In 1985, it was empowered to hear grievances going back to 1840 (Belich 2001; Sharp 1990; Sisson 1993; Walker 1990a). Biculturalism became the de facto

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government policy also by the incorporation of the treaty in various legislative acts. For example, the State Owned Enterprises Act (1986) prohibited government actions inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Sharp 1990). Government took on the incorporation of Māori culture also. Cultural awareness courses were held for government employees. Administrative positions and functions were described in Te Reo terms, government departments and ministries adopted alternative Te Reo names, and government advertising, publicity, and official correspondence, reports, and policy statements appeared in both English and Te Reo. However, some of these government publications, such as the one on the reform of the administrative structure of tertiary education in 1990s, had both Te Reo and English for several pages, but not all (Sissons 1993). Jeffery Sissons (1993) argues that Te Reo had been appropriated more for its visual appeal than for its capacity to inform. The state also promoted symbolic displays and public expressions of a “bicultural partnership” between itself and Māori people. The counterpart of these efforts to redefine the meaning of the treaty was a symbolic elaboration of the notion of partnership that drew upon Māori language, ceremony, art, and identity. Hence, as mentioned, New Zealand came to be called Aotearoa/New Zealand, adding a Māori name for New Zealand to indicate bicultural nationhood. However, by the mid 1980s it was clear that incorporating Māori culture in school and wider society was not making the difference its proponents had hoped for as mentioned. Graham Hingangaroa Smith (1990b) notes that Taha Māori in school is profiting Pākehā pupils more than Māori pupils. Linda Tuhiwai Smith also criticizes it, claiming it constitutes a barrier to more fundamental structural change (L. Smith 1992). Thus the strategy for Māori empowerment was changed to gaining self-autonomy (bicultural distributivism), with reference to the Treaty of Waitangi. Māori leaders regarded the treaty as upholding their political and economic sovereignty, their tino rangatiratanga. In the report written in 1985, the Waitangi Tribunal noted that the chiefs who signed the treaty had not ceded sovereignty to the Crown. Instead they had ceded kawanatanga (governorship), “the authority to make laws for the good order and security of the country but subject to an undertaking to protect Māori interests” (Sissons 1993: 106). It was in this context that the Kaupapa Māori movement called for Māori control of Māori culture (Bishop 1996; G. Smith 1990a) and Māori-controlled alternative preschool, Te Kōhanga Reo, began. Liberal Pākehā welcomed the biculturalism. They sought to show their support of biculturalism by learning Māori culture, including Te Reo (Fleras and Spoonley 1999). In the mid 1980s, however, Kaupapa Māori advocates urged non-Māori to tackle the cultural intolerance problem in mainstream New Zealand society instead (Tareta Poananga cited in Mannion 1984). In response, some Pākehā explored their own identities (Bell 1996; King 1985, 1991; Spoonley 1991a,

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1991b). They emphasized the Māori name for themselves, “Pākehā,” and encouraged others to use it, not only to embrace the Māori viewpoint but also to mark themselves as another ethnic group rather than as “regular” New Zealanders (as was the norm). The Pākehā sociologist Paul Spoonley (1988) describes a Pākehā as someone whose cultural values and behavior have been primarily formed from the experiences of being a member of the dominant group in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In this sense, “Pākehā” does not connote members of minority groups who are not Māori (also see Nairn 1986). However, there is no consensus on the borderline or homogeneity of the “Pākehā” category (see discussion in Pearson 1989, 1990). Just as coming to be considered “white” was a critical factor for immigrants in climbing up the social ladder in the United States (Baldwin 1984, 1985; Roediger 1991), to come to be seen as Pākehā is to acquire membership in the dominant group and thus is itself a power struggle. Also, because there are a number of people who prefer the label “[regular] New Zealander,” the label “Pākehā” remains a controversial one in some contexts. As to the label “Māori,” identification practices could be complex and contingent on other subject positions (see chapter 5). The statutory definition of Māori has varied over time, and a number of definitions have coexisted at once (see chapter 2). Keeping these issues in mind, however, I use the terms Pākehā and Māori throughout this book for consistency based on individuals’ self-identification. Some conservative Pākehā challenged biculturalism by calling it “separatist,” as will be analyzed in detail in chapter 5 (also see Ballara 1986; Spoonley 1988; Doerr 2004) or arguing that teaching Te Reo is “politically motivated” (while teaching English is not) (for analyses see Cazden 1992; Kaaretu 1995). Non-Māori minority groups called for a multiculturalism that would include immigrants from Pacific Islands (that is, Western Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, and Fiji) who filled the post–World War II labor market in Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as Asian New Zealanders (Ip 1998; Loomis 1991). Te Reo and Education Systems The well-being of Te Reo has been the focus of the efforts toward making a bicultural society. The aim was not to make Te Reo compulsory to everyone but to keep Te Reo as a viable language (Mead 1997). Because schooling has played a significant part in influencing the place of Te Reo in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the history of schooling in Aotearoa/New Zealand with a special focus on the place of Te Reo deserves some elaboration. In 1816, before Aotearoa/New Zealand became a British settler colony, missionaries opened schools for Māori, who took the schools up eagerly as a medium of accessing the “white man’s knowledge.” In the early nineteenth century, it was Te Reo that was used as the language of instruction at these schools (Mead 1997). However, in the mid-nineteenth century, the New Zealand colonial government

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introduced instruction in English. The government’s ultimate aim was to create Māori “in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (quoted in Barrington and Beaglehole 1974: 34–35). In 1867, the government established a national system of nondenominational village primary schools for the Māori, called Native Schools, under the Native Affairs Department (Barrington and Beaglehole 1974; Mead 1997). The Native School preceded the schools for the settlers in the creation of the national system. After abolition of the provincial system in 1876, the 1877 Education Act launched a national system of primary education for settlers that was free, secular, and compulsory. This act established the Department of Education and Education Boards in twelve regions, funded by the central government. An elitist secondary education modeled on British grammar schools arose; it was aimed at maintaining privilege and functioned in isolation from the Department of Education.1 Also under this act, Native Schools came under the control of the Department of Education until the 1900s, although they were administered separately (Dakin 1973; Shuker 1987). Māori children could attend other state schools, and Pākehā children could attend the Native Schools. In 1881, 26 percent of Māori enrollment was in “regular” schools, rising to 47 percent in 1900 (McKenzie 1982: 6). In the Native Schools, staffed mostly by Pākehā teachers, there was an emphasis on the teaching of English, which was actually the justification for the existence of the Native Schools. Te Reo was used in the junior classes, but only to help the pupils master English more effectively. In 1903, schooling was made compulsory for Māori children. In 1905, the inspector of Native Schools instructed teachers to encourage children to speak only English on school playgrounds, which translated into a general prohibition of Te Reo on the grounds of Native Schools. However, in the Māori boarding schools, some Te Reo was taught when teachers were available. Te Reo became a compulsory subject for students with government scholarships who wished to attend a Māori boarding school after 1931. Nonetheless, schools reduced staffs during the Depression, and the teaching of Te Reo was difficult to maintain (Barrington and Beaglehole 1974; Walker 1996). Māori culture, including Te Reo, had vanished from Native Schools by the early twentieth century. However, in 1930 a brief but strong Māori cultural revival occurred, and Māori culture was permitted back into the curriculum of Native Schools. The revival did not last long, due to both a lack of teachers with an understanding of Māori culture and the start of World War II (Mead 1997). In 1934, however, Te Reo was introduced as a School Certificate subject (i.e., a subject in the national credential examination for Year 11 or fifteen-year-old-students) (Kaa 1987). Nonetheless, Ranginui Walker argues that Te Reo was often downgraded in the school organization by being associated with less prestigious subjects, thus complicating its study by children in academic tracks. During the period between 1974 and 1982, Te Reo had a pass rate of around 40 percent in

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examinations for the School Certificate, compared to “academic” subjects’ 80 percent pass rates (Walker 1996: 166). The Māori Schools (previously called the Native Schools) were gradually merged with the “regular” state schools in the mid 1950s as the New Zealand government sought to “integrate” Māori out of fear that overseas visitors might view the presence of the Māori Schools as a form of segregation. Some Māori were suspicious of the government’s initiative because, by that time, these Māori schools had become the focus of a resurgence of Māori culture and pride. The merger was completed in 1969 (Barrington and Beaglehole 1974; Mead 1997). In the late 1970s, 25 percent of Māori people spoke and/or understood Te Reo (Benton as quoted in Mead 1997: 80). Te Reo was then considered to be dying out (Walker 1990a). A change in this situation started in the late 1970s, when continuing Māori initiatives to struggle against the loss of Te Reo were finally met with governmental support. A bilingual (Te Reo/English) class opened in 1977 in an established state school in order to revive Te Reo and enhance the self-respect of Māori students (Benton 1981; Kaa 1987). In 1996, there were 1,086 bilingual or Te Reo immersion programs (New Zealand Ministry of Education 1997a). Graham Hingangaroa Smith (1990a) is critical of such programs in terms of their accountability and objectives because they were administered under Pākehā-dominated educational institutions that have traditionally undermined Māori well-being. Waikaraka High School, the mainstream state secondary school in which I carried out fieldwork, had a bilingual unit as a semi-autonomous unit within the school in 1997–1998, as will be elaborated in chapter 3. The 1989 neoliberal educational reform, which will be detailed in the next section, established Māori Language Factor Funding. Through this program, the government funded each school in an amount correlated to the number of pupils learning Te Reo. However, the funds could be used for various things, including resources outside the bilingual unit (though it could not be used for teachers’ salaries). It was up to the board of trustees to allocate the budget, therefore leaving the Māori community little decision-making power. The year 1995 saw the introduction of a new formula for the distribution of funding for Te Reo language instruction, in which funding was allocated based on not only the delivery of Te Reo by the teacher and the number of children in a class, but also by the amount of Te Reo used (Johnston 1997). The most significant move was the establishment of Māori-initiated kindergartens (for children of age three to five), known as Te Kōhanga Reo (language nest), in 1982, with support from the Department of Māori Affairs. Each Te Kōhanga Reo is run by a Māori community with the aim of educating Māori children in Te Reo and the Māori cultural environment. In 1996, a year before my fieldwork, there were 767 Te Kōhanga Reo2 under the national Te Kōhanga Reo Trust. The trust drew up a syllabus for official approval and government funding, which is allocated to each Te Kōhanga Reo. There were significant additional

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benefits, in that the parents of the children at the Te Kōhanga Reo strove to learn the language as well. As a movement aiming at achieving autonomy in education, Te Kōhanga Reo has been as much a political movement toward the well-being of Māori people as it is a language-recovery program (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 229–36; Irwin 1990; Walker 1990b). To cater to the children who completed Te Kōhanga Reo, Kura Kaupapa Māori was established at the primary school level in 1984. It was also run by local Māori communities, carried out education via the medium of Te Reo, and emphasized the Māori pedagogical style and philosophy. However, once children had a sound understanding of Māori forms of knowledge, these schools taught knowledge from other sources—such as the Japanese abacus—within the Māori context (G. Smith 1990a; L. Smith 1992; Walker 1990b). Kura Kaupapa Māori are state schools and follow the guidelines of the national curriculum. There were forty-eight Kura Kaupapa Māori in 19963 (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 231–48), some of which, called Whare Kura, operate at the secondary education level. There were three Te Kōhanga Reo and one Kura Kaupapa Māori with Whare Kura in Waikaraka in 1997–1998. As for tertiary education, Te Reo became a matriculation subject in 1918 and was listed as a Bachelor of Arts subject at the university level in 1929. Māori Studies was first taught as a university subject at Auckland University in 1952. The first master’s degree in Māori studies was offered in 1978. In the teachers’ colleges, a period of study on aspects of Māori culture became mandatory in 1981 (Barrington and Beaglehole 1974; Kaa 1987; Mead 1997). In the 1980s, institutions called Te Wananga were developed by Māori initiative. They were acknowledged as tertiary institutions by the government in 1990 (accredited by the New Zealand Qualification Authority). There were four such Te Wananga in 1995. Te Wananga is equivalent to a university, but with priority on Māori cultural issues, philosophy, and language. Some were funded by the government (Mead 1997). There was one Te Wananga in Waikaraka in 1997–1998. The establishment of these alternative schools was a community-based political movement that challenged the Pākehā-centered education system (Benton 1981; Irwin 1990; G. Smith 1990a). Thanks to these efforts, Te Reo has been revitalized. By 1997, a national poll showed that 60 percent of Māori over the age of 16 could speak Te Reo, with 6.2 percent identified as having high fluency, 30.6 percent as having medium fluency, and 63.2 percent as having low fluency (Chrisp 1997: 36; Statistics New Zealand 1997: 159). However, variations in the definition of “Māori” (see chapter 2) and in the definition of fluency obscure the meanings of these numbers somewhat. In 1987, Te Reo was recognized as a co-official language of Aotearoa/New Zealand, along with English (Temm 1990). But despite its status as an official language, Te Reo still occupied a marginal position in Aotearoa/New Zealand. English was a compulsory subject all the way up to the Year 12, while Te Reo is

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an elective subject. Te Reo is used for Māori matters (for example, at Te Kōhanga Reo), while English is used for the majority of everyday communications (Benton 1981; Chrisp 1997). There also have been negative reactions to Te Reo revitalization, as mentioned earlier: calling it separatist (see chapter 5), doubting the validity of teaching the language (Scott 1995; for a review of such claims, see Johnston 1997), arguing that teaching Te Reo is “politically motivated” while teaching English is not (see Cazden 1992; Kaaretu 1995), and viewing the use of Te Reo in school an “imposition” (for results of a survey, see Nicholson and Garland 1991). At the level of school operations, there was resistance as well. Walker (1990a) describes how some teachers resisted implementing Māori programs in their schools by claiming “We are all New Zealanders” or “I think of people as individuals,” or that the inclusion of Māori culture “smacks of separatism.” Moreover, some Māori programs were sabotaged by being offered as a club option in competition with other appealing activities such as sports, art, or cooking. Meanwhile, the lack of Te Reo teachers was often used as a reason to impede any initiatives by Māori members to implement a Te Reo program (Johnston 1997). There were also some examples of “white flight” in urban areas—fleeing from the schools that had Māori-related programs—which created a de facto segregation (Spoonley 1988). Despite such resistance, a former monocultural “England in the South Seas” was steadily shifting toward a bicultural nation. This shift co-existed with a massive deregulation and free-marketization of school, to which I turn now.

The Neoliberal Reforms Neoliberal Reforms in the 1980s Another major transformation that Aotearoa/New Zealand underwent in recent years was deregulation reflecting the “transnational consensus” (Cox 1996)—the removal of the state from a substantive role in the national or global economy except as a guarantor of free movement of capital and profits, and the sale of government businesses, agencies, or services to private owners. In countries such as Great Britain, the United States, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand, various forms of deregulation, notably the free-marketization of education, were initiated in the late 1980s led by neoliberal ideology (Anderson-Levitt 2003; Aronowitz and Giroux 1993; Brown 1990; Burbules and Torres 2000; Gabriel 1994; Middleton, Jones, and Codd 1990; Whitty, Power, and Halpin 1998). The term neoliberalism refers to a belief that emphasizes individual choice and a limited role for the state in defense of individual liberties and property rights. The welfare state is viewed as a negative force that intrudes too much in the lives of its citizens, stifling initiative, inhibiting choice, and fostering drab uniformity.

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Thus, neoliberal reform is characterized by drastic cutbacks in social spending, revisions of the tax system to the advantage of the wealthy, loosened constraints on corporate growth, and attacks on organized labor. In this picture, the state has withdrawn from its responsibility to administer public resources to promote social justice, but functions to create and preserve an institutional framework to guarantee the proper functioning of markets and the protection of private property rights (Brown 1990; Harvey 2005; Whitty, Power, and Halpin 1998). The spread of neoliberal forms of governing is “a historical process that unevenly articulates situated political constellations” (Ong 2006: 3). In Great Britain, from which Aotearoa/New Zealand drew its model, neoliberal reforms are supported by the New Right,4 which emerged through the alliance of Anglo-centric conservatives and supporters of the classical liberal ideologies of individualism and the free market, drawn together by their mutual disdain of post–World War II collective social reform, the conservatives being against its egalitarianism, and the classical liberals against its constriction of free competition (Brown 1990; Gabriel 1994). In Aotearoa/New Zealand, massive deregulation was initiated by the Fourth Labour Government (1984–1990). Major aspects in this reform were the minimization of state obligations by cutting public spending, especially in areas such as health, education, and social welfare; the redirection of state funding away from program provision and toward increased program regulation; the reduction in the size and the enhancement of the efficiency and accountability of the public sector by copying private-sector practices; and the encouragement of foreign investment (Dale and Robertson 1997; Kelsey 1995). As a result of the encouragement of foreign investment, the United States and Asian countries’ influence became visible in the 1990s, especially through the new immigration policies (BIP) mentioned earlier (Dale and Robertson 1997; Kelsey 1995). The distinct feature of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s neoliberal reform is the commitment to “equity” (Middleton 1992). The concept of equity, used widely in the official policy of the Labour government, had an assumption that certain social groups had been disadvantaged by their historical and socio-economic circumstances, and that additional resources were needed to bring about equality of opportunity for members of the disadvantaged groups. The major disadvantaged group they note is the Māori. This is one basis of the biculturalism that the Fourth Labour government officially enforced. That is, the Fourth Labour government’s policies embodied contradictions between the atomized individualism of its free-market economy of the neoliberalism and the centralized “socialism” of its conception of equity in the policy of biculturalism (Middleton 1992). However, privatization of government sectors also meant that the Aotearoa/New Zealand government abandoned its responsibility to biculturalism and to the Treaty of Waitangi (Sharp 1990; G. Smith and L. Smith 1996). Furthermore, the succeeding center-right National Government (1990–1999) aimed at creating

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a new environment of enterprise and a “blueprint for the Enterprise Nation,” in which emphasis on equity was seen as inappropriate (Middleton 1992). In the 2000s, the Labour Party views culture as a perspective that individuals have, while the National Party views culture as one of many usable traits that individuals have (Gershon 2008). Neoliberal Reforms in Education In the arena of education, the neoliberal reforms changed the meaning and purpose of schooling, fashioning it openly around the principles of the marketplace and the logic of individualism. In the context of high youth unemployment, an alleged decrease in educational “standards,” and the failure of state education to secure equality of opportunity in the 1970s, neoliberal education reform shifted the site of responsibility from government to parents (Anderson-Levitt 2003; Aronowitz and Giroux 1993; Brown 1990; Whitty et. al. 1998). The neoliberal reforms in education often replaced centralized educational bureaucracies with devolved systems of education characterized by institutional autonomy and school-based management and administration. These changes are often linked to enhanced parental choice, an increased community involvement in schools, a “market” element in the provision of educational services, and “privatizing” schools both by involving private-sector providers and by handing over to individuals and families decisions that were previously a matter of public policy. Such changes result in public services behaving more like the private sector (Whitty et. al. 1998). In Aotearoa/New Zealand, prior to the neoliberal reforms, education was centralized under the Department of Education, which determined 90 percent of school expenditures and the rules and procedures that governed the conduct of school administration. There was centralized bargaining over teachers’ work conditions via discussions between the department and the teacher unions. Between the department and the schools, there was also an intermediate tier of regional boards that provided a system of services to the schools in their areas (Lauder and Hughes 1999). By the 1970s, the conventional theses on education, social equity and economic growth were subjected to separate critical attacks from libertarian anarchists, radical sociologists, and neoconservative thinkers alike. In the 1980s, the right-wing advocacy of market power (parental “choice”), the critique of “social engineering” and “over-education,” and the calls for “accountability” and “efficiency” proved impossible to resist. In 1987, Minister of Education David Lange appointed a task force to review educational administration, which produced a report, Administering for Excellence, in 1988. The leader of the task force and author of the report, supermarket magnate Brian Picot, advocated a decentralized system of education. The Labour government used the Picot Report’s suggestions

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in the blueprint called “Tomorrow’s Schools” and implemented it in the 1989 educational reform (Lauder and Hughes 1999; Nash 1989). This reform has had a strong impact on the supposedly homogenized (see Gordon 1997) education in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The reforms of 1989 consisted of (1) the abolition of the Department of Education and its replacement with a smaller, policy-focused Ministry of Education plus agencies covering accountability (Educational Review Office or ERO), qualifications and assessment (New Zealand Qualification Authority or NZQA), and special education and training; (2) the abolition of all regional bodies, whose major functions were devolved to schools; and (3) the creation of boards of trustees (consisting of parents elected by parents, a staff representative, the school principal, a student representative, and sometimes a Māori elder) for each school. The boards of trustees gained control of budgets, with the exception of teacher salaries, which are paid directly by the government, and some programs of deferred maintenance and capital development. The powers and responsibilities of the boards were listed in the school charters, which contained statements of objectives. Some of the objectives, such as a commitment to equity, were required by the government, and the school’s success in attaining these goals was to be monitored by the state (Gordon 1997; Middleton 1992). Moreover, the demolition of school zoning and the introduction of government funding for each school according to the number of pupils caused schools to compete for pupils, which had not been a major concern in the past5 (Dale and Robertson 1997; Gordon 1997). Another major change was the introduction of a Unit Standard aiming at replacing the national standard examination for the School Certificate (Year 11), 6th Form Certificate (Year 12), Higher School Certificate (Year 13), and University Entrance, Bursaries, and Scholarship Examination (Year 13). Developed to make academic credentials compatible with vocational credentials (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 233), the Unit Standard breaks up the curriculum into units, each consisting of several weeks of work and an examination. While some teachers found it unsuitable for their subject, most mathematics teachers found it useful and incorporated it in all the classes. The Unit Standard became a basis of National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA) introduced in 2002. The implications of the reforms are many. First, the public good became secondary to surviving in the marketplace, and attracting pupils to schools became a major focus. Schools advertised themselves through image creation: stricter disciplining in the area of uniforms even outside the school, the conscious publication of “good news” in the local media, direct marketing to favored junior schools (Dale and Robertson 1997; Gordon 1997), and the introduction of tracking, which tends to cater to parents who “know how to complain” (see chapter 4). Many state schools began to seek nongovernmental funding sources abroad. They actively sought “fee-paying” students, mainly from Asian countries, who pay one hundred times more in school fees than citizen students (Bennett 1998;

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Dale and Robertson 1997). For example, in 1997, a fee-paying student who paid $7,500.00 (NZ) per year (as compared to $75.00 by local students) also paid a Ministry of Education fee of $900.00 (NZ) (up from $700.00). The then minister of education expressed his view that Asia was an “area of education for export” (Dale and Robertson 1997: 209–27). The net income from fee-paying students in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1995 was $230 million (NZ) (1 percent of total foreign exchange earning in Aotearoa/New Zealand), and the number of such students tripled between 1992 and 1995 to almost 4,000, over 90 percent of whom came from Asia (Japan 19 percent, Thailand, 18 percent, Taiwan 13 percent, Hong Kong 12 percent, Korea 12 percent, Malaysia 10 percent). These ESL students usually attended both ESL classes for fee-paying students and regular classes with local students (Dale and Robertson 1997; Fiske and Ladd 2000). It is worth noting here that these Asian fee-paying students, along with new wealthy immigrants from Asia since the introduction of BIP, have a very different position in Aotearoa/New Zealand from New Zealanders who are descendants of those Asians who immigrated in the late nineteenth century (see chapter 2; see also Pearson 1990). The presence of Asian fee-paying students, which this new type of “education for export” brought about, added a new regime of difference within the school. The effects of the presence of these fee-paying students will be discussed in chapters 8 and 9. Second, as a result of the reform, the gap between the wealthy and poor schools widened. Various factors enhance the polarization. The schools with falling rolls lost governmental funding, while the costs of teaching students and maintaining the school remained almost the same. This made it difficult for schools to improve themselves to attract more students, continuing a vicious cycle. Meanwhile, school boards in wealthy areas tend to have a high proportion of professional white-collar members with legal and accounting skills who are used to running large enterprises, giving advantages to schools that have a pool of such parents as potential board of trustees members. Also, because schools are increasingly dependent on income from the community (through school fees and community fund-raisers such as school fairs), schools in poor areas tend to collect less from the community (Gordon 1994, 1997). Some poor schools have turned to niche-marketing: specialist courses of sciences, music, drama, and certain languages, including Te Reo (Gordon 1997). Third, parental choice created a new demography of schooling. As in Britain (Brown 1990), the increased (though uneven) parental power to choose schools led to “racial segregation” as a result of a “white exodus” from schools with a high Māori population. Also, the successful schools with rising rolls often carry out enrollment schemes that allow the schools to choose prospective students. These enrollment schemes, limited only by human rights legislation on discrimination, restrict parental choice because the schools can deny entrance to certain students, therefore restricting the parental choice of the school (Gordon 1997).

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Moreover, not all parents can afford the extra transportation costs involved in choosing to move their children (or threatening the school that they might do so) from an unpopular local school to a more “desirable” school outside the local area (Gordon 1997; Nicholson 1995). Also, Graham and Linda Smith (1996) argue that some options are placed on an uneven field: for parents to choose Māori-centered schools is often to choose underdeveloped curricula resources and undertrained teachers. Given this unevenness of “parental choice,” I argue that it is important to examine the cultural dynamics among people within a school—among those who chose the school, for diverse reasons, and those who did not have a choice—and analyze how a school incorporates people of various backgrounds, orders them through various regimes of difference, and invests in their “cultural differences” in its effort to survive in the education free market, which I will discuss in chapter 9. These major social transformations caused a “crisis of national identity” with repercussions for social cohesion and “race” relations (Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Kelsey 1995). In Meaningful Inconsistencies, this situation is analyzed in terms of the rise of multiple, competing regimes of difference with a focus on the implication of having a bilingual unit at school.

Notes 1. The secondary schools were endowed with public funds and charged fees. Small changes that the act made were the introduction of a small number of annually awarded scholarships to enable talented primary school pupils to attend secondary schools free of charge, and the creation of district high schools, which are primary schools that have a senior class studying “secondary” subjects charging small fees (Shuker 1987). 2. There were 3,923 early childhood services in total in 1996 in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 235). 3. There were 2,397 primary level schools in total in 1996 in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 235). 4. Aotearoa/New Zealand’s reforms are neoliberal reforms, but are usually designated by the term “New Right reform” within Aotearoa/New Zealand. While “New Right” denotes a cluster of political groupings that have tended to support neoliberalism, the term neoliberalism refers to the philosophical, economic, and political doctrines of a belief in competitive individualism, an ideological representation of a “reduced” role for the state, and a maximization of the market derived from classical political and economic liberalism (Edwards and Usher 2000; Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004). In this book, I will use the term neoliberalism rather than “New Right” throughout for consistency. 5. Some see the funding per pupil, which caused competition among schools, as a positive move: in the past, educational boards were bulk funded and paid teachers’ salaries in the schools that the board covered. Big schools made money because of the big size of the classes, allowing the board that covered many big schools to pay high salaries to teachers. For this reason, some argue that the funding per student is fairer to small schools (McGeorge 1993).

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C ATEGORIZING Changing Official Regimes of Difference in Aotearoa/New Zealand Statistical Publications

% Categorizing and Official Statistics Who are “New Zealanders”? This is a simple but significant and often controversial question that lies at the heart of many debates on the politics and policy of immigration, education, language, and so on in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This chapter examines the (Aotearoa)/New Zealand state’s official representations of who “New Zealanders” are and shows how they have been contested and changed over time by focusing on categorizations in (Aotearoa)/New Zealand’s official statistical publications. Pierre Bourdieu (1989) argues that an official regime of difference imposes a universally approved perspective, freeing individuals from the symbolic struggle of all against all. However, the contestation of official regimes of difference does occur, such as through a movement to incorporate multiculturalist curriculum (Olneck 2000). This chapter illustrates how New Zealand government officials have attempted, throughout the history of (Aoteaora)/New Zealand, to decide what people are different and how to categorize them. It also shows the difficulty of implementing difference and living with it. In the history of New Zealand official statistics, certain “differences” were noticed but not others, and certain differences were forgotten over time while new differences were recognized. For example, while Chinese were singled out as a separate category in New Zealand’s official statistics in the late nineteenth century, they were included in the category of “European” in the 1950s. This does not suggest that the Chinese were considered to be European in the 1950s, however. Rather, their presence was ignored, as they no longer attracted public attention or anxiety. This changed again in the 1990s. This chapter traces such changes and complements them with a brief survey of the contemporary social, cultural, and economic background.

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Benedict Anderson (1991) described the dawn of the census in the late nineteenth century as the emergence of a new mode of imagining people. It was a totalizing classificatory grid, in which items were not only bounded, determinate, and countable, but also serialized into replicable plurals. The census shows the colonial state’s aspiration to create, under its control, a human landscape of perfect visibility, with everyone carrying a serial number. With the penetration of imperial administration, these systems of difference spread to daily life (Anderson 1991). Inspired by this observation, I illustrate in this chapter the ways in which the New Zealand state promoted regimes of difference and nationhood through statistical representations and processes by which people were incorporated, though not without resistance and not homogeneously, into the state’s regime and the regimes of difference it promoted. There are four focuses in my investigation of statistics: changes in what constituted “the population of New Zealand1”; how Māori have been incorporated, despite their initial resistance, into New Zealand state’s regime through censustaking by the New Zealand state; changes in the definition of Māori in the context of prevalent intermarriage between Pākehā and Māori; and changes in who were, and how they came to be considered, ethnic “Others.” This chapter provides historical depth for understanding the regimes of difference discussed in the rest of the book. It helps situate regimes of difference at the time of my fieldwork not as static categorizations but as a snapshot of the ongoing development of symbolic struggles and their articulations. Here, I do not take the statistics as a raw source of information. Rather, I see statistics—with its categorization, its attention to certain features of the population, etc.—as a window from which to see the ways the New Zealand state saw or wished to see people and their social relations. For example, whereas one historian complained about the lack of clarity in terms of the number of nonEuropeans in early New Zealand statistics (Belich 1996), I analyze that lack as an illustration of the lack of interest at that time in separately enumerating these people. Categories of Māori and the “Other” (non-European, non-Māori people) in New Zealand statistics indicate what the general public, dominated by Pākehā,2 perceived to pose “problems” to society at a given time (Brown 1984). The census was the only source of a comprehensive description of the social and demographic categorization of New Zealand (Brown 1984). One of the earliest statistics was taken on main Pākehā settlements in 1840 (Department of Economics, Statistics of New Zealand for the Crown Colony Period 1840–1852, hereafter SNZCCP, 1954). However, early statistics were limited to particular periods or occasions (Department of Statistics, Statistics of New Zealand, hereafter SNZ, 1852– 1856). New Zealand’s earliest official statistics, the annual Blue Books prepared in triplicate for the Colonial Office between 1840 and 1852, were based on such haphazard data (Department of Statistics, New Zealand Official Yearbook, hereafter NZOY, 1990). The colonial administration began taking a census of Pākehā every

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five years in 1851. The census was standardized in 1877 by the Census Act. The first partial enumeration of some Māori was done in a separate census in 1857– 1858. Some Māori censuses remained separate until 1951. It is worth noting here that the practical significance of these censuses in New Zealand policy making is limited because each department compiled statistics according to its own criteria. The definition of Māori, for example, varied in government departments from half or more Māori ancestry, to any Māori ancestry, to subjective estimation based on appearance (Brown 1984). The census was taken every five years, but statistical yearbooks reporting the census data were published annually. In this book, for the data for the years 1840 to 1852, I refer to Statistics of New Zealand for the Crown Colony Period 1840–1852 (SNZCCP), which compiled statistics taken by various agents. For the period between 1852 and 1891, I refer to Statistics of New Zealand (SNZ) (published from 1852 to 1920), and for the period between 1892 and 2006, I refer to the New Zealand Official Yearbook (NZOY) (published from 1892 to present). NZOY was published yearly until 1999, when it appeared as an online version. Starting in 2000, NZOY was published again in hard copy, and the publication was reduced to biennial issues. The purpose of the publication of official statistics has changed throughout its history. The Official Handbook of New Zealand, the Official Yearbook’s precursor, was first printed in 1875 in England and largely circulated there. It aimed to provide an understanding of New Zealand to potential settlers and business investors in England. The first Official Handbook published and printed in New Zealand appeared in 1891 with the same purpose. The Official Handbook was renamed NZOY in 1892 but its purpose stayed the same. In the early twentieth century, however, the reason for publishing NZOY changed to providing a reference to New Zealanders (NZOY 1990). Its purpose as a reference book for New Zealanders remains to this day. In what follows, after a brief section on pre-census time in New Zealand, each section covers a time block divided by changes in the concept of the “population of New Zealand” in the censuses. The chapter ends with a summary and a conclusion.

Before the Statistics Ancestors of Māori first arrived in what is now called Aotearoa/New Zealand from Eastern Polynesia around A.D. 800 and 900 by waka (canoes). Māori lived in hapū (subtribes), landholding political entities that typically contained 200 to 300 people and were composed of whānau (extended family). Several hapū related through a common ancestor composed an iwi (tribe).3 Internally, hapū and iwi were stratified into rangatira (chiefs), tūtūā (commoners) and taurekareka (slaves). The regimes of difference in Māori society were mainly based on hapū and iwi (Walker 1990a).

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The first reported European visitors were Abel Tasman and his crews, who came in 1642 and experienced a hostile reception by the Māori. The second visitors from Europe, led by James Cook, arrived in 1769. Thereafter, sailors, sealers, traders, and whalers from Europe arrived and sojourned. In 1814, the first missionary arrived, introducing Christianity and literacy to the Māori and railing against Māori religious beliefs. Māori welcomed these Europeans, whom they called Pākehā, because they brought trade and material benefits. Māori took in what fitted them best and used items in the way they saw fit. By the 1830s, European diseases and the tribal wars fought with muskets brought by Europeans had reduced the Māori population by 40 percent (Belich 1996; Walker 1990a). Under the missionaries’ guidance, thirteen Māori chiefs petitioned the king of England to provide some form of control over British nationals in Aotearoa and to fend off other foreign intervention. In response, British Resident James Busby arrived and convened thirty-four Māori chiefs in 1835 to sign a Declaration of Confederation and Independence, which the chiefs signed as representatives of the United Tribes of New Zealand (Walker 1990a; emphasis mine). Having neutralized other Europeans’ claims to control with this declaration, representatives of the British Crown urged Māori chiefs to sign the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, which many of them, although not all, did, and Aotearoa became a British colony, as mentioned in chapter 1 (Orange 1987; Walker 1990a). Here, the creation of the settler colony of New Zealand was preceded by the creation of Māori as “New Zealanders” with whom the British Crown could sign a treaty. However, this view of “New Zealander” changed soon after. The following sections will illustrate the transformations of the concept of “New Zealander” and various regimes of difference that constituted them.

Contestation between Pākehā and Māori Regimes and Groundwork for a Regime of Difference: 1840–1866 This section examines the first half of the major Pākehā settling period from the 1840s to 1880s. In 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, members of the English and Scottish genteel class began migrating through organized settlement companies or independently. Less moneyed British migrated assisted by New Zealand’s provincial, and later colonial, governments or by private entrepreneurs (Graham 1981; Belich 1996). Settlers came to New Zealand attracted by its looser class structure and its image as the “Britain of the South.” Historian James Belich (1996) argues that there were two models of settler New Zealand: “Better Britain,” a paradise that was racially homogeneous and permanently subordinate to Britain (that is, a Scottish model); and “Greater Britain,” aimed more at progress than at ethnic or religious exclusivity (that is, an American model). Until the 1880s, settler New Zealand followed mainly the Greater Britain model. From

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the 1840s to the 1860s, Pākehā settlers were sustaining three major industries: wool, gold, and “progress” (that is, clearing forests for timber and making farms, and gaining land from Māori) (Gardner 1981; Belich 1996). In 1852, New Zealand settler society became “self-governing” with six provincial councils, a General Assembly, and an Upper House nominated by the British Crown. The British Crown also appointed a governor. Voting rights were based on ownership of freehold land, which effectively disenfranchised the Māori because their land was in customary tribal titles. Viewing the denial of admission into mainstream politics as breach of the guarantee of tino rangatiratanga (chieftainship) under the Treaty of Waitangi (see chapter 1), Māori leaders established their own institution in the Waikato area with the Māori king in the late 1850s (Kingitanga or the King Movement). These Māori aimed at peaceful coexistence: the Māori king ruled territory under Māori title (self-determination), while the governor ruled lands acquired by the Crown (Walker 1990a). The 1860s, however, marked the beginning of Europeanization and the marginalization of Māori, especially through alienation of their land. Governor Browne (1855–1861) once said, “Māori had far more lands than they needed and the Europeans were determined to get them . . . correctly if possible, if not then by any means” (Walker 1990a: 113). In 1859, Governor Browne announced that any Māori individual could sell land without the consent of chiefs. A minor chief, Teira, went against the authority of his senior chief, Wiremu Kingi, and sold a block of land at Waitara in Taranaki. Trying to prevent his land from being sold, Kingi ordered his people to pull out the survey pegs sunk by Pākehā surveyors. Governor Browne sent troops and attacked Kingi’s fortifications. After several skirmishes, whose the settlement the government regarded as the government’s victory in this “Taranaki war,” the next governor, George Grey, gave up the Waitara purchase and instead invaded another Māori iwi, the Waikato, in 1863. He justified this invasion to the General Assembly as a preemptive strike based on what ultimately proved to be an unfounded rumor of a Māori invasion of a Pākehā settlement in Auckland. Governments passed laws to detain without trial persons believed to be taking part in “rebellion,” and to confiscate their land. This law and the rumor allowed the government to confiscate land from the Māori iwi that defended their own lands in Waikato. A total of 1.2 million hectares of Māori lands were confiscated after these Land Wars (Orange 1987; Walker 1990a). Also through the Native Land Court, established in 1862, the New Zealand government acquired Māori land. The Crown’s right of preemption promised in the Treaty of Waitangi (see chapter 1) was abolished. The Native Land Court identified the owners of Māori land and transformed communally owned land held under customary titles into individual titles recognizable in English law. The certificate of title bore the names of only ten persons, who then gained power to alienate the land. When one member of a hapū applied to the court for a hearing, other hapū members could do nothing to stop it; All they could do is to appear at

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the hearing. This speeded the transformation of land titles. This transformation facilitated the purchase of Māori land by settlers, leading to destructive effects on Māori. In order to assist Pākehā in settling on the land, the government also introduced various types of tenure, including deferred payment and lease in perpetuity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Māori owned 2 million hectares and Pākehā 24.4 million (Belich 1996; Walker 1990a; also, see Kawharu 1971). In short, the settlers made laws in Parliament, where Māori had no representation, to take land by confiscating it and by facilitating settlers’ purchase of Māori land through the establishment of the Native Land Court (Walker 1990a). This, however, caused humanitarians in Britain to urge the New Zealand government to recognize the Māori king and return the land it had confiscated. In order to avert possible intervention by the British Colonial Office, four Māori seats (rather than twenty if calculated by the population ratio) were introduced in 1867 in a House of Representatives of over seventy members (Walker 1990a). Statistics were required to determine the electoral boundaries (Brown 1984). However, many Māori iwi, suspicious of the New Zealand government, resisted Pākehā authorities’ taking a census of them. SNZ reported the “insuperable difficulty” of collecting statistics on “the most important Māori districts” due to “the Native Insurrection” (SNZ 1860: vi). Thus, statistics on “the Aboriginal Native Population of New Zealand,” which first appeared in 1857 (SNZ 1857), omitted major Māori settlements (Riddell 2000). Also, there was an imposition of the New Zealand state’s regime of difference on Māori in SNZ: Pākehā settlement regions, rather than iwi or hapū membership, were used in categorizing the Māori (SNZ 1857: 2). In short, the Pākehā regime as well as regimes of difference were beginning to dominate the Māori in this period. The earliest statistics of New Zealand were only on Pākehā settlers, designated as “British,” “European,” or “non-Māori” “civil population” (SNZCCP 1840–1852). The titles of the tables were “The European Population,” or “The Population of European Descent in New Zealand” (SNZ 1852–1866). This indicates that the name “New Zealander” was not yet given exclusively to the settlers between 1840 and 1866. It contrasts with description of the Pākehā as simply the “population of New Zealand” in later NZOYs. Some statistics of SNZCCP were on or drawn from particular settlements, such as Wellington (SNZCCP 1854: 8–11). This indicates the lack of an even penetration by the colonial government over various Pākehā settlements, as well as lack of unity among Pākehā in New Zealand. In this period, New Zealand statistics did not recognize what they later considered “Others.” The statistics classified people roughly as either Māori or British/ European settlers, with the latter being further categorized by their birthplaces (SNZCCP 1954; SNZ 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1864). Race was not an important criterion. For example, all the British colonies were categorized together, no matter whether their residents were European or not. This contrasts with later statistics. A summary of statistical categories and people’s incorporation into them is shown below (see Table 2.1).

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Table 2.1 Regimes of Difference during 1840–1866 Time Period 1840–1866: Contestation of Pākehā and Māori regimes •

Who are “New Zealanders”? No national subject •

Incorporation of Māori

Who are “Māoris”?

1857: first Māori • “Aboriginal statistics. Native population” • No statistics of major iwi •

Who are “Others”? •

No recognition

Assertion of the Pākehā’s Regime (of Difference), Māori Incorporation and Resistance, and Attention to Chinese: 1867–1883 From the late 1860s to early 1880s, technologies and public works (railways, telegraphs, etc.) as well as abolishment of provincial government in the 1870s connected various Pākehā settlements, allowing settlers to imagine themselves as a nation. As primary schooling became compulsory in 1877, school encouraged a sense of community, and later of nation (Sinclair 1986). The 1877 Census Act standardized the census for the settler. On the pages of statistics from 1867 to 1883, SNZ reported the “Population of the Colony of New Zealand (exclusive of Aboriginal Natives),” with minor variations.4 This new categorization implies that the category “New Zealanders” does not include Māori—otherwise the “population of New Zealand” can be shown in total, and then divided into settlers and Māori as is the case for the period 1884–1921. The 1877 Census Act did not cover the Māori or “Aboriginal Natives,” mainly because of the belief that it was impossible to take the Māori census in the same way that data on settlers were collected. In this period, from the late 1860s to the 1880s, Māori resisted incorporation and marginalization in the Pākehā regime and struggled for autonomy. Many chiefs hoped for the model presented by the chief Tamihana: two sticks in the ground, one representing the Māori king and the other the governor, with a third stick across them representing the law of God and the queen of England. The governor, however, denied this vision. In 1875, several Māori iwi began the Kotahitanga (unity) movement, paralleling the Kingitanga movement, to resist Pākehā infractions of the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1877, however, Chief Judge James Prendergast declared the Treaty of Waitangi to be a “simple nullity,” therefore closing the door on Māori recourse to law for a settlement of their grievances (Orange 1987; Walker 1990a). Māori were beginning, however, to surrender to the New Zealand government’s census taking. Numbers of Māori for some provinces appeared in appendixes in the 1867 SNZ and then in the footnote for the table of the population of New Zealand (SNZ 1874–1876, 1878–1883). The numbers of Māori did not

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appear in the main table in this period. The 1874 census was the first national Māori census by the government (Riddell 2000). Until 1921 (for South Island Māori, until 1916), the Māori census was based on the statistician-general’s instruction to enumerators, who tended to be local officials who already had contact with Māori. They then picked their own sub-enumerators (Riddell 2000). A new feature in SNZ of this period was the attention given to Chinese people as they began arriving in the gold fields of New Zealand. In the 1867 SNZ, China was singled out from “Other Foreign Countries” in the list of birthplaces of immigrants. Footnotes on the number of Chinese appeared in the tables of the population of New Zealand and of the destination of emigrants. Also, detailed information on Chinese migrants’ ports of origin and destination, and their net increase in New Zealand, was reported (SNZ 1874–1891). While the question about race was asked in census forms from 1874, only Chinese were required to identify themselves racially up to 1916, when detailed race statistics began. The question of race was asked only in general (non-Māori) censuses up to 1921 (NZOY 1990). Even before Chinese males began coming to the gold fields in the 1860s, anti-Chinese sentiment existed because of the belief that the Chinese provided cheap labor. Anti-Chinese sentiment climaxed in the late 1870s and 1880s. The Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881 imposed a poll tax on Chinese of £10 per head, and limited the number of Chinese who could disembark from one ship to one person for every 10 tons of the vessel’s weight (Ip 1995). Although special attention was given to Chinese, their number was included in the unmarked “New Zealander” category in the main table of the population of New Zealand. This indicates that, while recognized as causing social concern, their distinctiveness was erased in the main official imagining of nationhood. Such erasure becomes clearer in the years between 1950 and 1965, when the New Zealand population was divided only into “European” and “Māori” in the main population table. The legacy of this imagining of nationhood that erases non-Māori minorities persists in the debate regarding multiculturalism vs. biculturalism, discussed in chapters 1, 8, and 9. See Table 2.2 for a summary. Table 2.2 Regimes of Difference during 1867–1883 Time Period 1867–1883: Assertion of Pākehā regime •

Who are “New Zealanders”? Exclusive of Māori •

Incorporation of Māori 1874: First (incomprehensive) national census for Māori •

Who are “Māoris”? “Aboriginal Natives” •

Who are “Others”? 1867–: Comments on Chinese • 1874–1891: Detailed information on Chinese •

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Emergence of Nationhood at the Intersections of Regimes of Difference of Briton vs. New Zealander (Better Briton), Māori vs. Pākehā, and New Zealander (Aryan) vs. Other: 1884–1924 Historians disagree on how to view the period from the mid 1880s to mid 1920s in terms of New Zealand’s nationhood. The orthodox view until the 1950s was that independence and nationhood were given by Britain in this period in thanks for New Zealand’s loyalty to Britain in international wars, such as the South African War and the First World War (for the discussion of this view, see Belich 1996). In contrast, historian Keith Sinclair contends that around 1900,5 a national feeling emerged among regular people from the experience of the international wars, with the literary and political elite tagging along. The change in population structure—a decrease in transient male settlers without kin and an increase in house-owning families—was conducive to creating a sense of nationhood. On the other hand, James Belich, another historian, insists that New Zealand was not independent from 1885 to the 1970s due to “recolonization”: a renewal and reshaping of colonial links between colony (New Zealand) and metropolis (London) (Belich 1996; 2001). Recolonization was characterized by (1) the protein industry (the mass export of frozen meat and dairy products), which made New Zealand a town supply district of London and created a powerful new class of medium yeoman farmers; (2) the collective identity of being Better Britons characterized by martial strength, egalitarianism, ingenuity, and self-reliance; (3) attempts to put Māori under Pākehā control; and (4) the desire for homogenization. Homogenization was attempted at three levels: socially (unity of classes with yeomen farmers as the “backbone of the country” to safeguard rural virtue for New Zealand and for urbanized Britain); morally (taming of frontier male culture by attacking drinking and controlling “violent” rugby games); and racially (reconceptualizing the place of Māori and restricting Chinese immigration) (Belich 1996; also, see Phillips 1987). I do not view Sinclair’s and Belich’s views as mutually exclusive. Rather, I see them as multiple regimes of difference co-existing with each other. I elaborate below three such regimes of difference—Britons vs. New Zealanders, Māori vs. Pākehā, and New Zealanders (Pākehā and Māori both considered as Aryans) vs. Others. The first regime of difference is that of Briton vs. New Zealander, created by the notion of Better Britonism. Better Britonism was expressed in loyalty and friendly rivalry in rugby (rugby was considered New Zealand’s national sport by 1900) and wars that New Zealand fought for Britain. Especially, the tragic sacrifice of lives of ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corp) soldiers in Gallipoli during World War I was a major catalyst for the development of a New Zealand national consciousness around its martial strength and loyalty to Britain. It is worth noting here that many Pākehā at that time called Britain “Home,”

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and recent British immigrants to New Zealand were called “Homies.” According to Sinclair (1986), many Pākehā considered themselves “New Zealanders and Britons” simultaneously. However, a large influx of British immigrants in the 1920s under the Empire Settlement Act produced resentment against “Homies” as they competed for jobs with returned New Zealander servicemen (Belich 2001; also, see Sinclair 1986; Phillips 1987). This regime of difference of Britons vs. New Zealanders also intersected with that of New Zealand vs. Australia, as New Zealand pondered and finally rejected joining the Australasian federation in the 1880s. In this period, there emerged a new categorization of population in NZOY. The number of Māori was reported in the main table for the first time in 1884, and the term “total” included Māori. A statistical table was entitled “The Population (inclusive and exclusive of Māoris) of the Colony of New Zealand” (SNZ 1884–1891; NZOY 1892–1924 except for 1896; emphasis added): The Population (exclusive of Māoris), Māori Population, Total Population of Colony. Here, the label “the population” probably indicates Pākehā because the label “population” is used interchangeably with the label “European” in the later pages of the same NZOY (NZOY 1911, 1912). However, such interchangeability leads to peculiar situations. For example, in the early 1910s (NZOY 1911: 572–73, 1912: 112–14), a table entitled “European population” shows three categories: European population: Total (exclusive of Māoris and that of Annexed Pacific Islands), Half-castes living as Europeans (included previously), Chinese (included previously). The peculiar inclusion of Chinese in the category “European,” shows the interchangeability of the labels between Europeans, non-Māori in New Zealand, and “the population [of New Zealand] (exclusive of Māori)” in this period. This unmarking of Pākehā as the population of New Zealand assumes the primacy and normalcy of the settler population as the quintessential New Zealanders (see Fusco 1988, 1995). While the category of “New Zealander” began to include Māori in this period, there were different interpretations of the place of Māori as it relates to the regime of difference of Britons vs. New Zealanders. Sinclair (1986) emphasizes that “New

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Zealanders” as a nation were imagined as exclusively white in this period. In 1886, New Zealand–born settlers outnumbered foreign-born settlers, and in the 1890s the former called themselves “New Zealand Natives,” establishing New Zealand Native Associations aiming at stimulating patriotism. Their assertion of nativeness was based on the claim that the Māori were not the only natives (although Pākehā borrowed Māori culture in asserting their native status) and on the belief that the Māori were dying out. Belich (2001), on the other hand, argues that Pākehā “whitened” Māori through the Aryan Māori ideology during this time. Aryan Māori ideology claimed that Māori shared an ancient origin with Northern Europeans, including the British, thereby co-opting Māori in asserting New Zealand collective identity without challenging the ideology of New Zealand’s racial homogeneity and Britishness. Some Māori also supported this ideology (Belich 2001). The second major regime of difference in this time period, that of Māori vs. Pākehā, as it intersected with the regime of difference of Briton vs. New Zealander, attracted much discussion. The difference between Māori and Pākehā was elaborated via the discourse that the Māori were dying out (SNZ 1884: 3; Ballara 1986). For those Pākehā who believed in the Māori decrease, the only hope for Māori was to become like Pākehā by cultural assimilation or by intermarriage, producing “half-castes.” Reflecting this, in the early twentieth century the census reports increasingly put focus on the half-castes, measuring the rate of Māori intermarriage and of assimilation (Riddell 2000). For example, there was a census report (NZOY 1898–1908) with the following table headings: Population (exclusive of persons of the aboriginal native race, of mixed European and Native blood, and Chinese), Half-castes and persons of mixed race living as and among Europeans, Chinese, Aboriginal natives (including [number] Māori wives of Europeans), Half-castes and persons of mixed race living among and as members of Māori tribes. However, there was no clear and stable definition of blood mixing (Riddell 2000: 81). From 1881 onward, half-castes were included in either the Māori or European categories, with enumerators making decisions based on whether the people in question were “living as Europeans,” or “as Māori” (Salesa 2000: 105–06). In 1896, those half-castes who were previously listed as European could reclassify themselves into the “half-caste as Māori” category (Riddell 2000). In 1901, three-quarter castes were sometimes counted as Māori and sometimes as half-caste. The categorization overlooked those who considered themselves Māori despite their blood ratio or otherwise. The concern with the legal definition of half-castes intensified after World War I, resulting in a change in the

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1926 census (Salesa 2000), discussed in the next section. Throughout, Pākehā saw half-castes as inhabiting a border space without constituting a full-blown category such as mestizo in Spanish and Portuguese colonies (Brading 1985; Haberly 1983). “Half-caste” was both a cultural and physical definition of persons, reflecting and reconfiguring what “Māori” or “European” meant (Salesa 2000) and emphasizing the distinction between Māori and Pākehā. Ignored was a Māori vision of this process in which they could incorporate Pākehā elements as they wished without abandoning their Māoriness (Riddell 2000). Māori struggled against Pākehā hegemony in the 1890s on three fronts: the Kotahitanga movement; Kingitanga movement led by Māori King Tawhiao of Waikato; and the Te Aute College Students’ Association (TACSA; later Young Māori Party). While the first two movements acted independently, both sought Māori autonomy via establishment of their own assemblies and boycotted the Native Land Court. The former wish was not heeded, but the latter action resulted in the government’s establishing the Māori Land Council, although it was dominated by Pākehā members. Unlike the Kotahitanga and Kingitanga movements, which were forums of chiefly elders seeking devolution of power, TACSA was formed by young leaders seeking to cooperate within the parameters defined by the New Zealand state. They aimed at adopting Pākehā values while pursuing a Māori agenda (Walker 1990a). In the meantime, Māori increasingly participated in the Pākehā world. For example, in World War I, responding to the call to arms, some Māori hapū served in the high-profile Māori Battalion, although other hapū were imprisoned as military defaulters for refusing to serve (Walker 1990a). The Māori Battalion proved its loyalty, which gave some Māori politicians leverage to negotiate with the government for land-development schemes and other projects for Māori. Māori contributions to rugby also raised the Māori profile among the Pākehā public (Belich 2001). Some Māori continued to resist the New Zealand government’s census-taking in this period. This was a form of resistance to being incorporated in the Pākehā regime, as well as to the Pākehā regimes of difference. Allowing someone to take a census is an act of acknowledging census-takers’ authority over the counted, politically and personally, to decide what constitutes them as who they are (Bourdieu 1989). For example, in the regions under the Māori king, sub-enumerators experienced difficulties, “being told that the ‘[Māori] King’ had already taken a census . . . The Māoris also seemed to connect the census with taxation, and objected to it on those grounds” (NZOY 1900: 111). Other reasons for the resistance to census-taking included fear—that the census was for conscription for the South African War, or that the census was for extermination or for deportation once it was known who had survived contact with Pākehā—distrust in the New Zealand government, and resistance to being counted at the same time as their pigs (Riddell 2000). Nonetheless, the new, more detailed, Māori census was taken in 1886 (SNZ 1887), and in the South Island, Māori households, not enumerators, filled out census forms just as the settler population did (although for

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settlers, individuals, not household, filled census forms) in the 1916 census. The census imposed an alien framework and did not respect a framework that was familiar to Māori. For example, the censuses from 1901 until 1991 did not collect information on iwi and hapū, the main regimes of difference for Māori (NZOY 2000: 142; the exception was the census of 1874). The third regime of difference was that of New Zealanders (considered as Aryan) vs. Others. The desire for social, moral, and racial homogenization of recolonization aimed at eradication of the “Others.” Belich argues that statistics used birthplaces as criteria in order to make New Zealand appear ethnically homogeneous and British, understating the size of various minority groups (Belich 2001). However, I argue that in this period, the category of “Others” was emphasized, not erased, in order to foster “racial homogeneity” by tracking and halting their increase. The concept of “race,” and later, “Race Alien,” were introduced through the censuses’ focus on Chinese, adding to the existing framework of birthplaces. Racially restrictive immigration legislation begun in 1881 was tightened toward the late 1920s and lasted until the 1950s, and arguably until 1974 (Belich 2001; Brawley 1993; Trlin 1987). Belich argues that New Zealand’s immigration policy was not white but Aryan, a flexible racial ideology that could incorporate various Europeans, Northern Indians (although Indians were subject to restrictive immigration laws in New Zealand), and Māori, as mentioned earlier (Belich 2001). This was a regime of difference of Aryan vs. “Others,” aimed at reducing the number of “Others” by narrowing the immigration gate for them. The noted “Others” of the late nineteenth century remained the Chinese. Intensive state and popular anti-Chinese feelings from the 1880s continued into the 1920s due to labor competition for jobs, the myth of white superiority, and the negative racial stereotype of Chinese (Ip 1995; Pearson 1990). The amendment to the Chinese Immigrants Act in 1896 raised the poll tax to £100 (NZ) per head and limited the number of Chinese passengers who could be carried by vessels to the colony to one per 200 tons of burthen (NZOY 1900: 105). In statistics, Chinese were singled out as a special category to be noticed and discussed. For example, “the population of the colony” in the narrative introduction section (not in the statistical table) (SNZ 1887–1888) reported “Population (other than Māoris or Chinese)” and “Chinese,” which were then added together into “Total (exclusive of Māoris).” “Māoris” was then added to the former to make “Total population.” Population (other than Māoris or Chinese), Chinese, Total (exclusive of Māoris), Māoris, Total population.

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A footnote (SNZ 1887–1891) and a textual explanation (NZOY 1892–1905) on the Chinese migrants in New Zealand appeared after the tables of the population of New Zealand. Several paragraphs (SNZ 1884–1891; NZOY 1893–1910, except for 1904 to 1907) and a subsection (NZOY 1898–1901, 1908–1923) described the chronological changes in the numbers of Chinese migrants. The effectiveness of the Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881, aimed at limiting the increase of Chinese, was discussed (SNZ 1887: xxi). One significant change at the turn of the century was the racialization of people: the category of “Others” became “Race Aliens,” who were defined as “Persons of other than European descent” (NZOY 1910: 112) and classified as such in the immigration returns. This racialization happened gradually: as of 1852 immigrants were categorized in terms of the ports or country of origin; as of 1878 Chinese were singled out, no matter which ports they were from; and in 1898 the concept of “Race Aliens” was introduced. It no longer mattered whether one was a British subject or not. A report on “Race Aliens,” including information on Chinese, appeared in the section of birthplaces of immigrants as early as the 1898 NZOY (NZOY 1898: 100). Starting in 1910, the note was replaced by a new Race Alien section, which lasted until 1942. The actual question on race in the general census (not just for immigrants) was introduced in the 1916 census (Brown 1984). The 1920 Immigration Restriction Bill prohibited the entry of people not of British birth or parentage to New Zealand without permit. Naturalized British subjects and indigenous people of any part of the British Empire, except New Zealand, were not regarded as British (Ip 1995; Pearson 1990). In sum, this period saw three coexisting regimes of difference: Britons vs. New Zealanders, in which Māori and Pākehā were merged; Māori vs. Pākehā, with attention on the dying out of Māori and the place of half-castes; and New Zealanders as Aryan (including Māori) vs. “Others” when discussing Chinese and other “Race Aliens.” See Table 2.3 below for the summary of this section.

Table 2.3 Regimes of Difference during 1884–1924 Who are “New Zealanders”?

Time Period 1884–1924: Emergence of nationhood •

Incorporation of Māori

Pākehā (as • 1886: More unmarked “popula- detailed Māori tion of New Zeacensus land”) and Māori • Resistance • 1916: No more enumerators for South Island Māoris

•

Who are “Māoris”? 1881–1895: Māori and MāoriPākehā half-castes living as Māori • 1896: Opted Māori-Pākehā half-castes living as Pākehā were added •

Who are “Others”? 1884–1903; 1908–1923: Description or subsection about Chinese • 1898–1942: Report on Race Aliens •

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Independent New Zealand, Māori under the Pākehā Regime, and the Rise and Fall of Anti-Chinese Sentiment: 1925–1949 In this period, New Zealand’s status shifted in 1947 from a dominion to an independent country. The ties of the British Empire were loosening in the 1920s and 1930s, while the system of preferences in trade remained strong. While World War II strengthened New Zealand’s tie to Britain, constitutional and foreign policy decisions of New Zealand from 1944 to 1951 show New Zealand’s allies shifting from Britain to the United States and Australia with the independent signing of an international treaty and the signing of a defense treaty between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (the ANZUS Treaty) (Belich 2001; Henderson 1984). This took place despite the popular loyalty toward Britain (Belich 2001; Sinclair 1986) and continued existence of the regime of difference of Britons vs. New Zealanders (Māori and Pākehā) that put Britain and New Zealand in one domain of comparison. In this period, the population of New Zealand was presented as “Population (exclusive of Māoris) of New Zealand proper” and “Māori population of New Zealand proper,” which were added into “Population (inclusive of Māoris) of New Zealand proper” (NZOY 1925–1949). The unmarked “population” still meant non-Māori (mainly Pākehā) in New Zealand. The difference from the NZOY of 1884–1924 was the concept of “New Zealand proper,” consisting of both Māori and non-Māori as opposed to island colonies (Kermadec Island, Cook Island and Niue, Tokelau Island, and the mandated territory of Western Samoa). Māori were increasingly incorporated into the Pākehā regime and its regime of difference in this period. Begun in the previous decade as discussed, Māori entry into mainstream politics intensified through the Young Māori Party, rugby, and public imaginings through their participation in New Zealand’s war efforts during World War II. A prominent Māori church, the Ratana Church, allied with the mainstream Labour Party in the 1930s (Orange 1987; Walker 1990a). Māori cultural distinctiveness, perceived in comparison to Pākehā culture, was celebrated in the 1930s; this was also a sign of its incorporation into the Pākehā regime of difference, which offered a standard by which to judge difference between Māori and Pākehā cultures (Walker 1990b; also see Taylor 1994). This increased incorporation was reflected in the further penetration of the census into Māori societies. Instead of being counted by sub-enumerators, North Island Māori households filled out their own census forms (however, the rest of the population filled out forms based on individuals, not households) for the first time in 1926 (in the less populous South Island this had started in 1916) (NZOY 1931; Riddell 2000). At the same time, in the 1920s and 1930s half-castes attracted attention in various arenas, caught at the center of the many-sided struggle between Pākehā and Māori for resources and authority, as well as for the definition of races. Sir

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Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangihiroa), Māori leaders in the Young Māori Party, saw half-castes as ideal leaders politically and socially, bridging the intellectual, social, and political gap between Māori and Pākehā. Academically, scholars viewed half-castes throughout the Pacific to be providing important examples for studying the spread of a race (European) over a variety of climates: for example, in Samoa, native blood was seen to allow Europeans to survive in the tropics. However, this did not lead to consensus on a principle regarding miscegenation within the British Empire (Salesa 2000). In the 1926 New Zealand census, all half-caste European-Māori began to be included in the Māori population, whether they lived “as Māori” or “as European” (NZOY 1928: 75). In contrast, Māori half-caste with other Polynesians, Japanese, or Chinese were categorized as non-Māori (NZOY 1930). Also, attention-attracting blood arithmetic was reserved for half-castes of Māori and Pākehā. For example, the 1930 NZOY meticulously categorized people of Māori and Pākehā descent by measuring a person’s blood components up to eighths. There was no such detailed categorization for the descendants of Māori and non-Pākehā. This contrast suggests that the obsession with Māori/Pākehā half-caste had more to do with Māori-Pākehā relations than with finding out racial compositions of all New Zealand residents. From 1925 to 1942, the section on race aliens focused on Chinese and Indians. The 1927 NZOY stated: “Although race aliens comprise comparatively small proportions of the total arrivals and departures, they are by no means unimportant . . . the principal race aliens with whom New Zealand is concerned are the Chinese and Indians and these are shown separately from other race aliens” (NZOY: 1927: 91). In the late 1920s the section also reported the history of restrictions on Chinese immigrants and their effectiveness in decreasing the local Chinese population (for example, NZOY 1928: 88–89). A significant historical background is the intensification of the attacks on the Chinese, including their alleged miscegenation with Māori, in the 1920s. However, the Sino-Japanese War provoked public sympathy for the Chinese in New Zealand, resulting in more lenient policies toward them in the 1930s and 1940s (Ip 1995; Pearson 1990). This shift was also because of a decrease in the number of Chinese immigrants due to wartime restrictions on migration, diversion of ships, and use of passenger liners as troop carriers and hospital ships in the 1940s (NZOY 1943: 11). From 1943 to 1949, there was no information on the race composition of immigrants or residents in New Zealand, nor was there a section on race aliens or on Chinese. The question of race was revived in 1950 in a section called “Race Origin.” In short, in this period a regime of difference of New Zealanders (Pākehā and Māori) vs. Others shifted from aiming to reduce the numbers of the latter to accepting them as less problematic, though nonetheless different from the mainstream groups in society. See Table 2.4 below for the summary of this time period.

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Table 2.4 Time Period

Regimes of Difference during 1925–1949 Who are “New Zealanders”?

1925–1949: Be- • Pākehā (as coming Indepen- unmarked “populadent New Zealand tion of New Zealand) and Māori • “New Zealand proper” vs. island colonies •

Incorporation of Māori

Who are “Māoris”?

Who are “Others”?

1926–: no 1926–: All Māori- • 1910–1942: Secenumerators for Pākehā half-caste tion on Race Alien all Māori • Not Māori–non• 1943–49: No inPākehā half-caste formation on race composition •

Postwar Labor Immigration and New Zealand’s Nationhood of Pākehā and Māori (and Other): 1950–1965 After World War II, despite the gradual political separation of New Zealand from Britain, both New Zealand and Britain sought to restore economic recolonization. In spite of the supplementary diversification into beef and milk powder to the United States and Asia, both public and private sectors were reluctant to think beyond Britain (Belich 2001; Henderson 1984). On the other hand, the New Zealand government supported the migration of immigrants from not only Great Britain but also the Netherlands and Pacific Islands (that is, Western Samoa, Tonga, The Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, and Fiji), as well as Māori living in rural areas, to urban areas in order to fill the demands of the post–World War II labor market. While immigrants from Britain and Netherlands were invisible, in terms of ethnic categories in the official statistics, those from Pacific Islands remained visible and marked as “other,” especially after the need for their labor declined in the aftermath of the oil shock of 1973 (Belich 2001; Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Walker 1990a). For Māori, the urbanization was drastic: in 1945, 25 percent of Māori lived in towns and cities; by 1966 the figure had risen to 62 percent (Pearson 1990: 111). The challenges for these urban migrants were to adjust to the capitalist economic demands and to transplant their culture (Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Walker 1990a). In everyday life, Māori urbanization juxtaposed Māori and Pākehā, making visible their difference and often inequality in Pākehā-dominated urban life. The first comprehensive official report in which the “progress” of Māori was measured was the Hunn Report of 1960. The report proposed the “integration” of the race, instead of “assimilation” or “segregation” or “symbiosis.” Integration was to combine, not fuse, the Māori and Pākehā elements to form one nation wherein Māori culture remained distinct. However, in the longer term it was a process of assimilation and loss of Māori culture, which many Māori resented (Ballara 1987; Sharp 1990).

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In this period, the government also expanded its regime to Māori institutionally: it established the Māori Council out of the tribal committees recognized by statute in 1945, and made it into a four-tiered system in 1962. The government expected Māori cooperation in promoting the well-being and postwar adaptation of Māori. The Māori Council contributed to the maintenance of Māori language and culture, education of Pākehā to become culturally sensitive to Māori, and the support of urban Māori youths, and also functioned as a sounding board for the government for pending legislation. However, the government did not heed the Māori Council’s recommendation on land issues: the Māori Affairs Amendment Act of 1967 commodified land, facilitating its acquisition for sale to others. This “last land grab” triggered the Māori land rights movement in the next decade (Walker 1990a), described in the next section. In this period, “European” emerged as a category in statistics. NZOY from 1950 to 1965 divided the population of New Zealand into: European, Māori. Pākehā was no longer the unmarked population but one of two groups that made up New Zealand. Despite the recognition of the existence of the non-European, non-Māori people (i.e., “Race Aliens”) in a later section, all the non-Māori in New Zealand were labeled as “Europeans.” This dividing of New Zealand people into European and Māori here indicates an erasure of “Race Aliens” in the imagining of New Zealand’s nationhood, although their existence was noticed in later pages in the same NZOY. The category of Māori became more inclusive than before. In 1953 (NZOY 1953: 42–43), Māori included: Full Māori, Māori-Europeans of three-quarter caste, half-castes, and those whose degree was not specified. People of mixed blood from Māori and “other races” (that is, not European and not Māori), who used to be counted as non-Māori, began to be counted as Māori as of the 1958 NZOY (54–56). This expansion of the category of Māori indicates changes in the meaning of Māori. Previously, only half-castes of a Māori and Pākehā parent were considered to be potentially Māori. This reflected the interest in Māori assimilation, physical or cultural, to Pākehā, as discussed earlier. However, the incorporation of half-castes of Māori and any race as Māori indicates the interest in Māori as a separate group, whatever the racial mix.

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In this period, a more detailed state machinery seeking knowledge of their personal lives was imposed on Māori. In 1951, a separate individual, rather than household, form of enumeration, the same as the rest of the population, was introduced to Māori in the North Island (in 1921 in the South Island) (NZOY 1954: 53). While the whole New Zealand population was divided into European and Māori on the first pages of the NZOY, on later pages in a subsection on racial origins (begun in 1950), the whole of the New Zealand population was divided into three categories: European, Māori, Race Alien. The “Race Alien” consisted of many subcategories (for example, twentyfour categories in the 1951–1952 NZOY). The NZOY also noted the rate of increase for each of the three categories, with special attention to Chinese, Samoan, and Cook Island Māori (NZOY 1951–52: 54) and, later, to Polynesians, Fijians, and Indians (NZOY 1958: 59; 1964: 88). The section on “racial origin” appeared in 1950. Beginning in the 1956 census, the term “Other Races” replaced “Race Alien.” In short, in this period, the New Zealand government imagined New Zealand’s nationhood by use of the regime of difference of European vs. Māori while seeing the racial composition through the regime of difference of European vs. Māori vs. Others, which seeded tensions between biculturalism and multiculturalism in later years. This period also marks the incorporation of Māori into the regime of difference of European vs. Māori, no longer as someone to be assimilated but as a separate group. See Table 2.5 below for the summary of this section.

Table 2.5

Regimes of Difference during 1950–1965

Time Period 1950–1965: Post– World War II labor immigration •

Who are “New Zealanders”? Europeans and Māori

•

Incorporation of Māori

Who are “Māoris”?

1951–: Same • 1953–: Full method of census Māori, half-, taking as the rest of three-quarters, population and any degree of Māori-Pākehā mix • 1958–: Half-caste of Māori and anyone •

Who are “Others”? 1950–: Subsection of racial origin: European, Māori, Race Aliens • 1956–: Race Aliens becomes Other Races •

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“New Zealand” with Minorities: 1966–2006 Since the 1970s, there have been three major changes as described in chapter 1: the “decolonization” of New Zealand from the “England in the South Seas” to a country in the Asia-Pacific region, the Māori resurgence that set in motion the transformation of New Zealand into a bicultural (Māori/Pākehā) nation, and neoliberal reforms in various domains (Belich 2001; Henderson 1984; Sharp 1990). Both conservative and radical Māori leaders pursued the resolution of Māori grievances under the Treaty of Waitangi, self-determination, land rights, the transformation of social and political institutions to include Māori needs, and an equal say with Pākehā in the future of the country (Walker 1990a). While the government initially took a multicultural position, it responded to Māori demands for biculturalism by acknowledging partnership between Māori and Pākehā under the Treaty of Waitangi, as mentioned. However, biculturalism was not reflected in NZOY’s uneven regime of difference. From 1966 to 1971, NZOY’s New Zealand population was divided into: Total population, Māoris (included above). Compared to the categorization of New Zealand being divided into European and Māori from 1950 to 1965, NZOY of 1966–1971 brought back Pākehā as an invisible category whose number was not shown on its own. This categorical invisibility was a symptom of, and further perpetuated, Pākehā normativity by unmarking them while marking Māori as a minority group (Spoonley 1991a). From 1979 to 2006, though, the table in the population section that reported the number of the total population in New Zealand no longer included any ethnic categories. There was no suggestion of biculturalism or multiculturalism on the page that had been so instrumental in creating the imaginings of (Aotearoa)/ New Zealand’s nationhood. This new absence of ethnicity on the first pages of population section reflected a growing opposition to the inclusion of the ethnic question around the world. In New Zealand in particular, the problems pointed out since the 1976 census were the question’s biological concept being irrelevant to the contemporary perception of ethnicity based on self-identification and culture, the reproduction of racism by reinforcing negative stereotypes, and the concern that the information might be used to the disadvantage of minority groups (Brown 1984). Nonetheless, in the 1979–2006 period separate sections discussing the numbers and issues specific to minority groups remained in later pages. Meanwhile, ways to categorize people by ethnicity changed. In 1971, the title of the section “racial origin” was changed to “ethnic groups” but retained similar content (NZOY 1971: 88). This reflected the emergence of the concept of ethnicity in the 1960s,

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when ethnic groups emerged as units that had political efficacy in the context of political and economic struggles within nation-states. The concept of ethnicity incorporated the idea of power relationships and emphasized the ways in which groups arise and define themselves against others (Wolf 1994). As to the definition of Māori, in the 1970s, while the NZOY continued to define Māori as “all persons of half or more Māori ancestry,” there emerged another definition in the non-census domain “a person of the Māori race of New Zealand: and includes any descendants of such a person who elects to be considered as a Māori” (the Electoral Amendment Act of 1975; also see the Māori Affairs Amendment Act of 1974; emphasis mine) (NZOY 1976: 69; NZOY 1979: 64). This led to the introduction of a two-part question on ethnic origin in the 1976 census: half or more Māori descent; and persons of the Māori race of New Zealand or descendants of such (NZOY 1978: 69–70). That is, in the 1970s selfidentification became the dominant form of identification, although blood ratio and appearance remained as criteria for judging one’s Māoriness (Pool 1991). In 1986 the blood ratio basis was eliminated. Instead, Aotearoa/New Zealand residents were asked two questions on “ethnic origin” and “ethnic origin or descent.” The former referred to cultural and ancestral criteria, and respondents could choose one or two ethnic origins. The latter is based on a common biological (or ancestral) background, which was considered especially relevant for Māori (NZOY 1988–1989: 188–89). Thus, from 1988–1989 to 1992, the ethnic categories were listed as shown below: One ethnic origin: European, New Zealand Māori, Pacific Island Polynesians (further categorized); Two ethnic origins (followed by a list of combinations of the above categories); Three ethnic origins (followed by a list of combinations of the above categories); Not specified. In the 1986–1987 NZOY, a section on “ethnic origin and citizenship”6 appeared. While keeping a similar structure, the page dimensions increased in the 1990 NZOY, which was published in a special edition for the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the enlargement was retained in the following years due to its popularity (NZOY 1992). Newly inserted were special articles and glossy pie graphs on the percentage of the Māori population, of the Pacific Island population, of people born outside Aotearoa/New Zealand, etc.

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Starting in 1996, the census asked people to specify which ethnic group(s) they belonged to and allowed them to specify as many as they wished. Therefore, the 1998 NZOY showed the results in two ways: the breakdown of people by allocating people to one group only with the use of a priority recording system, and the total number of responses for particular ethnic groups (people may be counted in more than one group) (NZOY 1998: 121), as shown below. Ethnic Group of Population Ethnic Group: European only, New Zealand Māori, Pacific Island, Asian, Other, Not specified, Total. Total responses New Zealand European, British and Irish, Dutch, South Slav, Italian, New Zealand Māori, Samoan, Cook Island Māori, Tongan, Niuean, Tokelauan, Fijian, Filipino, Cambodian,

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Chinese, Indian, Sri Lankan, Japanese. In short, in this period the description of a person’s ethnicity changed from being measured in terms of fractions (one person being divided into many ethnicities) to a more additive one (one person having one or more ancestral connections). In terms of special sections for minority groups, in the 1983 NZOY a section on the “Pacific Island Polynesian population” appeared for the first time, alongside that on Māori. This reflects the New Zealand public’s special attention to the Pacific Island population as a social concern. In the 1970s, when New Zealand’s postwar prosperity shrank after the oil shock and competition for available jobs intensified, immigrants from Pacific Islands, who arrived in New Zealand through assistance schemes (1945–1973) for temporarily filling labor needs became the targets of racism that viewed them as “overstayers” who stayed on after their legal sojourn period in New Zealand (Fleras and Spoonley 1999). Just as there was a separate section on Chinese when anti-Chinese sentiment raged in the New Zealand society, the Pacific Island population was allocated a separate section in this historical background. In 2002, a new section on Asian population appeared in the NZOY. Once the nationality criteria for immigration were removed by the Business Immigration Policy (BIP) of 1986, described in chapter 1, East Asians began arriving. Their arrival symbolized Aotearoa/New Zealand’s shift in its alliances, and some of the Aotearoa/New Zealand public saw it as an “Asian invasion.” The introduction of a new section on Asians reflected this anxiety (Belich 2001; Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Ip and Pang 2005; Pearson 2005). In terms of categories, naming and categorization shifted during this period as shown below. 1965–1966:

European, Māori, Other Races;

1967–1973:

Non-Māori, Māori, Other Races (Other Origin as of 1971);

1974–1993:

European, Māori, Other Origin;

1994–1997:

European, New Zealand Māori, Samoan, Cook Island Māori, Tongan, Niuean, Tokelauan, Fijian, Chinese, Indian;

1998–2006:

European, Māori, Pacific Peoples, Asian, and Other.

The category of “non-Māori” in 1967–1973 assumes Pākehā, in comparison to other years that labeled that category as “European.” Having the category of “non-Māori” separate from “Other Race/Origin” in this way suggests an assumption

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that “Other Race/Origins” (although they are also “non-Māori”) are outside of a group imagined as consisting of “Māori” and “non-Māori.” This is another instance that reveals the double national imagining based on the regime of difference of Māori vs. Pākehā and that of New Zealanders (Māori and Pākehā) vs. Other that later took a form of the debate between biculturalism vs. multiculturalism. Up to 1993, within “Others,” “Pacific Island Polynesians” had special status, sometimes constituting an independent category and also having a separate section. Chinese and Indians were other subcategories within the “Other” category. The rest of the ethnic groups were often not specified. As shown above, the number of categories increased in the 1994 NZOY. From 1994 to 2006 a list of more detailed ethnic categories followed the categories listed above. The category of “New Zealand Māori” is used in contrast to “Cook Island Māori.” In sum, there are three levels of national imagining here. The first normalizes Pākehā. Information on Pākehā has been included in the total or in the general summary since the 1970s, whereas Māori and Pacific Island Polynesians (since 1983) and Asians (since 2002) have their own sections. This uneven regime of difference indicates a nationhood, despite its official biculturalism, that normalizes Pākehā and marks Māori, Pacific Island Polynesians, and Asians as aberrations of the norm. The second national imagining is multicultural, while keeping Pākehā as an unmarked norm. That sections on Māori, Pacific Island Polynesians, and Asians are put side by side indicates their similar status. The third imagining is official biculturalism of Māori and Pākehā, based on the Treaty of Waitangi. However, there is little trace of this in the NZOY, and even less since the 1970s, as mentioned earlier. As maintained by Manying Ip (1995, 1998), the New Zealand government continues to fail to clarify its position regarding the relationships between multiculturalism and biculturalism and regarding the place of non-Māori, non-Pākehā New Zealanders under the Treaty of Waitangi (see chapters 8 and 9). See Table 2.6 for a summary of this time period. Table 2.6

Regimes of Difference during 1966–2006

Time Period 1966–2006: New Zealand with minority groups •

Who are “New Zealanders”? Everyone in New Zealand •

Incorporation of Māori

Who are “Māoris”?

Who are “Others”?

1970s: Half or more • 1965–1993: Other Māori ancestry; self- Races/Origin. identification • 1983–: Pacific • 1976: Half or more Island Population Māori descent; • 1996–: Asians descendants • 1986: Cultural biological link • 1996–: Multiple identification •

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Conclusion In this chapter, I illustrated the transformation of regimes of difference and nationhood that the New Zealand state promoted and uneven processes by which people were incorporated into them. At the same time, this chapter also introduced a history of Aotearoa/New Zealand. I focused on four items in New Zealand’s official statistical publications, which I summarize briefly in this section: (1) the concept of the “population of New Zealand”, (2) the ways in which the New Zealand state incorporated Māori into its regime (of difference) through census-taking, (3) the definitions of Māori, and (4) the ways in which statistical publications “othered” some people. See Table 2.7 for a summary of these transformations. First, we saw that what constitutes the “population of New Zealand” has changed, reflecting the changing view of nationhood: from pre-national, provincially separated Pākehā settlers to an imagined community of (Pākehā) settlers (the 1860s–1880s), a nation composed of unmarked Pākehā and marked Māori (the 1880s–1940s) and marked European and Māori (from the 1950s to the mid 1960s), and then to all the residents in New Zealand with minority groups singled out in separate sections (as of the mid 1960s). Second, the colonial, and later New Zealand, government sought to impose its regime and its ever-changing regime of difference on the settlers and Māori. By 1877 settlers were put under a standard census, being assigned positions in a government-made grid. It took longer to incorporate Māori under the regime of the New Zealand government, as Māori sought autonomy, which the New Zealand government’s census taking implicitly denied. While Māori sought to be part of the new New Zealand government as the Pākehā’s equal, the New Zealand government sought to incorporate Māori in their regime as subordinate. This situation encouraged Māori tribes to establish their own regimes—the Māori king and Māori Parliament—which the Pākehā regime sought to crush. From the mid 1920s on, Māori were increasingly incorporated into the Pākehā regime and its regimes of difference, which continue to change in turn. Third, the definition of Māori changed as Māori were incorporated under the Pākehā regime, thus allowing Pākehā regime to count and “know” them. Whether or not the children of intermarriage should be considered Māori has been an issue since the 1880s. While lifestyle—whether living as Māori or Pākehā—mattered from 1881 to 1926, all Māori-Pākehā half-castes came to be viewed as Māori from the 1920s to 1950s. After two decades of recognizing individuals with half or more Māori blood to be Māori, whether the other half is Pākehā or not, self-identification became an important part of the definition of Māori. Starting in 1996, individuals in the census were allowed to identify with multiple ethnic groups. Fourth, recognition of “Others” began with the focus on the Chinese population in the late 1860s, peaking in the 1870s to 1920s and then again in the

1867–1883: Assertion of Pākehā regime

Who are “Māoris”?

1950–1965: Post–World War II Labor Migration

•

1966–2006: New Zealand with Minority Groups

•

•

•

Everyone in New Zealand

Europeans and Māori

No enumerators for all Māori •

• Half or more Māori ancestry (Multiple) self- identification

Same method of census-taking • 1953–: full, ¾, half, and any as the rest of population degree of Māori-Pākehā mix • 1958–: half-caste of Māori and anyone •

•

1926–: all Māori-Pākehā half-caste

•

•

• Pākehā (as “population of New Zealand”) and Māori

“Aboriginal Natives”

1925–1949: Becoming Independent New Zealand

•

“Aboriginal Native population” •

• Māori, and Māori-Pākehā half-castes who lived as Māori • 1896–: opted Māori-Pākehā half-caste living as Pākehā

First national (incomprehensive) census for Māori •

Incorporation of Māori First statistics of some Māori

• Pākehā (as “population of • More detailed census while New Zealand”) and Māori, mak- some iwi continued to resist ing up “total” New Zealanders census-taking

Exclusive of Māori

•

1884–1924: Emergence of Nationhood

•

•

Who are “New Zealanders”?

•

No national subject

•

1840–1866: Pākehā and Māori regimes

Transformations of Regimes of Difference in (Aotearoa)/New Zealand

Time Period

Table 2.7

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Pacific Island, Asian

Race Alien 1956–: Other Races

Race Alien 1943–1949: none

Chinese Race Alien

Chinese

No recognition

Who are “Others”? •

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2000s. The Pacific Island population has been considered “Others” since the 1980s. This regime of difference regarding “Others” derived from the wish to identify, examine, and/or reduce, if not eliminate, what the government and the Pākehā-dominated general public perceived as a threat. Throughout history, there have been multiple regimes of difference: Pākehā (as the unmarked New Zealand nation or as an ethnic group) vs. Māori, New Zealanders (Māori and Pākehā) vs. Britons, New Zealanders (Māori and Pākehā) vs. Race Alien (later, Others), and Pākehā vs. Māori vs. Other. These regimes of difference came to the fore and moved to the background in the wake of changes in the political economy, international allies, and imagined nationhood. The latest official statistics categorizations encompass monoculturalist, biculturalist, and multiculturalist regimes of difference, not just the official regime of difference, biculturalism. This coexistence of multiple regimes of difference does reflect the current state of Aotearoa/New Zealand (see Ip and Pang 2005; Pearson 2005), whose effects this book investigates. Each regime of difference and its application has left its legacy. The borderlines between categories are not secure, as the content of categories as well as category itself changes. However, a will to categorize people persists. While the recognition of difference among people has become based more on cultural and self-identification than physical difference, its criteria remain multiple, exposing individuals to multiple ways to categorize people. In the later chapters, I analyze how individuals have lived such regimes of difference and what kind of effects were produced by their being exposed to multiple, sometimes contradictory, regimes of difference. I place special focus on the regimes of difference around bilingual education, one of the important recent changes in schooling.

Notes 1. In the yearbooks, it is usually written as, for example, “Estimated Population on 31st December, 1894.” However, in this chapter I omit the word “estimated” and the date for succinctness. 2. In terms of wording, throughout this chapter I use the term, Pākehā to mean New Zealanders of European descent, while quoting the term “European” when statistics used it. 3. I follow the convention in Aotearoa/New Zealand not to pluralize nouns for Te Reo words because nouns are not pluralized in Te Reo.

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4. An aberration was the narrative introduction to the 1880 SNZ, which reported “Total population, including Māoris,” which was divided into “population other than Māoris” and “Māori population.” This inclusion of Māori in the “total” population is a precursor to the kind of categorization used in the statistics tables after 1884. 5. New Zealand became a British dominion in 1907. The dominion status allowed New Zealand to have status equal to Great Britain’s, both being united by a common allegiance to the British Crown as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. However, there was little discussion within New Zealand (Sinclair 1986). 6. Its title changed to “human rights, immigration, and citizenship” as of the 1987–1988 NZOY,

3

I NHABITING W AIKARAKA H IGH S CHOOL Daily Life at Waikaraka High School and Fieldwork Experiences

% Introducing Research Contexts I carried out my ethnographic fieldwork for nine months, from August 1997 to May 1998, at a state secondary school, Waikaraka High School. Waikaraka is located at the edge of suburban sprawl from a large city in the North Island. In this chapter, I describe the town of Waikaraka and Waikaraka High School, and specifically discuss how bilingual and mainstream students inhabited the space of Waikaraka High School and related with each other as an effect of bilingual education. I then examine how the neoliberal reforms have affected Waikaraka High School and introduce my fieldwork methods.

Town of Waikaraka One of the two reasons why I chose Waikaraka for fieldwork, out of four potential sites, was its historical background. The short time interval between the time of settlement of the current Māori iwi in town and the arrival of Pākehā people makes Waikaraka a striking case. When I visited Waikaraka in 1995 during preliminary research, one Pākehā person told me that for this reason, Pākehā people in Waikaraka are as indigenous as Māori people. However, I heard this kind of comment only once. The other reason I chose Waikaraka was that it is only 20 km away from the town I stayed in as a Rotary Club exchange student from April 1986 to March 1987. I attended the local secondary school in that town as a Year 13 student (age seventeen to eighteen) and stayed with host families who had children attending the same school. Because the secondary school that I attended as a student was one of the alternative schools for Waikaraka High School students, which will

In h a b it in g Wa ikaraka High School

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be discussed later, I was hoping that my experience at that school would help me grasp the context better. According to the census taken in 1996 (all census data I cite will be from years close to my fieldwork in order to provide the context of my fieldwork), there were 5,580 people in Waikaraka. To the question regarding which ethnic group one identifies with, 63.2 percent answered “European only,” 24.1 percent answered “New Zealand Māori,” 3.1 percent answered “Asian,” 1.7 percent answered “Pacific Islander,” 0.2 percent answered “Other,” and the rest were not specified. This is a higher percentage of people self-identifying as Māori than the national percentage (14.5 percent in the same year) (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 124; Statistics New Zealand and Space-Time Research 1997). The town of Waikaraka presented itself to visitors as a beach resort with market gardens, referring to itself with the phrase “Sunny Waikaraka.” However, there had recently been an economic recession in Waikaraka.1 The census of 1996 showed that 50.1 percent of the people of the ages fifteen and up were receiving some kind of social welfare support. According to the Ministry of Education’s measurement, Waikaraka High School’s community’s socioeconomic level in 1996 was three out of ten, with one being the lowest socioeconomic level. The Ministry of Education measured the socioeconomic level of all schools in this way in order to determine government funding (Harrison and Papa 2005). The town of Waikaraka in 1997–98 was divided into two business districts and three major residential sections, separated by the market gardens, grazing fields for cattle, and open fields in between. The center of town consisted of a main street with two and a half blocks of stores, banks, the marae (Māori meeting complex), the town library, and councils. There was no significant ethnic segregation of communities or residence in Waikaraka. At the east end of the central district was the main marae of the area, at the west end of the central district was a Te Wananga (Māori university), and to the northwest of the center was a Kura Kaupapa Māori/Whare Kura (Māori primary/secondary school), in front of which was another marae. There were Te Kōhanga Reo (Māori-medium kindergartens) in this area as well. The second business district was along a major state highway, which parallels a major railway. One of the main residential areas of Waikaraka is around the central business district. The second residential area was the beach settlement, west of the town center, which consisted of many holiday houses, including some expensive ones. The third residential section was the “plateau area” to the east of the town center, a settlement of scattered farms and wealthy estates between the state highway and a mountain range. Waikaraka is an important place in Māori history. A prominent Māori chief invaded Waikaraka in the 1820s and pushed out iwi that had lived there; then in the 1840s, major Catholic and Anglican missions settled in Waikaraka. A prominent Māori chief converted to the Anglican Church. Due to the history of having a prominent chief, Waikaraka is still known for its strong Māori presence.

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The presence of one of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s four Te Wananga (Māori universities) in Waikaraka also points to this strong Māori presence. The Te Wananga attracted Māori from all over the country to live and study in Waikaraka. Non-Māori residents in Waikaraka often acknowledged the historical significance of Waikaraka for Māori and the strong presence of a Māori community, citing it as one of the things that make Waikaraka unique. However, only certain aspects of Māori culture were accepted in the public arena, and the rest of Māori culture was out of sight. For example, as will be discussed in chapter 9, while many mainstream, non-Māori parents that I interviewed praised the emphasis given to Māori culture at Waikaraka High School, they complained that the use of Te Reo in speeches in school functions was rude because they could not understand it. They argued that Te Reo could be spoken in the bilingual unit, but not in ceremonies for the school as a whole: “they should follow the regular way outside the bilingual unit” (emphasis mine) (for details, see Doerr 2008). Also, the following letter to the editor appeared in a local paper during my stay: “Sir, recently I had occasion to attend the prizegiving . . . at Waikaraka High School . . . I found it very disappointing . . . The audience was predominantly white people and the whole programme was spoken in Māori which, needless to say, not many understood. I consider this not only ignorant but arrogant. Is this a sign of our times?” (Weeds 1997). When shown this item some Pākehā parents commented against it, while other Pākehā parents agreed with it. Many Māori and non-Māori in Waikaraka befriended each other as friends, neighbors and colleagues. As mentioned, there was no noticeable residential segregation. Nonetheless, not many non-Māori people visited marae or Māori functions, I discovered by asking people in and out of Waikaraka High School. That is, Māori culture, despite its strong presence in Waikaraka, was something that many non-Māoris could live without. Waikaraka was also known for its market gardens owing to its warm climate and population of Chinese New Zealanders, whom many people I talked to associated with market gardens. However, in contrast to Māori culture, there was little representation of Chinese culture in Waikaraka or Waikaraka High School. As explained in chapter 1, these Chinese New Zealanders were viewed very differently from new Asian immigrants who arrived in the 1990s (Ip 1995; Voci 2006).

Schools in Waikaraka There were two secondary schools in Waikaraka: Waikaraka High School, a conventional state school, and a Whare Kura, which is a public school run by the Māori community that uses Te Reo as its medium of instruction. While anybody can attend Waikaraka High School, a student who wishes to attend Whare Kura

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must have attended Kura Kaupapa Māori, its primary schooling section. A strong family commitment was required for attending both Kura Kaupapa Māori and Whare Kura, according to a teacher there whom I interviewed. Parents of bilingual students at Waikaraka High School commented that they chose Waikaraka primary, and then the high school’s bilingual unit, over Kura Kaupapa Māori and then Whare Kura, partly because of the latter’s requirement of family commitment, partly in view of its long waiting list, and partly to fulfill their wish that their children learn “both Māori and Pākehā culture.” Private schools and other state schools in nearby towns were expensive alternatives for Waikaraka residents. If a student attended a public school in a neighboring town, parents had to cover all the costs for transportation but otherwise did not have to pay any tuition. As to its catchment area, most of the students of Waikaraka High School lived in the town of Waikaraka and its smaller neighboring towns. Students usually came from one of the five primary schools in the area. Two primary schools in Waikaraka and two in the vicinity catered to students for only the first six years of primary education (Type C in Table 1.1 in the introduction to this volume), sending students to Waikaraka High School for the last two years of primary education and the whole of secondary education. There was one Catholic primary school2 in Waikaraka that offered a full primary education (type B in Table 1.1 in the introduction) up to Year 8 and then fed Year 9 (the first year of secondary education) students to Waikaraka High School. There was another primary school in Waikaraka, Kura Kaupapa Māori, as mentioned. However, most students of that school went to Whare Kura, its secondary school section, instead of Waikaraka High School.

Waikaraka High School Waikaraka High School is a state (public) school located between the center of Waikaraka and the state highway. Its main route of access was Waikaraka’s major road, which cut through the town from the beach and the state highway to the plateau area. Residential houses stood on both sides and in front of the high school. In 1998, Waikaraka High School had 560 students ranging in age from twelve (Year 7) to eighteen (Year 13). Although Year 7 and 8 were the last two years of primary education, they were included in Waikaraka High School, as explained in this book’s introduction. It was a coeducational school, and the official statistics of ethnic composition in the 1993 audit report were: “Pākehā” 64 percent; “Māori” 32 percent; “Asian” 3 percent; and “Polynesian” 1 percent (569 students in total). This reflects the ethnic breakdown of Waikaraka. The financial base of the school was mainly general government funds, paid according to the number of students and for various programs such as the bilingual unit; support from local businesses; fund-raising; and fees from the students, both

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local and foreign. The fee for citizens of Aotearoa/New Zealand was $75.00 (NZ) per year per student in 1997. The fee for noncitizen students was $7,500.00 (NZ) per year per student as mentioned. The Board of Trustees managed this pool of funds. The government also directly funded teachers’ salaries (except for senior management salaries), school transport, and major capital works (building projects). Within each Year, students were divided into Form classes (see Table 3.1) with an assigned Form teacher. The number of the Year and two letters from the last name of the Form teacher were used as the name of the Form class (for example, 12BR for Mr. Brown’s Year 12 Form). Students were shuffled into the Form classes at the beginning of Years 7, 9, 11, 12, and 13. Years 7 and 8 were combined into mixed-age Form classes. As shown in Table 3.2, for Year 7 and 8 students (primary education), members of a Form class stayed together in all classes, except for the trial option (elective) classes (4 out of 26 periods per week), in which all the students of the same Year were mixed. For Year 9 and 10 students, the ratio of option classes became higher (7 and 8 out of 26 periods for Years 9 and 10, respectively). As the group in which students spent most of their time at school, the Form class served as a source of belonging for Year 7 to 10 students. For Years 11, 12, and 13 (for the Year 11 students, only as of 1998), that source of belonging decreased significantly: the members of the Form class were together only during the Form (homeroom) time in the morning. Table 3.1

Year Structure at Waikaraka High School

Year

Number of Form classes

Year 7/8 (combined Form classes)

8 (1 bilingual, 1 upper-track)

Year 9

4 (1 bilingual, 1 upper-track)

Year 10

4 (1 bilingual, 1 upper-track)

Year 11

5 (1 upper-track; as of 1998, only subject-tracking)

Year 12

5 (no tracking)

Year 13

1

Table 3.2

Number of Periods Spent as a Form Class and Separately (by Electives)

Year

As a Form class

Separately (electives)

Total

7/8

22

4

26

9

19

7

26

10

18

8

26

11

0

26

26

12

0

26

26

13

0

26

26

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Stages Posted at the entrance of Waikaraka High School was a sign in English and Te Reo: “Waikaraka High School, Haere mai [“welcome” in Te Reo], Welcome.” Students walked down a winding driveway, from which they could see a bike shed and tennis/netball courts on the right and lawn and trees on the left (see Map 3.1). The first set of buildings on the right consisted of single-story buildings surrounding a small open yard: this was the bilingual unit area. On the left was a two-story building called “Nelson block,” which housed the primary-school department and classrooms for mathematics, horticulture, and computer studies. After these buildings, several single-story buildings flank the driveway, from which students could see the school field at the far front. They were entering into a space which was marked institutionally and discursively. Students are introduced to the official designation of space at Waikaraka High School from the beginning. The Waikaraka High School information folder, which the high school offers to all incoming students, contained a small bird’seye view map of the high school (Map 3.1), along with glossy photos, information about the high school, and application forms. The map marks out various areas, such as the administration block, the bilingual unit, and the canteen. Historically, the idea of the bird’s-eye view was linked to the emergence of nationalism. In the nineteenth century, such a bird’s-eye view map created a framework for thinking, imagining, and projecting the nation and borders of national territory. It became the model for the nation and brought the nation close to being a natural entity (Anderson 1991; Winichakul 1994). The bird’s eye view map of the high school indicates how designated space, such as the bilingual unit area, served to help students imagine an entity of bilingual students. Buildings in the high school roughly formed an upside-down letter A. Entering from the gate, students approached the closed part of the upside-down letter A. On its left arm were structures in several blocks: starting from the Nelson block that I mentioned already, there were the “A” block (for administration), a small music suite, a small suite for the Weraroa unit (for specialneeds students), and the “B” block (English, art, and geography classrooms and a library). Behind the “B” block were a small house for the caretaker and sheds for canoes and other athletic gear. On the right arm of the upside-down letter A stood (in order from the gate of the high school) the bilingual unit buildings mentioned earlier, the “D” block (for wood/metal shop and home economics), the canteen, the common room for the Year 13 students,3 the “E” block (science, economics and more English classrooms), the gymnasium, and a swimming pool. A covered corridor linking the “E” block and “B” block via the music suite formed the horizontal bar in the middle of the upside-down letter A. The field bordered by the lower part of the A, which was big enough to have rugby, cricket, and softball games simultaneously, stretched to meet houses and market gardens at the far end. On the left-hand side of the upside-down letter

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Map 3.1: Waikaraka High School, used with permission

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A were a small wooded area with playground equipment and a horticultural garden in which students looked after apple orchards and grew vegetables and flowers. Because all the buildings except for the Nelson block were one-story, horizontal lines were emphasized: the ground, the roofs of the buildings, and the mountain ranges in the distance. The parking lots used to be located along the walls of the A block, D block, and the covered corridor. However, in 1998 the parking lot was expanded and moved to the back of the A block (left side of the left arm of the upside-down letter A) and along the wall of the Nelson block that faces the A block. In the same period, the driveway to the school ground was expanded from a one-lane road with a passing spot to a two-lane road. Before construction began, the deputy principal told me that this expansion of the parking lot and driveway was significant for the school because it would make the school more accessible for visiting parents. If other schools had better access than Waikaraka High School, he said, Waikaraka High School might lose the parents to other schools: it was important to make the school as attractive and convenient to the parents as possible. The expansion of the parking lot symbolically illuminated a priority in operating the school in the post–neoliberal reform era: attracting parents/customers. In terms of the presentation of Waikaraka High School to visiting parents, the deputy principal and one other teacher mentioned to me the need to move the location of the bilingual unit, then located at the entrance point to the school grounds. These two teachers claimed that the bilingual students intimidated visitors or gave a negative impression in terms of, according to them, the lax observance of the uniform codes. However, there was no concrete plan for such a move. As will be discussed in detail, the free-marketization of education was changing the landscape of the school, serving the perceived or imagined tastes and opinions of parents/customers. Staging Students and teachers were always on display at school. The audience was the students and teachers themselves. It was almost impossible to be out of people’s sight at school, except in the washroom. To define and sustain the relationship between teachers and students—the former embodying the authority and correctness—teachers performed on “front stage” (Goffman 1959). The teachers’ “back stage” at Waikaraka High School was where the power of the school rested: the A (administrative) block. The A block housed the staff room for socializing, a staff workroom, the offices of administrators including the principal, the student center (which sold stationery, took care of absences, and did other administrative tasks), the dean’s room, and the school hall (auditorium). The A block was the last and the highest place that managed “discipline problems”; it represented Waikaraka High School as the hub of hospitality (primarily the principal’s office and

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staff room) for guests from outside and as the gathering place for the whole Waikaraka High School (school hall), and it was the panoptical center of the school (Foucault 1977)—teachers and administrators watched, or were thought to be watching, the students on the school premises from its windows. Some offices had window blinds, which allowed teachers to see outside without being seen. The staff room was the teachers’ backstage4 in the strongest sense of the word. Students were prohibited from entering the staff room and staff toilet right outside of it. Although each staff had its own classrooms or offices, many spent their interval and lunchtime in the staff room socializing with other staff members. The staff room had many cushioned chairs along the wall facing inside the room. There was a small kitchen in which one could obtain a hot drink or heat up lunches. A ten-minute staff meeting was held there every morning, as was an hour-long meeting once a month. On Friday afternoon, the staff room changed into a bar. One teacher, who was in charge of the bar, kept the refrigerator full of beer. From five to fifteen teachers usually sat around and drank for an hour or so. The staff room was also a site where administrators and teachers gossiped about the students, shared strategies to control students in the classroom, and talked about “accidents” that revealed un-teacher-like attitudes or behavior to students. In this “backstage,” knowing that the student audience would not intrude, teachers could relax, drop their front, and step out of their character as the teacher (Goffman 1959). The A block was also the panoptical center, which created a space of pleasure at the margins of the school site (see Foucault 1977). Behind the walls of the buildings and gym on the side that did not face the A block, behind the wall for tennis practice, and in the bike shed near the gate, students smoked cigarettes and marijuana. Because prohibition heightens the thrill, the place of the margin—furthest away from the A block yet not outside the school site—became the space of pleasure: there, students “broke the laws” without leaving the “space of the laws.” It is worth noting that the house designated for the caretaker of the school, which was located at the very edge of the school site—behind the B block furthest away from the A block—was the only area in which teachers were allowed to smoke cigarettes. The house had a kitchen, a couple of sofas, and a table, and was decorated with pictures and posters, making it the only place on the school site that was like “home.” During intervals and lunch times, staff members who smoked went to this cozy room of the caretaker for pleasure. It was “the backstage of the backstage” at school. Another officially designated area that created a meaning important to students’ daily life was the space of the bilingual unit. In the next section, on effects of biculturalism on Waikaraka High School, I will introduce the establishment of the bilingual unit, its situation during my fieldwork, the place bilingual students occupied in Waikaraka High School, and how the space of Waikaraka High School was occupied by bilingual and mainstream students.

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Bilingual and Mainstream Students at Waikaraka High School Establishment of the Bilingual Unit The bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School was established by two teachers in 1981. One was a self-identified Māori and the other a self-identified Pākehā. Both had left Waikaraka High School before my fieldwork, but I managed to interview the former, Jane. She said that the initial purpose of establishing the unit was to give support to Māori students who seemed to have been “failing” at school. They began the unit by putting together a Form class for the Year 7 students who were taking the optional Te Reo class so that the students could support one another. Jane also arranged for teachers who were sympathetic to Māori causes to teach their subject classes. In terms of one’s ethnic identification, there were no restrictions on joining the unit: self-identified Pākehā students studied alongside Māori in the bilingual unit. At that time, most of the students at Waikaraka High School were learning Te Reo for the first time because the Te Kōhanga Reo had not existed when they were of kindergarten age and most of their parents did not speak Te Reo due to the past assimilationist education. As graduates of the Te Kōhanga Reo began to enter Waikaraka High School, the Te Reo immersion program for the Year 7 and 8 students began in 1994. Thus, the bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School was a maintenance bilingual program (Baker 2006) with a strong emphasis on social aspects. However, most students also spoke English, which was (one of) their first language(s) in most cases. In the context of rising biculturalism, these bilingual teachers had strong decision-making powers at Waikaraka High School, Jane said. Also, they tried to garner support from senior mainstream teachers. The principal at that time, William, supported the program from the beginning. In hindsight, Jane feels she could have included more staff and parents in establishing the unit: most staff respected the bilingual teachers but were also scared of them. Some teachers outside the bilingual unit who could speak Te Reo began refusing to speak it for fear they would be challenged about their competence in Te Reo, Jane said (also see chapter 7). The establishment of the bilingual unit also met with resistance from mainstream teachers, Jane said. The bilingual students, once they were in a large group in the bilingual unit, stood up for their cultural values and caused some friction. For example, bilingual students challenged mainstream teachers for sitting on the table because this is taboo in Māori culture. There were also complaints of “special treatment” for bilingual students—for example, allowing them to take time off from school to attend tangi (funerals, which often last several days and are of major community importance for Māori). Jane did not take much notice of these complaints, since she thought they were petty and derived from jealousy. From the beginning, the bilingual unit was successful in its aim to get Māori students to stay in school longer. Before the bilingual unit was founded, only two

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or three Māori students would stay at the school until Year 11. But when the first generation of bilingual students hit Year 11, there were twenty-seven of them, and all had passed some subjects in the School Certificate, the national credential examination. The bilingual unit was not only about promoting self-esteem and pride in Māori culture but also about expanding the life chances and future job opportunities for bilingual students. Because the secondary-level bilingual program at Waikaraka High School started in Year 7 (the second-to-last year of primary education, but the first year at Waikaraka High School) instead of Year 9 (the first year of secondary education), bilingual students in Waikaraka High School were two years ahead of the national standard in Te Reo. For example, in 1997 a number of Year 9 bilingual students passed the School Certificate for Te Reo, which was designed for Year 11 students. This helped bilingual students because already having one School Certificate made the workload lighter when they reached Year 11. Also, their knowledge of Te Reo and Māori culture opened up job opportunities for bilingual students because the market value of expertise in Māori culture and language had recently increased with the establishment, in the 1980s, of cultural advisory sections in various government departments that aimed at incorporating Māori perspectives in government operations (Sissons 1993). In Waikaraka, graduates from all three Te Kōhanga Reo could go to either the Kura Kaupapa Māori (the Māori-immersion primary school run by the Māori community) to continue education in Te Reo, or one of the two local primary schools with bilingual units. In 1997–1998, most of the students in Waikaraka High School’s bilingual unit had gone through a Te Kōhanga Reo and a bilingual unit in the primary school.5 The Bilingual Unit, 1997–1998 The bilingual unit in 1997–1998 was a department in Waikaraka High School, equal in status to the primary education department (Year 7/8), mathematics department, English department, and so on. The bilingual unit occupied a special area: a building with three classrooms, a meeting house, and a toilet block. During the 1970s and 1980s, schools and universities built meetinghouses and set aside spaces for use as marae. While the marae was a Māori community’s meeting place with an acknowledgement of ancestral presence, the school marae was a site for the display and practice of Māoriness within the school (Sissons 1993). The bilingual unit focused on teaching students in a Māori cultural environment and teaching Te Reo by using it as the medium of instruction for Year 7 to 10 students who opted to belong. Anyone could join the bilingual unit, provided they had some knowledge of Te Reo, at the level determined by the teachers. A person did not have to have Māori ancestry to join, and a person with Māori ancestry did not have to join. In fact, the students’ ethnic identification was affected by their membership in the bilingual unit, as will be discussed in chapter 5.

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The Year 7/8 Form class (7/8 UN) and one combined Year 9 and 10 Form class (9/10 IF) practiced Te Reo immersion. Even though they were immersion classes, they were often called bilingual classes because these Form classes were part of the bilingual unit. Classes were Te Reo and English bilingual for another combined Year 9 and 10 bilingual Form class (9/10 NV). However, after Form time in the morning, 9/10 IF and 9/10 NV were rearranged by Year as 9 IF/NV and 10 IF/NV in order to fit into the school’s framework of dividing students by year. English and Te Reo were used in both 9 IF/NV and 10 IF/NV classes. The amount of Te Reo used in bilingual classes varied from teacher to teacher—from just greetings to every word. Teachers and students took shoes off in the classrooms, as is the custom in Māori meeting houses, and a karakia (prayer) was often said at the beginning of the class. The bilingual students often used both English and Te Reo in class. Year 11, 12, and 13 students could also belong to the bilingual unit, but only for the Form time in the morning, and they had no subjects taught as bilingual classes. Thus, Year 11, 12, and 13 bilingual students mixed with the “mainstream” students in the actual classes. That is, the bilingual unit virtually went up to only Year 10. This arrangement created a regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream. Bilingual students experienced their teachers’ emphasis of Māori protocols, values, and language, whereas mainstream students experienced a rather monocultural education, partly because all Māori culture was concentrated in the bilingual unit. That is, Waikaraka High School celebrated diversity by having a bilingual unit, while leaving the monocultural mainstream norm intact in the mainstream classes except for symbolic/tokenistic use of Māori culture, as will be discussed. Also, the way the bilingual unit was set up—with students spending several years in the bilingual unit and then joining the mainstream at Year 11—suggested a model of progression toward the mainstream norm. This bilingual-mainstream distinction also had concrete effects. First, it was difficult to find qualified teachers who could teach specialized subjects and knew the Māori language and culture. This led to either letting mainstream teachers without any knowledge of the Māori language or culture teach some bilingual classes, or hiring new teachers who knew Te Reo but had less skill in conventional subject areas (from interview; also see G. Smith and L. Smith 1996). Second, the bilingual students sacrificed two class periods per week for the practice of kapa haka (Māori cultural performance), which they often performed for the school (see chapter 9). There was little acknowledgement of, or compensation for, their missed class time (see Harrison and Papa 2005). Here, it is crucial to distinguish the regimes of difference of students from that of the program’s focus, especially when discussing the relationship between the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and that of Māori vs. Pākehā. On the one hand, the bilingual unit and mainstream classes were clearly distinct in their cultural focuses. On the other hand, the students’ ethnic identification

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practice was complex and context-dependent, often contingent upon whether they belonged to the bilingual or mainstream classes. Thus, the relationship between the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and of Māori vs. Pākehā students was never fixed (see chapters 5 and 6). Also, people perceived such relations between the programs and students’ ethnicity differently, depending on their subject positions. As will be discussed in detail in chapters 5 and 6, the very inconsistency in relationships between these regimes of difference, in terms of both the students’ identification practices and the cultural focuses of the programs, spawned particular forms of ethnic relations and nationhood. It is also worth noting here the varying ways that bilingual and mainstream students named the bilingual unit and mainstream classes. Bilingual students called the bilingual unit “bilingual unit,” “Māori unit,” or “whānau (Māori extended family) unit.” The parental support group for the bilingual unit was also called whānau, indicating that the unit operated as if it were an extended family. Most mainstream students called the bilingual unit the “bilingual unit.” Most bilingual students called the mainstream class the “Pākehā unit” or the “mainstream.” The interchangeability of these two terms indicates their awareness that what is considered mainstream is not ethnically neutral but Pākehā. Most mainstream students, however, did not describe the mainstream in terms of ethnicity (see chapter 6). Some mainstream students did not even know how to name it: it was too “normal” to name. Other mainstream students called it the “regular” part of the school. Its invisibility, at least for mainstream students, supported and reproduced the dominance of Pākehā ways at Waikaraka High School as the “norm” (see Fine et al. 1997; Fusco 1988; hooks 1994). Although naming is a political process that asserts a certain worldview in this way (Koselleck 1985), throughout this book, I use the terms “bilingual unit” and “mainstream” for convenience and consistency. Also, in this book, I describe the positionalities of teachers, students, and parents in relation to the teachers’ and students’ membership in bilingual or mainstream classes in 1997–1998. This labeling is only for convenience in order to understand trends and does not assume permanency or homogeneity among mainstream or bilingual students and parents, as such membership could change over time. Also, the bilingual students’ siblings could be in the mainstream, rendering the label of “parents of bilingual students” meaningless unless it is seen as about parents of students in a particular Year under discussion. Place of Bilingual Students in Waikaraka High School In relation to Waikaraka High School as a whole, the bilingual unit played the role of representing the school ceremonially: a ceremony welcoming important people to the school was often done in Māori style, using Te Reo for ceremonial greetings and opening prayers and allotting significant roles to kaumatua (Māori elders), bilingual teachers, and the kapa haka group (Māori cultural performance

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group, made up of bilingual students), as will be discussed in detail in chapter 9. Also, Te Reo was often used in the symbolic spaces. For example, the coat of arms of Waikaraka High School carried the Māori saying “kia kaha” (“be strong”) in Te Reo only. This presence of Māori culture lent a touch of bicultural nationhood to these representations of school. This reflects the common display of “bicultural partnership” that the state has promoted since the 1980s (Sissons 1993). In various nationally symbolic occasions, such as the welcoming of foreign dignitaries, Māori culture has often represented Aotearoa/New Zealand’s bicultural nationhood (Ballara 1986; Bell 1996; Mead 1997). One mainstream teacher who used to be in the bilingual unit told me that the bilingual unit was the “ihi” (“guts” or “source of vitality”) of Waikaraka High School. Some saw commitment to Māoridom and the presence of the bilingual unit as the strength of Waikaraka High School. The bilingual unit was located at the entrance point of the high school, as mentioned, and the deputy principal told me that “bilingual students control the access to the school.” This location of the bilingual unit created a corridor of stares for the students and teachers entering the school every morning.6 Ten to twenty students—not necessarily from the bilingual unit, but often seen as bilingual students from being around the unit—sat at the table in the yard of the bilingual unit and on the bench by the wall of the Nelson block. People walked to school every day under the gaze of these students, some acknowledged by them and some not. Although I usually drove to school, I walked to school on particularly pleasant sunny days. The first time I walked there was when I realized how long the walk was—one minute seemed long when walking past their silent gazes—until my name was called out and I saw some familiar faces among them smiling at me. This procession past the bilingual unit served as a filter that classified passing students and teachers in terms of their relationship to the bilingual unit, repeated every morning. While the bilingual unit was a significant part of Waikaraka High School, it was isolated from the rest and was unknown to or feared by most of those who were outside it. Although some mainstream teachers did teach the bilingual classes due to the lack of bilingual teachers, and although bilingual and mainstream students mixed in elective classes and various after-school activities, most people did not have the chance to observe bilingual classes taught by bilingual teachers. The bilingual teachers invited all members of the school to the unit’s various functions during my stay, but even so, few students and staffs had visited the unit. There was a sense of distance cultivated by the mainstream students toward the bilingual unit.7 On the other hand, while some bilingual teachers were open to showing what was happening in the bilingual unit, there was a strategic aspect to the unknowability of the bilingual unit. In response to mounting criticism about the traditional anthropological way of knowing the other—gaining access to the “Other” in an asymmetrical power relationship and reproducing that power

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relationship through exoticizing and placing the Other in the eternal past in relation to the anthropologists (see Clifford 1988; Fabian 1983)—since the mid 1980s access to knowledge about Māori culture has been carefully controlled by the Māori people themselves in order to reestablish respect for Māori culture on their own terms (Ballara 1993; Bishop 1996; King 1985; G. Smith 1990a; for further discussion see chapter 5). That is, unknowability can function to resist domination by prying outsiders who want to “know” in the context of relations of domination between Māori and Pākehā. Because it was part of the established school system, certain aspects of the bilingual unit could not escape being known by the school administrators: financial reports to the school, national examination scores, disciplinary measures, and so on. That is, while the school administration accepted its limited access to knowledge of what was happening in the bilingual unit out of respect for the semi-autonomy of the unit and cultural sensitivity, discourses about the bilingual unit continued to be created, placed in the discourse of success and failure (see Varenne and McDermott 1999). However, some non-Māori people saw this space for Māori culture at school as a special privilege. At Waikaraka High School, the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream classes was interpreted differently depending on where one was located: most bilingual students saw the difference as that between Māori and Pākehā; most mainstream students and staff saw it as that between “regular” and “special.” Some mainstream students and teachers—being “unmarked,” which was an effect of their powerfulness (see Roediger 1994; Rosaldo 1989)—attacked the “mark” of the bilingual unit as an unfair privilege (for a discussion of a similar attack on biculturalism in general, see Ballara 1986). Some parents of mainstream students thought that the existence of the bilingual unit put the bilingual students on a pedestal and created an arrogant attitude among them. Other parents of mainstream students thought that the bilingual students’ arrogant attitudes intimidated the mainstream students. It was ironic that one of the positive things that many parents noted about having the bilingual unit was that it raised the self-esteem of the bilingual students. Such critiques of the dominance of bilingual students and Māori culture at Waikaraka High School led in some contexts to an argument to confine Māori culture in Māori space, as mentioned earlier. The perception of domination by the bilingual students will be further analyzed later in this chapter and in chapter 5. Among students, however, there was another dimension: attraction. When I casually asked one of the mainstream Year 10 female students who the most popular male students in Year 10 were, she answered that they were mostly bilingual students. She said that one bilingual male student’s blue eyes looked gorgeous against his brown skin. To my question about the most popular female students in Year 10, she mentioned one mainstream student who happened to be going out with a bilingual male student. Other mainstream female students told me that because there were few female students in the bilingual unit in

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that particular Year 10 (there were fifteen male and three female students in the Year 10 bilingual class in 19978), male bilingual students were going out with mainstream female students. In 1997, two bilingual female students were going out with bilingual male students, and two bilingual male students were going out with mainstream female students. Inhabiting the Space of Waikaraka High School Designated space on the school grounds mapped out varied accessibilities to spaces by various people. The trajectories of students’ movements were constrained by officially defined accessibility, reflecting one’s position in the school system—for example, being a Year 13 student gave one an exclusive access to the common room; being a bilingual students gave one an access to the bilingual unit, although this was not rigidly exclusive; and being a staff member gave one exclusive access to the staff room. For most mainstream students under Year 12, there was no clearly demarcated place to belong during free time in Waikaraka High School. Although the bilingual students had the bilingual unit, they spent much of their time outside it, vying for their own space, too. The belongings to spaces were constantly changing and constantly carved out by students’ activities—walking, standing, playing sports, and sitting (see de Certeau 1984). There were no lockers assigned to all the students, which would direct the movements of students in a certain way.9 There was no cafeteria or lounge to which students could go, but outside the classrooms there were many picnic tables scattered around the school grounds, and benches were attached to the walls outside each building. Some students hung around in a corridor of a building, some hung around at the table in front of the canteen, some sat at the far end of the field, some sat in between the gym and swimming pool, and some played sports in the gym. These undesignated areas were waiting to be marked and invested with meanings by teachers and students through their movements and occupation. The areas outside the classrooms were a major stage on which students played out their allegiances to their friends. Certain patterns organized the everyday practices of students, although there was always room for change. Some groups often sat together at a similar spot on the field, and other groups often played ball at one corner of the building, for example. Unless others dared to take over these roughly affiliated spots, the same groups of students gathered at the same spot every day. Such groupings were often by the peer group based on the Form class, but they sometimes reached across different Form classes and even across different Years. Some bilingual students were often together during the free period: they stuck to each other as much as mainstream students stuck together with their fellow Form class students. The bilingual unit area was the gathering place for some bilingual students. They gathered in the area before school, during breaks

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between classes, and at lunchtime. Sometimes students played jump rope there; sometimes they just chatted as they sat at the outside table. However, bilingual students did not always stay in the bilingual unit. Most of the core subjects for the bilingual unit took place in one of the classrooms in the bilingual unit area, but owing to a dearth of teachers in the bilingual unit some subjects were taught by teachers outside the unit, as mentioned. For these classes, bilingual students went to the classrooms of that teacher outside the unit. The reverse occurred, although not often, in that some bilingual teachers taught mainstream students, and in such cases the mainstream students came to the teacher’s classroom in the bilingual unit. For the option classes, except for the Te Reo class that was placed as an elective but was compulsory for bilingual students, bilingual students went to the classrooms outside the unit and mixed with the mainstream students. While bilingual students did go often to classes outside the bilingual unit—both for classes and for free time—the frequency with which mainstream students came to the bilingual unit was relatively low. One such occasion was when junior students (Years 7 to 9) carried out the duty of going to each class to ask for a list of absent students and carry notices. They were called “runners”; two students were assigned to be “runners” each day. Some mainstream teachers commented that “the runners are scared to go to the bilingual unit.” However, I did not personally hear that from the runners themselves. Also, as was described earlier, the bilingual unit’s location at the entrance point to the high school complex created the effect of a corridor of stares aimed at people coming to the school, sometimes inducing anxiety in people who had no friends among the bilingual students. Outside the bilingual unit, the bilingual students were perceived as dominating mainly because of the way they were seen to dominate the gymnasium. The gymnasium, gym for short, was one of the significant spaces in which negotiations of power relationships among students took place at lunchtime. It was a significant space for students because it was where sports—valorized at school, yet not regarded as “work” by most students—took place. In the gym, some students played basketball or volleyball, some worked out with the machines, and others watched from the bleachers or by the wall. The gym was a gendered space also. Those who played sports or worked out were mainly male students. Those who watched were mainly female students. Often co-existing were the relationship of active players and passive audience, on the one hand, and the reverse asymmetrical relationship of the objectified players on the stage and the voyeurs in the audience seats, on the other (Berger 1980; Mulvey 1975). Female students were often reluctant to be seen playing sports on this stage. During the basketball tournament of Year 10 students that I will describe later, there was a rule that each team had to have at least two female students. This official intervention accentuated the gender categories as meaningful. While some female students were as good as, if not better than, male basketball

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players, some female students were obviously reluctant to play, emphasizing that they were there because of the artificial balancing intervention of the school. The perception that bilingual students dominated the gym was especially heightened during the basketball season. Some mainstream students commented that “they [the bilingual students] think they own the place.” Some mainstream teachers said that “the bilingual students dominate the gym” because they were good at sports. This reputation of bilingual students’ athletic prowess was supported by the result of the basketball tournament between the Form classes of the Year 10 students in 1997. There were two teams from three mainstream Form classes and two teams from one bilingual Form class. The teams from the bilingual Form class took first and second places in the tournament (for a discussion on the relationships between ethnicity and kinds of sports associated with it, see Doerr 2000). The bilingual students’ belonging to the bilingual unit area, designated as such and supported by the school, combined with their domination in the gym to create a sense of threat and anxiety among the mainstream students, with two main effects. First, the fact of them having an assigned space gave rise to the argument that the bilingual students should dominate only in the space that was given to them. Second, the bilingual students’ domination outside the unit area was seen as caused by having a special place, or being “put on a pedestal by being given special space.” This claim often developed into a critique of the existence of the separate bilingual unit using the rhetoric of anti-separatism, which I will discuss in chapter 5. On the other hand, the bilingual students were not seen by the mainstream people as dominating in other domains at school, especially in “academic” competition, as will be discussed in chapter 6. In sum, the existence of a designated area for the bilingual students created specific perceptions of the place and people. The bilingual unit area made the difference of the bilingual students visible and noncontextual; it visually fixed the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream; it gave the bilingual students a place to belong to; it created a sense that, as a special privilege, it was the cause of the bilingual students’ domination of “regular” space; and it allowed common teenager turf politics to be seen as institutionally sanctioned ethnic exclusiveness. This section has illustrated a social effect of bilingual education. But what we have seen was also an effect of biculturalism, one of the three shifts in Aotearoa/New Zealand society, on school. Another major shift was the neoliberal reform, whose effects on school I now turn to.

Effects of Neoliberal Reform on Waikaraka High School The neoliberal reform of 1989 had two major effects on Waikaraka High School. The first was the introduction of tracking, which applied to the mainstream Year

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7 to Year 11 Form classes. Before 1997, there was one upper-track Form class in each Year (one of seven mainstream Form classes of Year 7/8 and one of three mainstream Form classes in each of Years 9 and 10). Starting in 1998, subject tracking in the core subjects (mathematics, English, and science) was introduced starting in Year 11. During my fieldwork, tracking was a contested system whose details will be discussed in chapter 4. The other main effect of the neoliberal reform on Waikaraka High School was the introduction of the fee-paying student program. As mentioned earlier, due to the neoliberal education reform that forced schools to seek funding from sources other than the government, schools around Aotearoa/New Zealand began marketing themselves to attract fee-paying students (Dale and Robertson 1997). Waikaraka High School began accepting fee-paying students in 1992 under the leadership of several senior teachers and others who formed a business unit independent of Waikaraka High School. However, this was soon taken over by Waikaraka High School, and the income from the fee-paying students was pooled with other contributions to the Waikaraka High School budget. Waikaraka High School received both short-term (several weeks) and long-term (a year or more) fee-paying students. In 1997, there were five long-term students (three from Korea and two from Japan) and two groups of short-term (both from Thailand) fee-paying students. Long-term fee-paying students attended both ESL and regular classes in their age group. Short-term students focused on “cultural exchange,” displaying their culture at Waikaraka High School and visiting various local tourist spots. At Waikaraka High School, fee-paying students paid $7,500.00 (NZ) per year, whereas a New Zealand citizen paid $75.00 (NZ) per year in 1997, as mentioned. Considering that Waikaraka High School needed to have some facilities and teachers for the fee-paying students, in 1997 the school barely broke even on its fee-paying student program: five long-term students and two groups of shortterm fee-paying students almost balanced out with the costs of marketing and the ESL teacher. A part-time (70 percent) teacher, Tatum, was responsible for the well-being of the fee-paying students in 1997. She taught ESL classes 11 hours a week for the long-term fee-paying students and also taught some health classes for Waikaraka High School. One high school in Japan sent two or three students to Waikaraka High School every year. However, because of a personal conflict with Tatum, according to one of the teachers involved in the fee-paying students program, this Japanese high school decided to stop sending students to Waikaraka High School. Coincidentally, by the end of 1997 no other fee-paying students had been secured for the year 1998. As a result, Tatum lost her job. In March 1998, one Japanese student enrolled as a fee-paying student. She received ESL lessons from a staff member at the student center who did not have any ESL training. This decision was motivated by the school’s obligation to pay only $20.00 (NZ) per hour for her lessons, instead of a part-time salary paid to a qualified teacher like Tatum.

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Host families for fee-paying students were chosen by Waikaraka High School. Tatum told me that many families whose children attend(ed) Waikaraka High School volunteered to be host families every year. The staff at school knew these families through their involvement in the school, so Tatum and some staff decided on appropriate families and matched them up with incoming fee-paying students. Host families received $150.00 (NZ) per week for hosting a student in 1997, which some thought was overgenerous. However, host mothers explained that, considering the work of chauffering the students and helping them with homework besides providing room and food, $150.00 (NZ) per week was appropriate. The host families listed by the school were all families with both a father and a mother. Waikaraka High School actively recruited fee-paying students for the high fees they paid while celebrating their cultural difference, which softened this monetary-driven aspect. In my interviews, 61 of the 76 interviewed parents of Year 10 students approved of the fee-paying student program mainly because their children could learn about other cultures and because Waikaraka High School gained financially. Among the interviewed teachers, 21 out of 39 approved of the program because it would teach local students different cultures and tolerance toward them. Seven of these teachers qualified their endorsement by noting that in practice, students do not mix with, or sometimes do not accept, the fee-paying students. While five teachers appreciated the program’s bringing in income, 11 resented this aspect (see chapter 9 for details). Fee-paying students, the majority of whom came from Asia, were considered wealthy by students and teachers of Waikaraka High School. A teacher told me some stories: one fee-paying student had a gang of students following him around for the money he gave out to them. Another fee-paying student bought a house in a nearby city and bought a car for Waikaraka High School to show her gratitude to the school. Another fee-paying student was involved in drug dealing and bought himself a BMW while a student at the high school. Tatum told me that many long-term fee-paying students came to Aotearoa/New Zealand because their wealthy parents could not be bothered to look after them: “They are very spoilt and don’t want to be here.” I heard similar stories from Waikaraka High School students. Some students asked me if I was rich because I am Japanese. “Not all Japanese are rich,” I replied, to which they answered: “All the ones that come to our school are.”

Fieldwork Methods I carried out my fieldwork in Waikaraka for nine months, from 13 August 1997 to 13 May 1998. My fieldwork’s main focus was investigating how structures that divide and label students at school affect students’ subjectivities. My research

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used an ethnographic method because it allows researchers not only to capture actions and opinions that may not be represented in official statements, statistics, and representations but also to understand them in their sociocultural context. Because I wanted to focus on how schooling produces students’ subjectivities, I devoted special attention to the transition of Year 10 students—from being divided into bilingual and mainstream classes to being put together in mainstream classes in Year 11 (the bilingual unit goes up to only Year 10)—in order to observe how change in the ways school structure arranges students affected the students’ subjectivities. That is, I followed both bilingual and mainstream Year 10 students starting in August, through their transition into Year 11 in January when the school year changed, and into their school life as Year 11 students until May, when I left the field. The transition was significant not only because bilingual students joined mainstream classes in all activities but also because they were introduced into the tracking system, which only existed in the mainstream Forms. Year 10 was divided into four Form classes: one bilingual and three mainstream, the latter being tracked, as mentioned. In 1997, there were seventeen bilingual and seventy-two mainstream Year 10 students. I visited the school almost every day, carrying out participant observation in two Year 9 social studies classes (social studies is compulsory up to Year 10) (total of 40 sessions), in all four of the Year 10 social studies classes (total of 84 sessions), and various other classes (one time each, total of 16 sessions) in 1997, and in all five of the mathematics (total of 89 sessions) and all five of the English classes (total of 67 sessions) of Year 11 students (i.e., the Year 10 students from 1997) as well as optional Year 11 geography classes (26 sessions) and three other classes (3 sessions) in 1998. In 1997, I also joined a Japanese class of the Year 7/8 students (19 sessions) to assist the class, because Japanese is my first language. Almost every day I also spent time in the school outside class at staff meetings, lunchtimes, school assemblies, school sports events, and school social events. I also conducted 219 interviews—of Year 9 and 10 students (65 students, 39 of them twice at the end of Year 10 and at the beginning of Year 11), teachers (39 teachers out of 43), and parents10 (76 parents—or parents of 55 out of 89 Year 10 students). These were open-ended interviews initiated with standard questions focused on four areas: their personal background; their views on what is important in education; their views on the bilingual unit, tracking system, and hosting international students; and their views on what makes Aotearoa/New Zealand unique. The questions were slightly modified for each group of interviewees (that is, students, parents, and teachers/school administrators). Interviews of students, upon parental written consent, were done mainly at school, during class time, intervals, and lunchtime, lasting from fifteen minutes to a half hour each. I interviewed some students twice, once while they were Year 10 and once when they turned Year 11, in order to see if their views on things

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had changed due to the transition. Interviews of parents, done mainly at their houses during the summer holiday (January 1998), lasted from a half hour to three hours each. Both students and parents were given one- or two-page survey sheets beforehand to fill out, and I carried out follow-up interviews. Interviews of staff members were done at their homes, at school, or at the place I was boarding, lasting an hour to six hours each, beginning in the early part of the summer holiday (December 1997). First I asked them to fill out a sheet about their family background, education, and employment history. Then I asked them questions orally. Some interviews were tape-recorded upon permission, but I also took notes of all the interviews. There was no translator because all the interviews were done in English, except for the exchange of some Māori sentences not significant to the content of the interview. Outside the school, I boarded with five local households, five to seven weeks at each household, throughout my stay. Three of these families had children who were Year 10 students at Waikaraka High School in 1997. One family was the family of a bilingual teacher from Waikaraka High School. Not only did I spend time with them in the evening and holidays, but I joined many of their activities with their friends and relatives as well. I also participated in some community activities. Once a week I did volunteer work for a nonprofit organization called the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, and I helped out at the town’s Visitor Information Centre when they needed a hand. I was also asked to carry out unpaid mathematics tutoring of a Year 9 student who was suspended indefinitely from Waikaraka High School. I tutored her for two months until she decided to enroll at a correspondence school. This was part of the program for “at-risk youth” sponsored by the district council of the area. In addition, I took a diploma course in Māori culture, art, and language at the local Te Wananga. These experiences helped me grasp the diversity within Waikaraka and, at the same time, the linkage of the diverse parts of the community—it was sometimes the case that people whom I met in totally different contexts happened to be neighbors, went to school together twenty years ago, or were in-laws. As in any ethnographic research, my research is a product of my unique interaction with people in Waikaraka. At school, I introduced myself as a researcher doing fieldwork for my PhD dissertation for a university in the United States. While observing the classroom practices, I also acted as a quasi teacher’s aide, carrying out errands for the teacher and assisting students. In the classes I observed, I occupied ambiguous positions. I was like a student, often sitting among students facing the blackboard and teacher’s desk; but I was also like a teacher, able to walk around at will. Mainstream students called me “Miss” without a last name—an anonymous term used for teachers, adults and students senior to oneself. Teachers called me by my first name, as they did with other teachers and with students. Bilingual students called me by my first name. In general, bilingual students called bilingual teachers “whaea [mother or aunt] Pare” or “matua

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[father or uncle] Robert,” but they called mainstream teachers “Miss” (regardless of their marriage status) or “Mister.” Bilingual students’ calling me by first name put me closer to the bilingual teachers, while distinguishing me by the lack of the term “whaea.” This difference in the terms of address between bilingual and mainstream students was, I suspect, mainly due to the bilingual unit’s atmosphere being more family-like than that in the mainstream classes. I was in-between students and teachers in other ways also: knowledge-wise, I often answered students’ questions about schoolwork, although the answers were ultimately relegated to a teacher for approval; authority-wise, I encouraged students to follow school rules but did not choose to exert disciplinary power over them. Although I observed in both bilingual and mainstream classes, the fact that I visited bilingual classes made many people assume that I was “researching Māori culture at school.” Also, the knowledge I have of Māori culture and language and my being Japanese (thus non-European) led many Māori and Pākehā people to see me as supporting Māori causes. I suspect that this subject position of mine made some Māori people more vocal in expressing their views on ethnic relations and some Pākehā people less so. As a side note, I situated my interviews with parents to be not only for my own research but also for the school to receive parents’ feedback, and the parents were notified of this. Thus, the interview responses may have an aspect of the parents addressing the school through me. I provided coded answers from my interviews to school administrators and teachers, especially regarding tracking (see chapter 4). What I experienced during my fieldwork was not only situated in a specific historical time (see Fabian 1983, 1991; Fischer 1986) but was also the product of my interaction with people in their own historical time—when they were fifteen years old, for example. Interviews—which I initially thought of as my recordings of people’s opinions on certain issues—often turned out to be a discussion session between the interviewee and myself during which each party’s opinions were affected by the other’s. From reading the biweekly high school newsletters after returning from the field, I found that things continued to change after I left. It is likely that people’s opinions changed as they faced changing situations. Also, all through my research I talked with people, especially people that I boarded with and teachers that I became very close to, about my research project and problems, as I would do with my mentors, colleagues, and friends at a university. During my fieldwork, I had two occasions to present my findings at a conference and a university seminar (colloquium) in Aotearoa/New Zealand; I also submitted a conference paper in the United States. People that I was staying with at that time read my paper and made some critical and helpful comments. The PhD dissertation on which this book is based, as well as earlier draft of this book, were sent to Waikaraka High School, and in the Waikaraka High School newsletter I invited people of the school community to read and comment on it, which some did. One of the parents is a researcher on education, and I consulted her about

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my work both during and after the period of fieldwork. It makes sense that I write “what I experienced during my fieldwork,” between August 1997 and September 1998, using the past tense. In the nine months I spent at Waikaraka High School there were many events, big and small, that caught my attention. Some were one-time events in classrooms; others were repeated practices, such as dance performances at school functions. There were also utterances, solicited or not, that caught my attention. In the following chapters, I analyze some such events that tell us about practices that group, order, and relate individuals in certain ways, reflecting, challenging and further producing subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Notes 1. The top four major occupations of people in Waikaraka were retailing (7.3 percent), agriculture-related industry (6.6 percent), education (5.6 percent), and food and beverage services (5.2 percent) (Statistics New Zealand and Space-Time Research 1997). 2. It used to be a private school but became an “integrated” school, which means it received government funding and allowed 10 percent of its students to be non-Catholic. 3. Year 13 students had the privilege of having a common room with a pool table, couches, and various posters of their choice. 4. Guests of the school spend their time in the staff room as well. However, the “backstage” aura still persisted with the presence of the guests, in that they were the same “adults” whom staff members did not have to keep a distance from or exercise authority over (Goffman 1959). 5. There was a Year 12 student who had moved from Whare Kura to Waikaraka High School in order to learn more English, although Whare Kura had English as a subject. 6. An exception to this was the students who cut through the field on the other side of the gate. 7. Mainstream students could be comfortable in the bilingual unit, nonetheless. When Year 9 mainstream students were taking a social studies class taught by a bilingual teacher, which I observed in 1997, these mainstream students hung around comfortably at the bilingual unit. True, this was only before and after that class and with their classmates. It was almost as if they required the official backing of taking the class there, along with the force of numbers, to occupy the space with ease and with the air of belonging. 8. However, this was reversed in the Year 9 bilingual Form class (three to six) and Year 7/8 Form class (seven to twelve). Including the previous three years (1994 to 1996), the gender balances between male and female in the Year 9/10 bilingual Form classes were 12 and 19 (1994); 9 and 10 (1995); 28 and 13 (1996); 18 and 8 (1997); 6 and 13 (1998). 9. There were a few lockers for students, but the students had to pay a special fee ($25.00 [NZ] per semester) to use these lockers. 10. In this book, I include caretakers—such as relatives when parents were not living with the students—in the category of “parents” for the purpose of simplifying the language.

4

S ORTING The Tracking System and Production of Meanings

% Tracking in the Era of Neoliberal Reform One of the main regimes of difference at many schools centers on “academic ability.” Such “academic ability” is discursively determined, reflecting what is considered important knowledge, intelligence, diligence, and effort in a given society. Schools create various means by which to show the high “academic ability” of some students, such as giving differentiated grades to students, giving the status of “honor students” to some students, and putting them in upper-track classes1. This labeling of “academic ability” reifies the qualities of students and creates a regime of difference based on “academic achievement,” which affects students’ subjectivities. From the beginning of my research effort, finding out about the tracking system was a struggle as there were inconsistencies in the information presented to me by several teachers. The written policy on tracking or class placement was vague: “when placing a student in a class the following should be considered: the student’s learning needs are paramount; the choices and wishes of students and their parents; the choices and options possible; the recommendations of the contributing or previous school; the recommendations of the previous years’ teachers through the profile data; gender and ethnic balance, and where appropriate the student’s ability; the equity aspect; the class size; the safety factors; the teacher’s skills; the student’s behavior; entry criteria or pre-requisites as specified by HODs [Heads of Department]; and changing circumstances” (Waikaraka High School school policy). This policy document did not reveal the detailed workings of exactly how these numerous criteria are considered and what priority they are assigned in the tracking process. I thus interviewed teachers and observed selection processes. However, the interview results were inconsistent, a common difficulty that researchers face when doing research on tracking, not because the operation is disorderly but because of the political nature of the knowledge of its operation (Oakes 1985).

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The amount of knowledge students and parents had regarding the operation of tracking was uneven. At Waikaraka High School, many parents whose children were in the lower-track class had little idea as to what it was. Some did not even know it existed. Other parents who had access to the knowledge of the school operation—through close communication with teachers and/or other parents “in the know”—knew about the system. If their children were not in the upper-track class, some such parents pressured the school to put them in the upper-track class by threatening to send their children to other schools, which would hurt the school by depriving it of some per-pupil funding. In the era of the free market for education, knowledge of the operation of the systems at school, including “how to complain” to the school, was vital for parents in gaining what they desired from the school and getting ahead within the system (see Harklau 1994). Realizing the political nature of knowledge about tracking, I decided to consider the inconsistency in information as a starting point for understanding the power politics among teachers and between teachers and parents regarding tracking. As the information gathered is the product of a process that is conditioned by relations between a researcher and the researched and by the people’s view of the system, it is meaningless to filter out the information so that the description becomes consistent and appears “objective” (Clifford 1988). Thus, instead of aiming at a consistent description of the tracking system, I decided to examine the production and contestation of meaning by teachers in the process of negotiating their positions in the power politics at school. In order to add student viewpoints, I also examine how students lived and created meanings of the regime of difference produced by tracking. The aim of this chapter is not to criticize teachers for the ways they presented the tracking system to me. Rather, the aim is to illustrate how one’s position affects how one represents the item in discussion. In New Zealand, interest in a tracking system first emerged in the late 1940s but was resisted by those who saw it as not egalitarian. However, tracking began to flourish after the 1989 education reform, when per-pupil government funding made schools sensitive to the demands of parents. Tracking served to attract certain kinds of parents who wanted their children to be separated from “disruptive” students and were often wealthy enough to send their children elsewhere if their demands were not met (Moltzen 1996; Whitty et al. 1998). As described in chapter 1, at Waikaraka High School in 1997, the mainstream Year 7/8 (mixed age) Form classes were tracked into one upper- and six lower-track classes. The mainstream Year 9 Form classes were tracked into one upper- and two lower-track classes, as were mainstream Year 10 Form classes. The mainstream Year 11 Form classes were tracked into one upper- and four lowertrack classes (see Table 4.1). There was no tracking for Years 12 and 13. Starting in 1998, Year 11 had subject tracking only for the compulsory subjects, namely, English, mathematics, and science. The bilingual class was not tracked because of its small number of students (17 in 1997).

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Table 4.1

Number of Upper- and Lower-Track Form Classes in Mainstream Mainstream Form classes Upper-track

Lower-track

Total

Year 7/8

1

6

7

Year 9

1

2

3

Year 10

1

2

3

Year 11 (until 1997)

1

Year 11 (from 1998)

4

5

Subject tracking

5

Year 12

No tracking

5

Year 13

No tracking

1

At Waikaraka High School, tracking produced many “successes,” which also helped the school emphasize its “excellence” in marketing itself. It suggested to parents that being in the upper-track class was a ticket to good academic credentials in the future. For example, out of eighteen Year 13 students who gained university entrance credentials at Waikaraka High School in 1997, fifteen (83.3 percent) had been in the upper-track class and only one in the lower-track class when they were Year 11 students. Parents often believed that upper-track class had the best teachers and the most rigorous academic training, as well as being free of disruptive students (my interview of parents). I started to focus on the tracking system in the first week of my observation at Waikaraka High School, following a suggestion by a teacher. While my main research interest was the formation of subjectivity through the presence of the bilingual unit, I wanted to incorporate into my research a topic that the school would find useful so that I could give something back to the school. To this end I asked some teachers if there was any research that ought to be done. Upon the suggestion, I included questions about tracking in standard interviews of teachers, Year 10 students, and their parents. I conducted more extensive interviews with some teachers involved in tracking. I also observed upper- and lower-track classes of social studies (Year 10), English (Year 11), and mathematics (Year 11). At the end of 1997, I set up a time to see Kate, a teacher who had carried out research on tracking earlier and asked me to do further research. In our discussions of my findings, the individual students, parents, and teachers remained anonymous. During and after my fieldwork, I gave the principal and Kate anonymously collated interview results. In what follows, I outline how several teachers presented the tracking system to me and examine how some teachers and students made sense of the tracking system by giving meanings to upper- and lower-track classes and students from their particular subject positions. I also discuss the implications of the tracking system in creating meanings for a regime of difference based on “academic achievement.”

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Presenting Tracking In this section, I present how various teachers presented the following information: (1) why research on tracking is necessary, (2) how the tracking started and why it should stay at Waikaraka High School, (3) the degree of parental pressure, (4) the selection processes of the upper-track classes, and (5) the difference between the upper- and lower-track classes. I also provide additional information in order to situate the teachers’ interview results. Need for Research Jack, a social studies teacher, suggested that I do research on tracking because he thought it would benefit the school to have a study done “by an outsider.” He did not mention the existence of previous research. We talked about this after his Year 10 social studies class in my first week of research at Waikaraka High School. I observed his social studies and geography classes regularly. Jack was the head of the department for social studies and one of the teachers responsible for developing the curriculum of Waikaraka High School. When I talked with the assistant principal, Julie, about the possible choices of research for Waikaraka High School and how some teachers had suggested tracking, she told me that someone else had already done research on tracking and suggested a study on drug and alcohol abuse among students instead. I had little contact with Julie in terms of observation of classes due to her position, but became close to her through talking in the staff room. Feeling that I lacked expertise to do research on drug and alcohol abuse, I pursued tracking. I found out that Alice, whose Year 10 social studies classes I had been observing, was one of the teachers who had done the research on tracking. Upon my asking, she remembered visiting schools to get some ideas about tracking, but she referred me to Kate, a Year 7/8 teacher and the dean of Year 9, for further information and guidance on what additional research may be needed. Nonetheless, it was Alice who became my main source of information about the tracking system at Waikaraka High School. She not only let me regularly observe both upper- and lower-track classes of Year 10 social studies that she taught but also showed me the selection process for the upper-track class, which took place in mid October 1997 and will be described later. I carried out two hour-long interviews with Kate and visited her Year 7/8 upper-track class once. Kate did not have the results of the research she had participated in, but we discussed tracking in general. After some discussion, Kate said she would like me to research the self-esteem of students and parents from both the upper- and lower-track classes. I then included questions about self-esteem in my standard interviews for Year 10 students and parents, as well as teachers.

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During a standard interview of teachers, one teacher, Walter, an elective subject teacher with whom I did not have much contact, talked about research on tracking. Walter commented that the tracking system had been started without any research on its effectiveness. There should be research about it, he said. The discrepancy between the ways Jack and Walter did not talk about the existing research and the ways Julie, Alice and Kate did suggests various intentions behind people’s desire that research be done. Jack suggested I do the research on tracking because it would be done by “an outsider.” His failure to mention the “insider” research by Kate and Alice, which he was probably aware of, may have indicated his view that the study was not impartial. It became clear later that Jack was an implementer of the tracking system, and the “insiders” who had done the research (Alice and Kate) were opposed to the tracking system. Julie told me about the previous research right away, which shows her approval of that research to some degree, but also her disapproval of my doing research on it again, as she wanted me to do research on drug and alcohol abuse. Alice and Kate did not share their research results with me but were willing to share certain information on tracking with me. Walter did not mention existing research, either, but for a different reason; his comment rather suggested a complaint about top-down decision making without any research justifying its implementation. In short, how and whether teachers saw a need for research or acknowledged existing research reflected, I suggest, the teachers’ positioning themselves in the struggle for the continuation or dismantlement of tracking. This aspect becomes clearer in later sections. How Tracking Began and Why It Should Stay Teachers differed in their explanations of how the tracking began as well as why it should or should not stay at Waikaraka High School. The difference reflected each teacher’s view of tracking and upper-track students and parents. I introduce four teachers’ views below. William was the principal of Waikaraka High School for twenty-one years until he retired in October 1997, two months into my fieldwork. He was the principal when tracking started. The interview whose results are given here was done at his house, after his retirement. I asked him why the tracking system was introduced. William explained as follows. First, it aimed to solve the problem of the falling performance of the “able students,” which began in the 1980s. He attributed the students’ declining performance to their being made the targets of put-downs and becoming known as “teachers’ pets.” Parents of these students wanted the school to solve this problem by putting the able students in a class where they would not be “put down” but instead be supported by their peers. Second, tracking was a reaction to an increase in behavioral problems in classes. Some parents threatened that they would take their children out of Waikaraka High School if they were

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in the same class as students with such “behavioral problems.” Waikaraka High School responded by introducing the tracking system. He said the tracking started in the Year 11 classes because Year 11 was the first national examination (School Certificate) year. Tracking slowly expanded to lower Years, and by the time of my fieldwork it had reached Year 7/8. While he was the principal, the tracking was done by Form class, not by subject (subject tracking was introduced in 1998, soon after his retirement). This was the easiest way to manage because of the small size of the school, he said. Examination results went up after the introduction of the system, especially for the upper-track students, according to him. I asked William what debates occurred while the tracking system was being established. He said there was no significant debate except among a small group of staff who opposed it. There is always opposition to whatever one does, he said. The Board of Trustees supported the tracking system because they were feeling pressure from the community. Parents of able students were especially vocal. I asked him what the opposition was. He said some teachers thought it was socially unacceptable in the egalitarian New Zealand society because tracking was elitist. He remembered that two students had opted out of the upper-track class for that reason. Most Year 7/8 teachers were against it. I asked him who had been involved in the implementation of the tracking system, and William said he himself had been the main driver. Jack, the social studies teacher introduced earlier, was interviewed about tracking at his house. I asked him how the tracking system was first put into place. He told me that the system had been started in the 1980s by the then principal, William. Jack himself implemented it because he was in charge of the curriculum. Tracking started in Year 11 to prepare students for the School Certificate. He was the Form teacher of the first Year 11 upper-track Form class, and he had done that for six years. The students in that class were required to take geography, which Jack taught.2 Geography was an elective class for others. Jack said that the tracking system should stay for economic reasons, despite opposition by some teachers, because the tracking system was driven by community expectations. If there was no tracking, parents of “good students” would change schools, he said. Since Waikaraka High School was small, it might have to close down if many parents pulled their children out, he said. In short, for Jack, the tracking offered a form of “excellence” that Waikaraka High School could advertise to attract/retain the parents Waikaraka High School needed for its survival. Alice explained the origin of the tracking system differently: “It was an elite class that they wanted to make.” After inviting me to join her when she went to local primary schools to select students for the prospective Year 7/8 upper-track class, as I will elaborate later, she explained to me the historical background of the establishment of the tracking system. I did not take notes at the time.

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She told me that tracking was begun to accommodate the demands of parents of high socioeconomic status. At the beginning, teachers filled upper-track classes with students whose parents wished it so. That is, there was no selection process. Later, a selection process was introduced. Parents could always choose not to put their students in the upper-track class. After this discussion, I carried out a standard interview with Alice in the staff room. I asked her again for clarification on what the aim of tracking was at the time of its establishment. She said, in contrast to her previous answer, that it had been to raise the level of the results of senior students’ national examinations. I see this discrepancy as partly due to the effect of code switching in interviewing—from casual conversations without taking notes (although she knew that I was always doing participant observation) to more formal interviews with written notes—and partly due to the existence of multiple reasons for having tracking and several takes on tracking within Alice. The results of these interviews reveal the links between the teachers’ positions toward the tracking system, the meaning of the tracking system they created, and the perceived characteristics of the upper-track students in relation to lowertrack students (regime of difference of upper- and lower-track students). While William, Jack, and Alice all mentioned the need to raise the national examination results, they differed when it came to another reason for the existence of the tracking system: William, who had introduced the system, saw it as an attempt to save able students from being put down; Jack, who supported the system, saw tracking as an attempt to attract/retain parents of “good students”; and Alice, who opposed the tracking, told me that it was motivated by elitism that keeps the privilege of the elite. Thus, these teachers portrayed the upper-track students very differently: the “bullied” to be saved (William); children of parents who demanded the best condition for their children (Jack); and unfairly advantaged elite (until the selection process was introduced) (Alice). Parents’ Perceptions and Parental Pressure Pressure from some parents to put their (undeserving) children into the uppertrack class was related to a common perception about the upper-track class: that its environment was more conducive to academic achievement than that in the lower-track classes. When I interviewed thirty-four parents of Year 10 uppertrack students, many viewed tracking as helpful for their children (number of parents in parentheses; some gave more than one answer) mainly because: students were all at the same level of learning/intelligence and thus can support each other academically and socially (15); class content was more demanding and advanced than in a regular class (11); there were no disruptive students in class (5); upper-track classes had the best teachers (2); teachers treated students as mature persons in the upper-track class (2); teachers had high expectations

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of students (2); upper-track students had more opportunities for class presentation, which would make students more outgoing (1); and in the upper track the teacher-student ratio was better (1). About the last point, the teacher-student ratio in the upper-track class was actually worse than in the lower-track classes. This was because, in order to accommodate parents’ demands to put their own children to the upper-track class, an upper-track class usually had the maximum number of students in it compared to a lower-track class, which usually did not. Critiques of the upper-track class were: the best teachers and demanding content should be given to all, not just upper-track (3); the school needed more consultation with parents (3); the upper-track class was not demanding enough (1); the school should not accept students to the upper-track class based on parents’ pressure (1); the upper-track class put too much pressure on students (1); and it was difficult for upper-track students to get out of the upper-track class, even if it proved too hard for the student (1). A striking difference between the upper- and lower-track parents was the latter’s lack of knowledge about the tracking, as mentioned earlier. Out of twentynine interviewed parents of Year 10 lower-track students, eight parents did not even know what tracking was. In contrast, there was only one parent of an uppertrack student who answered “I don’t know” to questions about tracking, though it should be noted that his spouse knew about the tracking. Also, it is worth noting here that seven parents of Year 10 lower-track students implied that tracking only serves the upper-track students, rather than catering to all the students by allowing all to learn at their own speed. To the question “Is the streaming [tracking] system serving your child well? How?” four parents of lower-track students put “N/A” as the answer and three others only discussed other children of theirs who were in the upper track, instead of answering about their Year 10 children in the lower-track class. Many parents of lower-track students who knew about the tracking said (number of parents in the parentheses; one answered more than one answer): special treatment of the upper-track class was unfair (8) (as one of them put it, “smarter ones get smarter and the rest get the crumbs”); lower-track students were discouraged and no longer motivated to work (7) (however, four other parents of lowertrack students said their children had good self-esteem; conversely, seventeen parents of upper-track students thought being in the upper-track class boosted their children’s self-esteem); the social division between upper- and lower-track students was a problem (4); taking all the “able” students into the upper-track class and lumping all the rest together was hard for the average students (4), there were too many disruptive students in class (3), and there were no role models (1), tracking should be done further to create a middle track and a lower track (2), underachieving students, not the high-achieving students, were the ones that needed the best teachers and extra attention (3), tracking should be by subject (1), the school needed to listen to what parents want (1), it had something

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to do with class because better-off children were in the upper-track class (1), and balancing gender and putting more (undeserving) male students in upper-track classes was not fair to girls (1). As for bilingual parents, while the questions on tracking were on the survey sheet, some did not answer it, and I did not specifically ask in the follow-up questions because there was no tracking in the bilingual unit. However, two parents responded: one said the school should assist less capable students more; and the other said tracking created a false binary between the upper-track class and the bilingual unit because students who were intelligent and wanted to learn in a Māori environment had to choose between the mainstream upper-track class and the bilingual unit. I will discuss this issue in detail in chapter 6. This brief overview of the interview results shows the general perception by parents of both upper- and lower-track students that tracking gave a special advantage to the upper-track students. The labels of upper- and lower-track classes also affected the self-esteem of students, according to them. That is, what tracking did in these parents’ eyes was to create a regime of difference of high and low achievers out of diverse students, allocating resources based on that regime and affecting self-esteem. This perception led some parents to push the school to put their children in the upper-track class even if they did not meet the criteria. In casual conversations, I heard some parents saying that they had pulled or were thinking about pulling their children out of Waikaraka High School because their children had not been put in the upper-track class. In my standard interview, one parent of a upper-track student said this explicitly. A parent of another upper-track student, however, said that if one of her children was not academically strong, she would build his/her self-esteem through other things that he/she excelled in rather than making the school put him/her in the upper-track class. Jack’s opinion earlier indicates how he took such parental pressure seriously, to the degree that it justified the existence of a tracking system. Here, the neoliberal reform provided Jack with a new logic of argument: whatever the customer/ parents wanted was right for the school. However, Kate and Alice, who opposed tracking, said that there had only been two to four parents who pressured teachers to put their children in the upper-track class. That is, although the power of parents, strengthened by neoliberal reform, was recognized as the force behind the existence of the tracking system, teachers perceived it in different degrees. Selection Processes I gathered information on the selection process by observing the process first hand and by interviewing teachers involved in the selection process. The selection process varied from Year to Year, reflecting the philosophy of the teachers involved. There were different degrees of transparency in the selection process

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depending on the teacher. There were also some discrepancies between teachers’ explanations of the selection process. Differences in the way the selection process was perceived and presented reveal power politics among teachers who support and oppose the program. I introduce below the selection processes for upper-track classes in Years 7, 9, and 11, as the class stays together for two years. Selection of the Year 7/8 Upper-Track Class Alice explained to me the selection process for the Year 7/8 upper-track class in my interview. Some Year 7/8 teachers visited four local primary schools for an hour or so and (a) talked to the principal and teachers about each student regarding their usual work effort and commitment, (b) carried out tests in mathematics and writing, and (c) talked to students about Waikaraka High School. Entering Year 8, there was not much movement of students between upper- and lowertrack classes. If the number of students in the upper-track class became smaller, some lower-track students moved into the upper-track class. Also, students were taken out of the upper-track class if they were not keeping up with the class. At the beginning of 1998, there were two such students. I asked Alice what the inputs from parents were. She said that when forming the upper-track class, Waikaraka High School sent a letter to the parents whose children were to be in the upper-track class. As mentioned earlier, parents could tell teachers if they wanted otherwise. This way of informing parents meant that parents whose children were assigned to lower-track classes were not officially informed about the existence of the tracking system. In 1997, parents of two students pressured the school by saying they would send their children to another school if they did not get into the upper-track class. In October 1997, Alice took me on two of her four trips to local primary schools. The visit to the first school lasted for an hour. Two Year 7 students who had graduated from that primary school came with us. The principal of Waikaraka High School joined us later. The second primary school we went to was bigger than the first school and was located close to Waikaraka High School. Two Year 7/8 teachers (including Alice), the principal of Waikaraka High School, the kaumatua (Māori elder) of Waikaraka High School, the chairperson of the Board of Trustees, two graduates from the primary school and I were in the visiting party. We received a powhiri (Māori-style welcome) at the beginning from the whole primary school, and the visiting party stayed over an hour. The selection process was similar in both schools. The principal of Waikaraka High School spoke to the prospective students. A question-and-answer session was run by Waikaraka High School students who came along, and writing and mathematics tests were given. Alice and I went to the office of the principal (first school) or a teacher (second school). The principal or teacher commented on each student’s attitude (hardworking, concentrates, etc.), academic achievement

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(struggler, below average, etc.), personality (friendly, “teachers love her,” etc.), friends they spent time with, and sports activities they were involved in (crosscountry, etc.). At the end, Alice asked about students who needed to be separated from each other. At the first school we visited, Alice and the primary school’s principal talked about the students who were not coming to Waikaraka High School. Some of them were going to another local primary school that had Years 7 and 8. This local primary school offered them free transport to the school, which Alice thought was unfair. Alice had been to another primary school the same week. She told me about the visit and said only half of the prospective Year 7 students were coming to Waikaraka High School; the rest of them were going to another primary school to do Years 7 and 8. This vying for students suggested a need some teachers felt for making Waikaraka High School attractive to parents. One such way was tracking—it was held that there would be no “disruptive” students in the upper-track class. In the second, bigger primary school we visited, there were three homeroom classes of prospective students: one bilingual and two mainstream classes. Waikaraka High School teachers carried out the selection process with two mainstream classes on the assumption that students in the bilingual class would join Waikaraka High School’s bilingual unit. Tracking existed only in the mainstream. I will discuss the implications of not considering the primary-school bilingual students for the upper-track class at Waikaraka High School in chapter 6. Alice kindly let me observe the actual selection process because, I believe, she was supportive of my research. In light of Alice’s comments earlier that the tracking had started as an elitist system thus without a proper selection process, her willingness to show me the selection process in detail could also be seen as an act of exempting herself from accusations of a murky selection process, as well as a critical statement against the selection process done by others. Selection of the Year 9 Upper-Track Class Kate, the Year 9 dean, told me about the selection process for the Year 9 upper-track class retrospectively when I interviewed her in the staff room. The process involved (a) talking to the Year 7/8 teachers about each student regarding their attitude, behavior, achievement, ability, who should not be together, and whether he/she should be recommended for the upper-track class and (b) analyzing closely the students that had been recommended for the upper-track class by looking at the Progressive Achievement Test (PAT) result and grade in each subject. A PAT is a national standard test composed of comprehension, vocabulary, listening, and mathematics. Kate told me that some teachers changed their minds about recommending certain students during this second process. Movement between the upper- and lower-track classes entering Year 10 was the same as that for entering Year 8.

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I asked Kate what factors besides such consultation with the teachers influenced the selection. First, she talked about the requests from the parents. She had received four requests from parents for all Year 8 and 9 students in 1997. Although some parents threatened the school, as mentioned earlier, Kate tried not to be influenced by this because, she said, she was a professional teacher and she should stick to her decision based on students’ abilities. Usually, the parents of the prospective upper-track students were sent letters by October letting them know the decision, but this had not happened in 1997. One student’s parents refused to put their child in the upper-track class in 1996 because of a concern about language; English was a second language for the student. Second, Kate talked about a need to balance gender; otherwise the uppertrack class was likely to be mostly girls. Around the time of my fieldwork, there was a nationwide discussion of the “underachievement” of male students at school. Some argued that it was due to the higher degree, among male students, of peer pressure against achieving academically in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This situation was said to be related to the emphasis of a macho ideal and a perceived link between intellectual work and femininity in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Phillips 1996; Watt 1999; also, see Willis 1977). This act of balancing gender due to the concern of equity had specific effects, given that tracking was about the differentiation of students by their “academic achievement,” which was supposed to be gender-blind. As a result of such balancing acts, the gender difference was accentuated and normalized, and the meanings of being male or female were created and emphasized. Such balancing reinforced the legitimacy and power of the category by citing it as a meaningful and relevant category in viewing differential achievement (see Butler 1993). For example, one male upper-track student that I interviewed was conscious that he was not supposed to be there but was, because of his gender. A female lower-track student was furious about the way she thought the upper-track students looked down on her, because she was supposed to be in the upper-track. She said a teacher had told her that they had to let male students in instead. Third, Kate talked about balancing race (Māori and Pākehā) in the uppertrack class. However, she said she had not really done that. I will discuss the combination of various structural and perceptional factors that accentuate the view of “underachievement” of Māori students in chapter 6. As a simultaneous opponent and unwilling implementer of tracking, Kate presented the selection process as a fair system in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, she emphasized individualistic meritocracy by showing her dependence on “objective” academic measurement, such as standardized testing, when she mentioned how teachers’ “subjective” recommendations were reconsidered in light of examination scores. Kate also emphasized her refusal to be influenced by threatening parents—the opposite position from Jack’s. On the other hand, she resorted to another kind of “fairness” that was based on group rights,

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allowing the underrepresented gender to artificially get into the upper-track class (although she did not balance ethnicity). Selection of the Year 11 Upper-Track Class Jack, a social studies teachers and the Form teacher of the Year 11 upper-track class for six years, explained to me the selection process for the Year 11 uppertrack class during my interview. The selection was based on: (a) the result of the examination at the end of Year 10, (b) recommendations from teachers on prospective students’ work effort, and (c) interviews of students by Jack. Letters inviting the students to the upper-track class were sent to their parents. William, the then principal, dealt with the pressure from the parents to put their children in the upper-track class, Jack told me. Even some staff members whose children attended the school had pressured the school to put their children in the uppertrack class, he said. In 1998 subject tracking was introduced for Year 11, and there were no tracked Year 11 Form classes. I asked Kurt, an English teacher and the dean of Year 10, about the selection process for the new Year 11 subject tracking for English. He told me that the relevant factors were: (a) the number of fives (top grade) in the report to the parents, (b) who the top achievers were in each module from the Year 10 curriculum, and (c) the discretion of the head of the English department. The criteria used were academic performance, attitude, and commitment, he said. The result was a main core of students from the previous year’s upper-track Form class, with some additions. Teachers involved in the selection process were the Year 10 dean (Kurt himself), the head of the English department (Nick), English teachers who had taught Year 10 in 1997 (including Kurt), and the Year 11 dean. I asked if there was any parental input. He seemed careful in choosing his words. He said parents were given a chance to object. He said, after a pause, that parents always “supported it.” He made it sound as if the word “support” was loaded, although it was not clear whether parents supported the decisionmaking process or the decisions the teachers had made regarding who were to belong to the upper-track. I then asked about the parental pressure on the school to place children in the upper-track class, which other teachers had mentioned. Kurt did not answer. I then asked if the senior management was involved. He said yes. Then, he said, “they should [be involved],” then said, “did,” and then said “should,” again. Then he said the deputy principal was involved. I asked him if there were any other elements considered, in terms of balance. He said they intended to have gender and ethnic balance. According to him, there tended to be more girls than boys, but nothing was done to balance them. He then said they had input from the bilingual unit because all bilingual students joined the mainstream as of Year 11. There were two students from the bilingual

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unit in the upper-track English class, he said. However, according to my observations there were no bilingual students from the previous year in the upper-track English class. I put a question about this to Nick, the English department head who taught the Year 11 upper-track English class, and he told me there must have been a scheduling conflict. I asked Kurt if the bilingual teacher who taught English to the Year 10 bilingual class had been consulted. He said “yes.” This, however, contradicted what the bilingual teacher had told me: that the bilingual teacher was not consulted at all about the tracking selection. About tracking in general, Kurt said he found subject-based tracking to be good and effective. Upon my asking about the Form-class-based tracking, he hesitated and somewhat reluctantly said it was good. The selection process of the Year 11 upper-track class stood out as more “subjective” in comparison to those of Year 7 and 9, as it included Jack’s interviewing students and the English department head’s discretion. Also, in contrast to Kate, neither Jack nor Kurt was very clear about how they had responded to parental pressure—deferring to the principal and avoiding a direct answer, respectively. Kurt’s description gave the impression that tracking was half-heartedly concerned with gender and ethnic equity: he admitted that gender equity was not actually considered, and what he said about the bilingual unit involvement contradicted the bilingual teacher’s recollection and the actual result. In sum, Alice and Kate, reluctant implementers of tracking, made the selection process transparent and emphasized its fairness, respectively. I argue that their efforts to present tracking as a fair system were not a result of their support for the system but rather of their opposition to the system. In the presence of discord about tracking within the school, Alice and Kate’s emphasis on “fairness,” even in tracking, put into relief and critiqued the “unfairness” of others’ murky implementation of tracking. On the other hand, Jack and Kurt presented tracking in a less clear fashion, leaving the impression that selection processes were mainly in the area of the teachers’ “subjective” discretion. In the background, especially for Jack, was the discourse of the neoliberal educational reform—the need to attract parents was paramount for the school—which may have had nothing to do with “fairness.” In short, the implementers’ views on tracking influenced both the way tracking was done and how tracking processes were presented to me.

Difference between Upper- and Lower-Track Classes Teachers developed their images of upper- and lower-track students from teaching students in both upper- and lower-track classes. Jack said that it was “nice” to teach the upper-track class. Although it was demanding, he said, there were no discipline problems; a teacher could get great satisfaction teaching them. In the lower-track class, a teacher could not do what he/she would do in the upper-track

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class because of the discipline problems, he said. He then commented that it was the very teachers who did not like the tracking system that tended to put their own children in the upper-track class. He called these people “wishy-washy.” In contrast, Nick, who opposed tracking, told me that he preferred teaching the lower-track class to the upper-track class because students in the uppertrack class, contrary to the common belief, did not work as hard as the students in lower-track classes. He said students in the upper-track class knew that they could do all the work, so they did not do their best. He did not like to teach that kind of student, he said. Kate told me that she was against tracking as a philosophy, but if she was asked to teach either an upper- or a lower-track class, she would choose the uppertrack because it was easier to teach and the students were independent. Kate’s case shows that she had different views on tracking depending on her subject position—as an educational philosopher and as an instructor. In order to further understand the ways teachers developed their image of upper- and lower-track students, I introduce below the ways Nick differentiated the ways he taught the upper- and lower-track class. It shows that the difference between the upper- and lower-track classes in their operation was not systematic but developed by each teacher through “trial and error” (for a detailed description of other teachers’ handling of upper- and lower-track classes, see Doerr 2000). In 1998, Nick, an English teacher and the head of the English department, taught upper- and lower-track Year 11 English classes, which he let me observe regularly. I observed thirteen sessions of TEN (upper-track English) and eleven sessions of ENG A (lower-track English) classes in 1998. Both classes had similar numbers of students (twenty-seven in TEN and twenty-three in ENG A), and they each met four times a week in 1998. Both classes were held in Nick’s classroom. The desks were divided into two big sections, five rows of desks on the left side and six on the right side. There was one big table at the very back. Nick’s desk was at the front facing the students. The room had many large windows on both sides. A major difference that I noticed between the TEN and ENG A classes was the reading material that Nick assigned. When TEN students were reading The Old Man and the Sea, Nick told me that he would not assign the book to the ENG A class because “it would be too hard for them.” After finishing Animal Farm with the ENG A class, Nick told me that the book was too hard for them, and the students “didn’t get it.” He would not assign it to the Year 11 lower-track class in the future again, he said. He also chose some short stories written by Witi Ihimaera, a Māori writer, for the ENG A class but not for the TEN class. He told me that this was because students in ENG A could relate to them more, implying that there were more Māori students in ENG A. Six out of twenty-seven students in the TEN class identified themselves as Māori, all from the mainstream. Nine of the twenty-three students in the ENG A class identified themselves as Māori, four from the mainstream and five from the bilingual unit of the previous year.

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Also, Nick ran TEN and ENG A differently. In the TEN class, when he returned the assessment to students, he spent at least half the period going over the students’ work. He often read aloud the best work by the students and explained why it was good. He also read aloud work that he did not think was good and explained why. He did not do either in the ENG A class. This suggests that Nick acknowledged the differences in students’ “abilities” and “work attitudes” and even a need for differentiated treatment. I found little difference in the way students spent time in the two classes, probably because of the differentiated reading assignments used in these classes. In both classes, some students talked a lot and walked around in the class until Nick scolded them, some students worked quietly, and most students responded actively to Nick when he was leading the discussion. In sum, in their classroom experience teachers saw different aspects of students and interpreted the regime of difference between upper- and lower-track students differently. Jack viewed upper-track students as having no discipline problems, whereas lower-track students did. Nick viewed upper-track students as more intelligent learners who could “get” the difficult literature, whereas lowertrack students could not. Nick also believed, contrary to selection criteria, that upper-track students did not work as hard as lower-track students. Kate viewed upper-track students as independent and thus easier to teach, unlike lower-track students. Although Kate was against tracking, she preferred teaching the uppertrack class, reflecting her view of the quality of the upper-track students.

Making Sense of Tracking: Teachers’ Points of View Different answers were given for why research was needed on tracking and the existence and sustenance of the tracking system, how teachers perceived parental pressures, how upper-track students were (perceived and explained to be) selected, and how teachers viewed upper- and lower-track classes differently. All these responses were based on, and further created, certain meanings of the upper- and lower-track students and parents. In this section, I recapture such meanings and further discuss their implications. As to the raison d’être of the tracking system, William described the uppertrack students as bright but helpless, in need of rescue from ridicule and bullying. Jack described the students in the upper-track class as having parents who wanted nothing but the best for their children. Alice described the upper-track students and their parents as elitist. I argue that these images emerged as the cause and effect of the positions each teacher was taking. As some underscored the importance of meeting parents’ demands in the era of the free-marketization of education, such discourse was used to support tracking (Jack). Those who opposed tracking played down the significance of parental pressure (Alice and

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Kate). That is, the gravity and thus meaning of the parental pressure were perceived differently. As to the selection process, the criteria used emphasized that what was valued at school was not the same for everyone. The criteria that were mentioned by most teachers were attitude (effort, commitment, patience, etc.) and academic performance (test/exam results, grades, etc.). They pointed to the kinds of things that counted as “achieving.” In evaluating the attitude, not only “diligence” in working but also relationships with peers and teachers in the classroom mattered. As to the concept of “disruptive,” I observed that tactics to avoid annoying teachers enabled students to escape being thusly labeled: some students who talked about issues unrelated to the class yet included the teacher in a friendly way were not considered “disruptive” (see Doerr 2000 for details). Regarding academic performance, what was considered to be “achievement” could be seen in the aims of each modules and criteria for which grades were given. In the syllabus of Year 10 social studies, for example, these aims were such things as “define technology and explain examples,” “explain how lifestyles change through technology,” and “explain the reasons for the movement of people to/from urban/rural areas.” Assessment criteria were such things as “chart diagram construction,” “map exercise,” and “group work.” There was an emphasis on the understanding of the cause and effect relationship and on the skill of communicating information in various forms, rather than the memorization of facts. The focus on “academic achievement” was challenged by some teachers, pointing to the power struggle between teachers of different subject areas, especially ones who taught compulsory subjects and ones who taught elective subjects. For example, Tony, a woodwork (elective subject) teacher, talked extensively about the tracking system during my standard interview at his house. He was very critical about the current selection process, which was, according to him, based purely on academic achievement, especially in mathematics. To Tony, it indicated a hierarchy in the subjects. He believed that the criteria should be behavioral, based on diligence, parental support, and attitude, rather than indicating such subject hierarchy. As to the perceived difference between upper- and lower-track students, teachers developed their own understanding from the actual operation of upperand lower-track classes: disciplined vs. not disciplined (Jack); intelligent students who “get” difficult literature vs. students who do not (Nick); students who do not make the best effort vs. students who do their best (Nick); and independent vs. dependent (Kate). Here, the views derived from actual dealing with upper- and lower-track classes as an instructor sometimes differed from their philosophical position as an educator, reflecting the teacher’s multiple subject positions. In sum, these diverse meanings of upper- and lower-track students were created in the specific positions these teachers took on the existence of tracking. My efforts to understand the tracking system at Waikaraka High School put

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contestations of meaning into relief as these teachers struggled to support or oppose having a tracking system at the school. While teachers created meanings of upper- and lower-track classes, students, and parents, students created their own meanings for these categories from their specific positionalities in the conjunctions of teacher-student relationships, peer relationships, the process of growing “mature,” development of sexuality, pressure for national credential examinations, etc. In order to add another layer to the understanding of tracking and its meanings, I introduce two examples in the next section.

Living in Tracking: Students’ Points of View Students sensed the difference between tracks in various ways. In this section, I describe and discuss briefly how differences were felt from the viewpoints of lower-track students and an upper-track student. Calculator, Examinations, Tradespeople, and Quiz: Being Lower-Track Students In 1998, Year 11 students were placed in five tracked mathematics classes: one upper, three middle, and one lower track. The upper track was called “upper math,” the middle, “math,” and the lower, “math applied.” The term “math applied” implied a vocational option. Students called it “cabbage math,” as lowertrack classes were often called “cabbage classes” for reasons few could explain. While the difference between upper- and middle-track classes was merely that the former covered extra material beyond the Year 11 curriculum, the difference between “math applied” and the rest was significant. “Math applied” was designed with the expectation that the students would not take the national School Certificate examination at the end of the year. It was for students who were to postpone taking that examination or intended not to take it at all. A mathematics teacher told me that the decision to go into the “math applied” class was based on the mathematics teacher’s recommendation and discussions between the teacher and the students at the end of Year 10. The students’ parents received a letter notifying them, and they could appeal the decision. I attended the first session of the newly formed “math applied” class at the beginning of 1998. There was a new mix of students: seventeen students from two former mainstream lower-track Form classes, three from the former bilingual Form class, and two Year 12 students who were repeating the class. The students were checking each other out, restless in their uncertainty about what dynamics would develop in the classroom—who would be the loud ones, who would be the class clown, etc. Because this was the first official session of the year, the teacher explained the disciplinary system that he was going to use, what the students should bring to the class, and the rules of writing in their notebooks.

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It was when the teacher was explaining to students which calculator to buy that the “difference” of the “math applied” class became illuminated. When the teacher said, “When you buy a calculator . . .” one student shouted out, taking over the teacher’s line with what he had always heard in the past, “buy the scientific calculator!” However, it was different this time. The teacher went on to say, “you don’t need to buy the scientific one . . . unless you are to go [study] further.” The student looked shocked and became silent. The rest of the class fell silent as well. “There are basic ones [calculators] for $4.99 at [a local stationery store],” the teacher continued. To study mathematics beyond Year 11—that is, not drop out—one would need to invest about $20.00 (NZ) in a scientific calculator. Telling students that they did not need to buy a scientific calculator implied that these students would drop out of mathematics after Year 11. The teacher went on to explain the overall design of this class: “It is a class for students who are not going to sit [take] the School C or sit [take] it next year.” Hearing this, some students made a murmuring noise, sounding disappointed. A student shouted, “This is the cabbage class!” The teacher replied carefully: “Some people might want to say negative things about this class, but I will not allow anyone to think that you are stupid or silly.” The students became quiet again. Next, the teacher explained about the Unit Standard, the national examination (see chapter 1) that the students would be doing instead of the School Certificate. Taking the Unit Standard test meant a great deal to the “math applied” class because, although they would not take School Certificate, they could at least have some credentials in hand at the end of the year. The teacher explained that the Unit Standard was “for tradespeople.” The students were getting noisier, talking to each other. The teacher seemed to become annoyed with the students not listening to him quietly. He said, “This class is for tradespeople, not for academics and intellectuals.” The classroom got noisier, as if the students intended to drown out his statement. The teacher then began putting some mathematics questions on the blackboard. One student shouted, “We are not intelligent enough for that!” The teacher kept writing warm-up exercises such as “13 + 18 =” on the board. Looking at that question, another student shouted, “Whoa! We must be in the cabbage class!” Another student asked the teacher if he could move to a different track. The teacher said no, but went on to tell the class about a student who had been in the “math applied” class in the past yet ended up taking the School Certificate and scoring higher than some of the upper-track students. It was possible, he said, to take the School Certificate upon taking a transfer test to the middletrack class. The class ended soon after. In summary, in this first session of the “math applied” class, this class’s difference from upper- and middle-track classes, or in other words the meaning of the lower-track class, was felt by the students through the kinds of tools they were expected to use (that is, a basic calculator rather than a scientific calculator), the

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kinds of aims they were heading toward (a postponed School Certificate or none at all), the definition of students (tradespeople, not academic nor intellectuals), and the kinds of questions that the teacher asked students to solve (for example, “13 + 18 =”). Students reacted sensitively to these signs of the lower track in the classroom. Some thought about moving to another track, rejecting the “cabbage” subjectivity. Others adopted a giving-up mode, accepting, albeit resentfully, their lower-track status. Schoolwork, Maturity, Sexuality, and Othering: Being a Upper-Track Student Tracing the meanings that students saw in various categories was sometimes not an easy task. Among students, comments that sounded prejudiced and/or bigoted were rarely heard. However, this is not to say that students were free of prejudice. Intolerance and stereotypes based on problematic assumptions became visible at various moments in everyday life (see Doerr 2000) and in between the lines of interview answers. Here, I will present moments when some of a student’s views about school work, maturity, and the distinction between the upper- and lowertrack students became illuminated. B. J. Beever (students chose their own aliases) was in the Year 10 upper-track Form class in 1997 and took all of the upper-track subject classes when she became Year 11. However, according to her account, she changed when she turned Year 11. She told me about this change during my second standard interview (I interviewed students twice, once in Year 10 and again in Year 11). She said, “My friends have changed and I’m different . . . the guys I talk to changed this year . . . I started to talk to ‘stoners’ [people who smoke marijuana] from the school . . . [she named four students of the same Year, one from the upper-track and three from the lower-track classes] . . . They are more mature . . . I feel I changed and became mature. Guys that I used to hang out with are not mature any more.” (Later, she listed four male students from the upper-track class for this category.) She said her girlfriends were the same people, although she had made some new friends. She said, “It just happened.” When I was observing in B.J. Beever’s Year 11 classes in 1998, she sat with the same female students as the previous year. However, I did notice that, in one of the elective classes in which students of various tracks mixed, she was sitting with male students from the lower-track class that she had mentioned in the interview. I never saw her talking with them when they were Year 10. She said she had gotten to know them at parties and begun talking with them on the phone often. With all the students that I interviewed twice, I repeated some questions from the first interview. In her first interview on December 2, 1997, B.J. Beever responded to the question, “Please give a list of words that describe you,” by listing the following words: “easygoing, fun, dizzy at times, likable, flirtatious.” In

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answers to other questions, she implied that she was a hard worker in the classes, which was why she had been chosen to be in the upper-track class. In the second interview, done on April 7, 1998, she used the following words to describe herself: “stoner, druggie, flirtatious, slut [crossed out], confident.” There was a change in tone and in the way she presented herself to me in these answers. In her self-description, aspects that were “likable,” both to her peers and possibly to teachers, gave way to things that were disapproved of at school, and probably by her old friends, but not by her new friends. The quality of flirtatiousness was provided in the first interview answers, but another level of friendliness—being a “slut”—-was added in the second interview answers, although it was crossed out. There was an implied link between things that receive negative sanction at school and maturity. Uniform restrictions deemphasized the sexuality of students. Female students were allowed to choose between a skirt and pants. Both female and male students were allowed to wear identical bulky sweat shirts and pants. However, there was some room to emphasize their sexuality through their clothes. Once B. J. Beever became Year 11, I noticed that she was wearing a bright red brassiere whose color was visible through her white uniform shirt. Some other female Year 11 students wore black brassieres, which were also quite visible. I did not see many girls wearing colored brassieres in Year 10 or lower Years. Because the uniform restrictions did not extend to the kind of undergarments students wore to school, this was a way to emphasize one’s sexuality beyond the rule of school. B.J. Beever’s change in becoming mature was linked to the emphasis of her sexuality. Her change was also seen in the way she differentiated herself from others. In the first interview, she answered the question, “What kind of persons do you think are very different from you?” by saying: “No one. I can fit into most groups.” In the second interview, she answered the same question by listing “preppy tryhards, sporty people, environmental people, quiet people, choir singers.” There was a shift from the presented image of a “likable,” friendly-to-all person to that of a teenager with a smell of viciousness and rebelliousness. Contrary to her initial portrayal of herself as a hard worker, in the second interview she was distancing herself from “preppy try-hards,” which was a term often used against the students in the upper-track class. Here she was also distancing herself from various kinds of people who often received positive sanctions at school or from adults. However, it cannot be assumed that B. J. Beever became more intolerant or more tolerant of differences of opinions, hobbies, tastes, or demeanor as the result of her change. In the second interview, she told me that she used to think some guys were “geeks,” and she hadn’t wanted to be seen talking to them. But since becoming Year 11, she had begun to think that “geeks” were people, too, she said. She still thought they were “geeks,” but she no longer cared about that and talked to them. She explained that “geeks” were people who did not have friends and went to the library3 at lunchtime. Also, they did not go to any parties

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and sat at home, she said. That is, although she presented herself as friendly to all in the first interview, she did have negative feelings toward some people and was restrained from being friendly with them. Or, in the last case, she had an expectation that others might see her negatively if she was to be seen with a kind of people of whom she did not feel tolerant. These feelings were expressed only retrospectively, and the previous idealistic answers crumbled down as she distanced herself from her past self. It is worth noting here that she still felt certain people were “geeks,” but she had become confident enough not to worry about being judged according to whom she talked with. She described this whole process of change as becoming mature. In that process, doing things that were approved of by the school came to represent immaturity. The quintessential example of this shift lay in what was represented by the upper-track students, whose depiction changed from that of positive hard workers to immature “preppy try-hards.” That is, the meanings given to the regime of difference between upper- and lower-track students changed. The case of B. J. Beever illuminates the meanings of the regime of difference of upper- vs. lower-track students through the specific positionalities of the speaker, situated in the changing school environment—new Form classes and the increase of schoolwork and pressure in Year 11, leading up to the end-ofthe-year School Certificate examination—the changing body in puberty and its awareness, and changing social relationships with peers and teachers. In short, meanings were created by teachers, caught in their politics, and by students, caught in their developing subjectivities and maturing process.

Regimes of Difference and Tracking The tracking system served a school that created subjects for the labor market, framing them in the concept of “success” and “failure” (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977) by creating a regime of difference of upper (success) and lower (failure) tracks. However, depending on their position toward having the tracking system at school, teachers presented the system in certain ways, creating certain meanings of the tracking and characteristics of upper- and lower-track students and parents. Forces such as parental demands were interpreted differently depending on the teachers’ positions as well. Students experienced the tracking system not only through the labels of upper- and lower-track that were assigned to them and the ways teachers treated them but also through their changing friendships and subjectivities. They gave meanings to the upper- and lower-track students from the experiences framed in their subject positions at a given time. These meanings changed as their subject position changed. The regime of difference of “academic achievement” created by tracking intersected with other regimes of difference. For example, teachers’ efforts to

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balance gender in the upper-track class related the regime of difference of “academic achievement” to that of gender. As a result, this balancing act not only accentuated gender difference but also created meanings of the regime of difference of male vs. female, with male students regarded as underachievers. Another significant intersection of the regime of difference of “academic achievement,” expressed via tracking, was with the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and Māori vs. Pākehā. After examining the relationships between the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and Māori vs. Pākehā students in the next chapter, I will investigate in detail the intersections of these two regimes with that of upper- vs. lower-track students.

Notes 1. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the word streaming is used for tracking. Also, in everyday life, the upper-track class was called the “stream class” and the rest were called the “non-stream” classes. However, for clarity I will call the former “upper-track” and the latter “lower-track” throughout this book. 2. Some parents of upper-track class students complained about the lack of option classes because students were required to take geography instead of other option classes. Geography was taken off the compulsory subject list for the upper-track class after 2–3 years because of these parents’ complaints. Some parents suspected that the geography class’s being compulsory was something to do with the fact that Jack, the geography teacher, was the Form teacher of the upper-track class. Tired of being involved in such a debate, Jack stopped being the upper-track class’s Form teacher after six years, Jack said. 3. The library appeared to be one of the least desirable places to spend the free period, for most of the students. It was usually open at lunchtime, with a supervising teacher. For a fee, students could use the Internet in the library during the free period, but few seemed to take advantage of this opportunity. Every time I went to the library in the free period, mainly to do some photocopying, there were no more than five students there, and sometimes there were none. During class periods, the library was used for various classes. Any teacher could arrange to use it via a sign-up sheet in the staff room. Teachers often used the library when students needed to look up books for their class activities. In such cases, the library also served as a diversion from the ordinary classes for students.

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C ALLING I T S EPARATIST On Conflating Two Regimes of Difference

% The school divides students all the time when it places them in the music class, cooking class, etc. So I don’t believe that the bilingual unit is alone in being separatist. —Beth, one of the cofounders of the bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School

The Claim that the Bilingual Unit Is Separatist “Separatism” was the term some parents chose to describe Waikaraka High School’s bilingual unit. Why did they describe the unit, established to revitalize Te Reo and create a Māori culture–sensitive environment at school, with a term that evokes moral resentment? How can we counter it? When does a division among students become a worrisome instance of separatism? Why? What does the claim of separatism tell us about nationhood in Aotearoa/New Zealand? In this chapter, inspired by a comment by the teacher who founded the bilingual unit (cited as an epigraph to this chapter), I seek answers to these questions, with special attention devoted to the regimes of difference involved in the claims of separatism. In this and the next chapters, I examine relations between a regime of difference of students based on a school’s institutional arrangement of bilingual education (bilingual vs. mainstream students) and a regime of ethnic difference (Māori vs. Pākehā students). I situate the relationships between these regimes of difference in the context of changing nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand (this chapter) and differentiation of students based on their “academic achievement” at school (next chapter). What is at issue in the claim of separatism, I argue, is not so much the division between the bilingual and mainstream students as a conflation of an

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institutionally based regime of difference (bilingual vs. mainstream students) with an ethnic regime of difference (Māori vs. Pākehā students). As will be seen, some conflated these regimes of difference, influenced by the particular identification practices of students contingent on their institutional belonging, and resented the division between the bilingual and mainstream students as an ethnic separation. Others resented being excluded from the Māori cultural programs and saw this as an act of conflating institutional and ethnic regimes of difference, thus an ethnic separatism. In this chapter, I examine some parents’ calling the bilingual unit separatist as an instance and a critique of such a conflation. This chapter shows the ways in which people formed and expressed their subjectivities, understood ethnic relations, and articulated nationhood through the homologies between these regimes of difference. Once regarded as an ethnic division, the relationships between bilingual and mainstream students become an instance that reflects the politics of difference and nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand in general, not just the institutional arrangement of Waikaraka High School, as will be seen later in this chapter. As politics of difference came to constitute a global discourse by the late twentieth century (Taylor 1994), resistance to the politics of difference shared a common discourse: the claim of separatism. While the politics of difference takes various forms (Goldberg 1994; Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997), there are two primary propositions in the concept of separatism. One is the divisiveness and resultant instability that the politics of difference allegedly causes within a nation-state, and the other is an alleged unfairness caused by separate laws for separate groups within a nation-state. An example of the former is the claim of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who sees the formation of schools with Afrocentric curricula and Spanish/English bilingual education programs in the United States as based on a “cult of ethnicity” and claims they were separatist acts that “disunite” America (Schlesinger 1991; also see Barry 2001). An example of the latter is the claim of Stuart Scott, who calls not only the Māori’s demand for self-determination, but also the laws that acknowledge Māori customary rights in Aotearoa/New Zealand, separatist (Scott 1995). Will Kymlicka, a political philosopher, acknowledges that whereas minority groups’ demands for representation—therefore inclusion—do not threaten social unity, demand for self-government does pose a possibility of division and secession. However, he argues that oppressing such demands would be more destabilizing than risking secession (Kymlicka 1995). Bhikhu Parekh suggests that recognizing group-based rights is beneficial not only on social justice grounds, but also in terms of national integration and harmony (Parekh 2000). Countering the claims against separate laws for separate groups, Kymlicka argues that despite its official cultural neutrality, the government supports particular culture(s) when, for instance, it chooses official languages, thereby disadvantaging others. Group-based rights seek to rectify this situation. In the case

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of New Zealand, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, arguing for Māori cultural rights, notes that the state has always favored the Pākehā culture (G. Smith 1990a). In cases where historical agreements determined which citizens should be governed by which states, members of these groups now under one state should have differentiated rights based on prior agreements (Kymlicka 1995: 116–120). This was the case for Aotearoa/New Zealand (Sharp 1990; Walker 1990a). Kymlicka also argues that the application of the term separatism to the politics of difference rests partly on the overgeneralization of a particular historical experience—e.g., segregation in the United States or South African apartheid1—into a paradigm that automatically sees separation as injustice. However, in the first case separation in toilets, buses, etc. was not about the politics of difference. Secondly, he argues, the injustice of apartheid was not in the separation as such but in the coercion of the system, the unequal distribution of resources, and the suppression of the civil and political liberty of African citizens (Kymlicka 1989: 245–251). In general, researchers view the claim of separatism as representing resistance to increased minority rights and supporting Eurocentric and assimilationist monoculturalism. For instance, in discussing education in the United States, Joe Kincheloe and Sherry Steinberg (1997) state that monoculturalists portray as separatist those who reject their call for assimilation. In the Aotearoa/New Zealand context, Patricia Maringi Johnston (1997) and Ranginui Walker (1990a) argue that the claim of separatism has been used to hinder the promotion of Te Reo in schools. Others claim that calling biculturalism separatist represents resistance to alterations of the current Pākehā-dominated ethnic relations (Ballara 1986; Wetherell and Potter 1992; also see Tilbury 1998; Sharp 1990). Paul Spoonley (1988) goes farther, charging that the dominant Pākehā’s claim of Māori separatism is a form of racism. I agree that claims of separatism hinder biculturalist efforts. In this chapter, I also suggest that the claim has other properties that, if analyzed, open up a way for us to proactively respond to and reduce such a claim. First, I argue that the claim of separatism has in fact supported two cultural groups coexisting within a nation, despite its apparent contrary stance. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the claim of separatism reflects and reproduces a nationhood in which an assimilationist impulse and a celebration of ethnic difference are held in tension, with ethnicity remaining meaningful nonetheless. Second, I suggest that the claim of separatism does not necessarily arise from blanket opposition to the politics of difference, but rather has served to articulate personal concerns and negotiate their positions within current social developments. Therefore, some people called the bilingual unit separatist, while supporting the unit in general. In other words, this chapter sheds light on the formation of dominant group members’ views of minority-related issues with the aim of co-opting it to support social justice. As many researchers show, minority group members’ epistemologies and worldviews often challenge the status of dominant-group privilege as “natural”

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and the “norm.” These researchers urge other analysts to examine how relations of domination come to be justified, naturalized, and perpetuated (see Fine et al. 1997; Frankenberg 1993; hooks 1994; G. Smith 1990a). This chapter offers one such study, which teases out how the dominant group members’ apparently benign personal concerns can, by their articulation through the concept of separatism, unwittingly perpetuate relations of dominance, and suggests how to change them. In particular, I am in dialogue with Stephen May’s (2001) suggestion that it is possible to persuade dominant group members to support minority initiatives by (1) demonstrating that globalization makes maintaining cultural distinctiveness an issue for all members of society, and (2) appealing to dominant group members’ sense of social justice. I argue that maintaining a nation’s distinctiveness may involve an unwelcome appropriation of minority culture (see Warner 1999) and that those with a sense of social justice may unintentionally hinder initiatives toward group-based rights. While adding such precautions to May’s suggestions I offer another possibility, that of reducing claims that unwittingly undermine minority rights. This entails working with those who express their personal concerns (rather than the politics of difference itself) inaccurately with the term “separatism” so that we can together develop a new discourse that more effectively addresses their concerns without challenging minority-group social justice initiatives. In the following sections, I first introduce various divisions among the students at school and discuss students’ identification practices as background for the analysis in this chapter. I then introduce a survey and four detailed cases in which parents talked about the bilingual unit as separatist and analyze the implications of the claim of separatism. I conclude the chapter with the suggestion discussed above.

How the School Divided Students School institutionally divides students in many ways. At Waikaraka High School, differentiated human and material resources were allocated to these students divided by Year and by the differentiation of bilingual vs. mainstream and upper vs. lower tracks. Such divisions were emphasized through several technologies at school. The class timetable divided students, assigning to various groups of students their whereabouts, classmates, and supervisors. The Year system divided students: students spent more time with people in their same Year than with their own siblings when at school. Form classes divided students: in option (elective) classes, which students from all Form classes attended, students from the same Form class often sat together. Tracking divided students: some upper-track students experienced an alienation from lower-track students, who called them “stuck-up,” and some lower-track students complained about the upper-track students’ alleged

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arrogant attitude toward them. The distinction of the bilingual/mainstream classes divided students, as discussed in the introduction to this volume. The school marked the divisions among students by its spatial arrangements, as I described in detail in chapter 3. The designated spaces gave them places of belonging and directed the trajectory of their movements (see de Certeau 1984). Year 13 students had exclusive access to the common room, which had a pool table and couches. Younger students dared not enter this space unless invited. Females had exclusive access to female toilets, and males to male toilets. School toilets initiated and interpellated the students as gendered subjects, as they were often the first place in which children experienced a strict division of gender. Uniform dress codes marked people of different status. Year 11 and 12 students were differentiated from younger students by formal pants, optional school tie, plaid skirts (for females only) and pantyhose (females only). Some students mentioned how these items made them feel “grown-up.” Year 13 students were exempt from wearing uniforms altogether. In all the Years, female students wore pants, shorts, or skirts. Male students also wore pants and shorts, but they were not allowed to wear skirts. Bilingual students followed all these rules but one: they were allowed to wear one pendant, which had cultural significance. On the one hand, these divisions “normalized” students. Michel Foucault argued that school disciplines individuals and makes them aspire to follow a norm by comparing, differentiating, hierarchizing (to show the goal to aspire to), homogenizing (by making them conform to a value), and excluding (those who do not meet the standard) (Foucault 1977). Some of the divisions at Waikaraka High School can be understood as such normalizing measures. Marking of the seniority of Years by special spaces and different dress codes made younger students aspire to be Year 13, encouraging students to stay longer at school. On the other hand, these divisions also enforced a differentiation of students. For example, different “tastes” (Bourdieu 1984) sometimes enforced younger, bilingual, or lower-track students to distance themselves from the Year 13, mainstream, or upper-track students, respectively. Among these school-imposed divisions, a third of the interviewed parents of Year 10 mainstream students singled out the bilingual-mainstream division as the most problematic, some viewing it as an ethnic division, as will be detailed later. These parents’ views need to be taken seriously because, given the increased parental power granted by the free-marketization of schools (Codd 1990; Gordon 1997), the reputation that bilingual unit was separatist left it at risk of dismantlement, which would halt a major bicultural effort. Some mainstream parents mentioned the bilingual unit area as a privilege not available to mainstream students, though none claimed the same about the Year 13 students’ common room. Partly because the bilingual students were allowed to wear a pendant, and partly because some bilingual teachers were reputed to be much less strict than others, some mainstream parents talked about alleged looser uniform rules

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in the bilingual unit. However, many bilingual teachers were strict in applying uniform regulations, saying to students: “They [mainstream people] talk about us as not following rules. Wear proper uniforms” (classroom observation). No one complained about differential rules applied to Year or gender. The tracking system was also considered to create problematic divisions,2 although only by three out of sixty-three parents of mainstream students. One of the reasons why the division between bilingual and mainstream was more problematic to these mainstream parents than other divisions was that it was linked to ethnic division. I describe next a context that was contingent on such linking.

How Students Ethnicized the Bilingual Unit One important background for the parents’ linking the institutional regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students with the regime of ethnic difference of Māori vs. Pākehā students was the students’ identification practices. I investigate such practices by examining the students’ practical decision to join the bilingual unit or not from a summary of standard student interview results and cases of three students’ and one teacher’s ethnic identifications. Interviews With Students: Reasons for (Not) Joining the Bilingual Unit What follows is a summary of the answers by Year 10 mainstream students to the questions, “Have you thought about going to the bilingual unit? Why?” and by the Year 10 bilingual students, “Have you thought about not going to the bilingual unit? Why?” in my standard interview in 1997 (Table 5.1). Out of fifty-four mainstream Year 10 students (of seventy-two mainstream students in total) who answered the question “Have you [ever] thought about going to the bilingual unit? Why?” thirty-eight wrote no. The main reasons were as follows (number of students in brackets; ordered by frequency): they did not know Te Reo and/or were not interested in learning it (21); they did not have any friends in the bilingual unit and/or thought they would not “fit in” (7); they were not Māori (4); they had no reason to join (4); he disliked the bilingual unit (1); and she did not want to see her cousins, who are in the bilingual unit, at school (1).

Table 5.1

Consideration of (Not) Joining the Bilingual Unit (Year 10) Yes

No

Total

Mainstream students: Considered joining the bilingual unit?

16

38

54

Bilingual students: Considered not joining the bilingual unit?

2

9

11

18

47

65

Total

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Sixteen mainstream Year 10 students answered yes. The reasons were as follows: they wanted to learn Māori culture and language (6); they were “part Māori” (4); they had been in the bilingual unit in primary school (2); she had friends in the bilingual unit (1); he just wanted to (1); she wanted a change (1); and joining was recommended to her by her teacher (1). The reasons these sixteen students ended up in the mainstream class were: “my friends didn’t go to the bilingual unit”; “Māori is too hard to speak”; “my auntie said there are too many trouble-makers in the bilingual unit and didn’t want me to go”; “I’m not dark enough and I won’t fit in”; “I wanted to learn Māori, but not that much”; “I get my work done here [mainstream]”; “I didn’t know enough Māori. You have to start early”; “There are more opportunities in the mainstream” (the Te Reo class was in the option class line, but was compulsory for the bilingual students, giving them less choice in option classes); and “I was in the bilingual unit in Standard 2 [Year 2] for a year, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t learn anything. And I was intimidated by the people there. They were big and scary.” Her sense of intimidation was related to the fact that, in contrast to the mainstream part of school that divided students of different ages, the bilingual unit encouraged interactions among students of various ages during Form (homeroom) time and fostered a family-like atmosphere. Looking at their answers numerically (some gave more than one reason), one can summarize them as: a language issue (8); family pressure (5); teaching content/effectiveness (3); lack of opportunity (2); and friend circles (2). Out of eleven bilingual Year 10 students (of seventeen bilingual students in total) who answered the question, “Have you thought about not going to the bilingual unit? Why?” nine answered that they had never thought about joining the mainstream. The reasons were: they had no reason not to join the bilingual unit (5); they did not know the answer (3); and they had been in the bilingual unit all their lives and did not think to do otherwise (2). Two said they had considered joining the mainstream, one because her friends were in the mainstream class and the other because his parents thought he would get a better education in the mainstream. However, in the end they decided to join the bilingual unit. From these interview results, I suggest that a student’s decision to join the bilingual unit was not automatically determined by his or her ethnicity. Although most bilingual students who had been in the Te Kōhanga Reo and the primaryschool bilingual unit took it for granted that they would join the bilingual unit, membership in the unit was by no means restricted to former bilingual students. A student’s decision to join the unit had more to do with a combination of a commitment to learning Māori culture, fitting into the crowd, his/her ethnic identification, others’ views of his/her ethnicity, and balancing learning Māori culture and other things.3 In order to understand such complexity further, we can look at more contextualized cases of the relationships between membership in school programs and one’s ethnic identification practices.

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Mary: “I Am an Interesting Case for You” Mary was a Year 10 mainstream student in the upper-track class in 1997. I came to know her at school and also by boarding with her family for six weeks. To the survey question of whether she had thought about joining the bilingual unit, she wrote “no,” because it “doesn’t interest me, and I would feel out of place.” From this answer, from her being a mainstream student, and from her mainly Pākehā circle of friends, I assumed that she was not Māori. However, it was not that simple. During the follow-up interview, I asked her if she uses the term “Pākehā.” She said she tried not to use it because, although she had “one-sixteenth of Māori in her,” she did not consider herself a Māori. She said that because Pākehā was a Māori word, a European should not use it, though it was all right for Māori to use it. However, she said, she actually often used the word because it was quicker to say than the word European. On the first day of my stay with her family, Mary told me that she would be “anthropologically interesting” for me because she had Irish, Scottish, English, and Māori in her. In her house, a painting of a Māori chief was displayed on an easel at the entrance to the family room. At a party at their house, one guest asked about the painting, and Mary’s father explained that he was a descendant of the chief in the painting. However, Mary distanced herself from the bilingual unit: whenever I asked her about the bilingual unit at home, she was reluctant to answer, saying “you know more about the bilingual unit than me.” Tom: Māori, but Pākehā as Well Tom was a Year 10 bilingual student in 1997. I boarded with his family also for six weeks. He had one older sister and one younger brother, both of whom were bilingual students, and his mother was a teacher at the bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School in 1997. His mother’s partner, a self-identified Pākehā, was living with them (Tom’s biological father was no longer living with them). Once, Tom told me about an episode at another high school he had attended before coming to Waikaraka in 1996. A mainstream student made racist comments about Māori to Tom, not realizing that Tom was a Māori himself. Tom said nothing at the time but later told his Māori friends in the bilingual unit about the incident. The bilingual students beat this student up, Tom said, laughing. He said not many people realized that he was Māori because he “looks white.” Then he related another episode from when he first came to Waikaraka High School and joined the bilingual unit. Two major figures from the bilingual unit, who were star rugby players at school, brought him to a corridor of the building that some bilingual students called the “Pākehā block.” He told me how mainstream students gave way and backed into corners as these three quietly walked through the corridor. One of the bilingual students escorting Tom winked at him and said, “Good trick, eh?” He said that was his introduction to Waikaraka High School.

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What I noticed as distinct about Tom’s family was that Tom and his sister often discussed racism with their mother and were sensitive to others’ racially loaded actions. One example was when we visited their distant Pākehā relatives. I was introduced to them, and we talked casually. In the car going home, Tom pointed out to his mother that these relatives had been very rude to me because they had talked to me differently—very slowly, as if I were a small child who could not understand English well. Tom said that treatment, despite my speaking like other people, was racist: “They just saw your [Asian] face and thought you cannot speak English.” In other families that I stayed with, discussions of racism hardly arose in casual conversations. I felt that this reflected Tom’s awareness of the possibility of becoming a victim of racism. Also, Tom and his sister might have been sending messages to their mother’s Pākehā partner about what actions they considered racist. From all these experiences, and because Tom explicitly said so, I thought Tom identified himself as Māori. Again, however, it was not so simple. When I did my standard interview with Tom and asked if he used the word “Pākehā,” he said no because “I am one.” I was struck by the answer and asked him, “Are you Pākehā?” He replied: “Yeah, half.” I knew that he recognized both his biological father and his maternal grandmother as Pākehā, but usually Tom said he was Māori. Yet despite this explicit identification with Māori, he was Pākehā as well. That moment came only once during my stay with his family and upon explicit questioning. Vanessa: Has Māori in Her, but Some Do Not Know That Vanessa was a Year 10 mainstream lower-track student with whom I became acquainted while observing classes. During my standard interview with her, she revealed something that I had never realized about her: she had Māori ancestry. Her survey form read: Doerr:

“Did you think about going to the bilingual unit?

Vanessa: “No” Doerr:

“Why?”

Vanessa: “Ive [I’ve] got Maori in me but I have never leant [learned] how to speek [speak] it. Doerr:

“Are you part of kapa haka [Māori performance group]?”

Vanessa: “No” Doerr:

“If no, do you wish you were part of kapa haka?”

Vanessa: “Kinda [kind of] but I probably wouldent [wouldn’t] feel part of it.”

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In the follow-up interview, I asked her why she thought she would not feel part of kapa haka, which was formed by students from the bilingual unit although membership was not restrictive. She said that her hapū was from another area and that some did not know she “has Māori” in her. Her mother, who was Māori, was not involved in the activities of the local Māori people, she said. Lisa: I Can Pick and Choose Lisa was a mainstream teacher in her late fifties, whose interview I chose to introduce here because her description of herself was indicative of some of the issues that mainstream students with Māori ancestry were going through. I interviewed her at her home. Although I had not spent much time with her at school, she told me about various personal issues: her conversion to Christianity, her family structure, and her ethnic identification. When I asked her to name the positive and negative things about the bilingual unit, she told me that it was good to teach Te Reo at school, mentioning that it was part of the new syllabus that the school had to follow, and that it was excellent. As a negative, she said the bilingual students were difficult to teach because they had a different learning pattern and because they did not obey the rules, which they saw as Pākehā rules. Then she told me that her mother was Māori, which could make Lisa Māori also. Yet Lisa said she did not feel herself to be Māori: she was “not brought up that way.” She told me that when she was seven, she looked at some of her uncles and aunts for the first time and realized that “we are Māori.” She found out that her Irish father had been almost ostracized from his family because he married a Māori. I asked Lisa if she spoke Te Reo. She said she could understand it, but had no desire to learn how to speak it. About the bilingual unit, Lisa said it was separatist: “Pākehā students do not get on well with Māori students because they are different.” I asked if she had ever substituted for a teacher in a bilingual class, and she said yes. She felt that bilingual students were hard to teach because they could not sit for long, “not like our kids,” and because “they say ‘you Pākehās hate us Māori.’” I asked her if she had told the bilingual students that she was Māori too. She said no, because if she had, she felt, the bilingual students would have challenged her and asked her to recite her whakapapa (genealogies), which is important knowledge about oneself in Māori culture. Later, I asked her if many staff members knew she was Māori. The answer was no. She said that at heart, she was not Māori: “I couldn’t live the way Māori people live. I can get away with it because I don’t look Māori. I can pick and choose.” Institutional Belonging and Identification Practices The cases above illustrate that one’s identification as Māori was not static. Each situation summoned one to cite one’s Māoriness in a certain way. Mary talked

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to me about her “having Māori in her” only during my interview and because I was interested in the identity issue. Tom’s identification as Māori was clear most of the time. However, to those who did not know him well he appeared Pākehā, and his Māoriness had needed to be supported by walking down the corridor with other, well-known Māori/bilingual students. Vanessa’s and Lisa’s Māoriness was not apparent to me until I interviewed them. From these cases and other casual conversations, it became clear to me that students identified themselves in two ways. First, some said they were Māori. Tom said he was Māori. Although he acknowledged that he was “half Pākehā,” he never said he was “half Māori” or that he had Māori in him. This was common among the bilingual students: they often identified themselves as being Māori, expanding their degree of Māoriness to 100 percent, often regardless of the amount of their perceived Māori ancestry. Second, some students said they were Pākehā but had Māori in them. Mary said she was Pākehā but had Māori in her. Vanessa said she had Māori in her, although some did not know it. Such a practice of identifying oneself as having Māori was common among mainstream students with some Māori ancestry. It was an acknowledgement of their Māori ancestry, which was seen to be in the person to have, without making it into one’s being. It was a claim to Māoriness without all the baggage that came with being Māori: competence in Māori culture, various statistically publicized features, and stereotypes. It was a claim to ethnicity without commitment. It gave them flexibility and an explanatory device. That is, identifying themselves as having Māori justified their staying in the mainstream: if they said they were Māori, their staying in the mainstream could indicate the rejection of their Māoriness. On the other hand, it rendered those who could not recognize their Māoriness defensible: if they said they were Māori but someone did not know it, it made the person look ignorant. It allowed multiple positionalities without sacrificing personal integration or risking a sense of contradiction. The mainstream students’ reluctance to identify themselves as being Māori derived from various considerations because the meaning of citing it varied contextually. For example, among the bilingual students, being Māori implied competency in Māori culture and language and allegiances to the bilingual students, as Mary’s, Vanessa’s, and Lisa’s cases show. Among the mainstream upper-track students, being Māori implied being gang-like as described in the introduction and chapter 7. For some mainstream teachers, as Lisa’s comment shows, being Māori evoked an image of academic underachievement, undisciplined behavior, and lower socioeconomic status (see chapter 6). The existence of the bilingual unit produced two kinds of space at school: one in which cultural competence in Māori was celebrated (bilingual unit), and another in which being Māori could be translated into poor social and academic prospects (mainstream). As a result, the bilingual unit encouraged students with Māori ancestry in it to be proudly Māori.4 There was also a parental factor: parents who were committed enough to Te Reo education to send their children to the

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bilingual unit tended to describe themselves and their children as being Māori, influencing their children’s self-identifications. In contrast, mainstream classes prompted the students with Māori ancestry in them to express their Māoriness as a thing to have that could be brought up as an interesting anecdote (Mary) or justification of certain decisions (Vanessa), rather than a whole being of the person. These ways of identifying oneself reflected the change in the definition of Māori in government documents since the 1970s: from (self-identification of) the amount of one’s “Māori blood” (half or more) to one’s self-identification as being Māori based on any amount of descent (Brown 1984; see chapter 2). In this light, given that she was much older than the students, Lisa’s identifying herself as being rather than having Māori may be attributed to this availability of the ways to talk about her Māoriness when she was growing up: under the older definition, children of a Māori were automatically Māori, if not “Māori half-caste” (see chapter 2). It is worth noting here that ethnic identification by others tended to be more digital: either being Māori or being Pākehā. Such guesses were usually not based on the student’s appearance, however. While there were physical stereotypes of Māori that enabled people to guess a stranger’s ethnic affiliation, the high incidence of marriage between Māori and Pākehā and the new definition of Māori led people to accept one’s self-identification, even when it seemed to contradict his/her appearance in many cases. That is, perceived skin color and ethnicity formed separate regimes of difference, while still being intertwined. At Waikaraka High School, teachers often guessed students’ ethnicity. If the teacher was familiar with the local community, they guessed students’ ethnicity from the students’ family background. Sometimes a teacher even challenged the self-identification of a student as “wrong” (classroom observation) based on his knowledge of the student’s ancestry. The teachers’ perception of students’ ethnicity was also linked to the “academic achievement” of the students. In the mainstream upper-track class, teachers tended to see students with Māori ancestry as Pākehā (see chapter 6). For example, a Form teacher of the upper-track class identified three Māori students in the class: two of them had moved from the bilingual unit, which tended to make people see them as Māori. Yet I knew from my interviews that there were at least three more students who had said they had Māori in them. In sum, while various factors influenced students’ decisions to join the bilingual unit, once in the unit, students with Māori ancestry tended to identify themselves as being Māori. Mainstream students with Māori ancestry tended to identify themselves as being Pākehā who have Māori in them. Although students’ ethnicity was often treated as static in the literature of education (for such a critique, see McCarthy 1993), close examination reveals that students’ ethnic identification was more nuanced and contingent, in this case, on their belonging to certain school programs. This situation made the division between the bilingual and the mainstream students appear to be an ethnic division between

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Māori and Pākehā, allowing the conflation of the institutional regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream with an ethnic regime of difference of Māori vs. Pākehā. This constitutes an important context in understanding some parents’ problematization of the division between the bilingual and mainstream students as an ethnic one. In what follows, I summarize interview results and four detailed case studies in order to show how parents viewed this division.

Parents’ Views on the Division between Bilingual and Mainstream Students I asked parents to list the positive and negative aspects of the bilingual unit in Waikaraka High School in a standard survey that I mailed and then followed up with interviews. Out of sixty-three interviewed parents of mainstream Year 10 students, twenty-eight mentioned the division of students caused by the bilingual unit as negative, five of them using the term separatism. Ordering by the frequency with which they were mentioned (numbers in brackets), negative factors were: the bilingual and mainstream students did not mix with each other, often having an us vs. them attitude (here some parents used the term “separatism” though others did not) (21); there were different rules or special treatment for the bilingual students (some used the term “separatism,” others not) (10); the bilingual students displayed a sense of superiority (6); the bilingual unit encouraged racism/discrimination (4); the bilingual students formed gang-like groups (2); and having two systems caused administrative difficulty (1). The only other division that these parents problematized was that caused by tracking, but this concern was expressed by only three parents, as mentioned. Parents of the bilingual students had quite different answers to the same question. They focused on the quality of the program. Out of thirteen interviewed parents of bilingual Year 10 students, only one, who did not identify herself as Māori, mentioned separatism.5 For a closer look, I now turn to four cases of the claim of separatism from my interviews with three parents of mainstream students and one parent of bilingual and mainstream students. Ken: “One Rule for All” Ken, a father of a Year 10 mainstream upper-track student, said in the interview in the presence of his wife, Rose, that biculturalism gave an opportunity for racism to be promoted; it steered us away from the assumption that we are all equal and one people (New Zealanders), and it was a disgrace. Ken was one of the most vocal opponents of biculturalism among those whom I interviewed. He conflated the regime of difference of the bilingual vs. mainstream students with that of Māori vs. Pākehā students in his interview. About the bilingual unit, Ken

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problematized the division it caused among students. He also implied that the bilingual students received special treatment when he said that the bilingual unit had its own room, couches, and coffee that were not available to mainstream students. He argued that too many school resources were used for Māori education at Waikaraka High School: “these resources should be used in ‘education’ instead.” The use of the term “education” here indicated the unmarked status of education based on Pākehā culture as “regular,” where the assertion of normalcy reproduced the relation of dominance (see Fine et. al. 1997; hooks 1994). Ken also emphasized the necessity of one law for all. There was a sense of victimization and anger in Ken’s comments. Ken told me about a problem his daughter had had on a sports team where she was the only Pākehā among Māori students and one Samoan student. She had such a hard time with the Māori students (some called her “white trash”) that she decided not to play that sport. Fed up with such incidents, Ken and Rose had decided to send their daughter to a private boarding school the next year. Connecting this episode to the school’s alleged differential treatments of bilingual students, Ken asserted a need for a single system for all because “it is the basic principle of democracy.” Rose countered Ken: “It is the English democracy.” Ken retorted that “the Treaty of Waitangi says Māoris are British subjects,” and Rose replied that “their ancestors signed it, not them.” This kind of interaction happened often during this and other interviews in which parents were interviewed together. Leila: Intimidation Leila, the mother of a Year 10 mainstream lower-track student, said in the interview that it was important for Māori children to have pride in their culture. As a disadvantage to having the bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School, she said that the unit separated the students as Māori and Pākehā—that is, they stopped mixing the way they did in primary school. She said people should be able to be different but still be one. Here, Leila was conflating the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students with that of Māori vs. Pākehā students, although she later acknowledged the existence of Māori in the mainstream. To the question of whether she had thought about sending her child to the bilingual unit, she wrote: “No. He’s scared of the Māori kids. They bash him up. It would be like throwing him into a lion’s den.” In a follow-up interview, she explained that her son was scared of the Māori students, although he had never been like that in primary school, where there was no bilingual unit. He was still fine with individual Māori, such as Māori students in the mainstream and his sister’s Māori boyfriend. It was only when the Māori students were in a group that they were intimidating to him, Leila said. She then added that the Māori were a proud race and that this was good. She also mentioned that her daughter in the mainstream had stopped being friends with one girl when they entered

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Waikaraka High School because her friend had joined the bilingual unit and begun hanging around with bilingual students. The two became friends again after they left school. Leila then said that it was good to have the bilingual unit because it taught Māori students pride instead of thinking they were members of the “Mob,” by which she meant street gangs. I asked if her son talked about the bilingual students at home. Leila replied: “Not much. We are not racist. We mix with Māori people at the family level.” Later she said her son did talk about the “Māori kids,” saying “they’ll bash me up.” They were rougher, she added. Leila’s apparent point was that the bilingual unit separated students, which made her son feel intimidated by Māori students although they were not actually intimidating. However, the mass media played a part in making her view ambivalent: she implied that Māori students were actually intimidating by saying that Māori students would think of themselves as being members of the “Mob” if it were not for the bilingual unit. This fearful media image substituted for the lack of knowledge about the separated bilingual students. Still, she was anxious in expressing her feelings, as indicated by her constant qualifications that she was not racist. The conventional moral high ground of “anti-separatism” offered her a way to do this. Pam: Inclusion and Exclusion Pam had a daughter and a son in the mainstream upper-track classes and another daughter in primary school. During the interview, she said it was important to make Māori a part of the school atmosphere. About learning Te Reo at Waikaraka High School, she said it was either join the bilingual unit and learn a lot, or not belong and learn very little. If it had been offered as a subject, she would have encouraged her daughter to take a Te Reo class; however, she had changed her view since then: Te Reo was “not for us,” she said. Pam explained her change in viewpoint as follows: as a white Australian who had immigrated to Aotearoa/ New Zealand after marrying a Pākehā, she had taken an interest in Māori culture. She took classes on the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Reo, and Māori flax weaving. In the late 1980s, however, she began to feel unwelcome in these classes because of her “color.” She felt Māori teachers did not want to use their energy teaching a Pākehā. Although she also wanted her children to learn Te Reo because she thought it would help them get along with Māori students, the Te Reo class in the primary school was, according to her, only for Māori students. As positive aspects of the unit, Pam wrote in the survey that “our Māori language/culture is kept alive. Māori children can stand tall and proud as they learn about their heritage and experience success.” As for negative aspects, she raised two. First, she wrote, it “often feels like there are two sets of rules, especially regarding uniforms,” referring to some bilingual teachers’ alleged looser enforcement of uniform dress codes. She added that at a primary school where she was

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teaching, there was a division between the “bilinguals” and the mainstream students. Second, she wrote: “Bilingual children don’t appear to be succeeding in regular academic subjects.” Taking these comments together—that the bilingual unit let the bilingual students experience “success,” and that the bilingual students were not “succeeding” in regular academic subjects—it appears that Pam viewed learning Māori culture as not “academic,” indicating a hierarchy of knowledge and the unmarked nature of Pākehā culture. By merging her view on the situation in Waikaraka High School with her experiences in the primary schools and night classes, Pam expressed a sense of alienation as a Pākehā from biculturalist arrangements in general. Her comment, “our Māori language/culture (emphasis mine),” shows a sense of sympathy for and entitlement to Māori culture. Her claim of separatism was a critique of her and her children’s exclusion from something to which she felt they were entitled. Excluding Pākehā from Māori cultural programs (such as the bilingual unit) conflated an institutional regime of difference with an ethnic regime of difference. This conflation was what Pam saw as separatist, unlike Ken’s and Leila’s conflating them themselves. However, Pam also problematized differential rules and divisions between the bilingual and mainstream students without necessarily conflating them with the regime of difference of Māori vs. Pākehā students. This contrasted with her view on tracking. Pam’s son had been in and out of the upper track. She said that if he was not assigned to the upper track in the coming year she would send him to another school, partly because her son became “naughty” when he was with “naughty” students in lower-track classes. This indicated her approval of the division of students created by tracking. After being interviewed for over two hours, Pam suggested that I board with her family. During my stay there, I attended Te Wānanga, a university established by a Māori iwi. Te Wānanga offered certificate and diploma courses, such as arts and crafts, which I took, and bachelors and masters degrees. Pam was very excited about my attending Te Wānanga and talked about how pretty the flax baskets that I was learning to make were. The tone of conversation changed when her daughter, Dena, joined us. Dena asked me what Te Wānanga was. I explained that it was accredited by the New Zealand Qualification Authority and issued degrees just as other universities did, that there was an emphasis on issues related to Māori in any major, and that every student there either studied or already knew Te Reo. In fact, Te Wānanga produced researchers and leaders with knowledge of Māori culture who could lead and represent the iwi to Pākehā organizations. For example, Māori law and philosophy courses trained people for positions to represent the iwi in advocating, mediating, and negotiating with Pākehā-dominated organizations, cultural advisory positions within such organizations, and positions within the Waitangi Tribunal6 (Mead 1997). In the mid 1980s, with the move toward Māori self-determination, the Aotearoa/New

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Zealand government projected its commitment to biculturalism by establishing “Cultural Advisory,” “Māori Perspective” or “Partnership Response” units in the Departments of Justice, Health, Social Welfare, Conservation, Inland Revenue, and Labour as well as in the Ministries of Education, Women’s Affairs and the Environment. This establishment raised the saleability of Māori identity, knowledge and expertise that graduates of Te Wānanga can offer (Sissons 1993). However, Pam implied to Dena that Te Wānanga was not as proper a university as I made it out to be: she told Dena that one goes to other universities, not Te Wānanga, to become a “lawyer.” When talking to me alone, maybe Pam was just being kind, commenting positively on Te Wānanga because I was involved in it, or maybe she thought Te Wānanga was better for learning the weaving of “pretty” flax baskets than a profession (such as law). As a caring mother, maybe Pam was trying to teach Dena how society may delegitimate a Te Wānanga degree, discouraging her to consider it as an option for her. That is, Pam’s position towards Māori cultural revitalization was ambivalent: she felt excluded from it and resented the division so caused; on the other hand, she indicated reluctance regarding her daughter’s (potential) inclusion. Jen: Although the Unit Is Good, It Is Separatist Jen was the mother of both a bilingual student, Lois, and a mainstream student, Nancy. Jen identified herself as a Pākehā married to a Māori; thus her children could be considered Māori. I interviewed Jen at her house. Her daughter Lois was there during the interview. As a negative thing about Waikaraka High School, Jen mentioned the separatism caused by the bilingual unit: unlike mainstream students, the bilingual students could get away with such acts as not wearing proper uniforms. Lois, who was currently in the bilingual unit, joined in: “But, the whaea [teacher] Tui is very strict with us.” Nancy was absent. The interview was dominated by the exchange between Jen and Lois, as shown below. Responding to my question on whether her children talked about separatism at home, Jen replied, quoting Nancy (in the mainstream) saying to Lois (in the bilingual unit), as often happened, that “you guys can do it [break school rules and get away with it], but not us.” Hearing this quotation, Lois jumped in to say that the bilingual students got away with some things, but not everything, and that the bilingual unit emphasized different things. For example, if there was a pōwhiri (welcome for visitors), the bilingual students had to take time off from class to perform for school. Lois added, “Some stuff is more important than other stuff.” Jen nodded: “The bilingual unit is good, but needs to be aware of the problem of separatism. The bilingual and mainstream students need to work together.” Lois corrected her by saying that everyone mixed in the option (elective) classes. Jen

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then said that the bilingual students usually played on the top sports teams. Lois said that the best players happened to be the bilingual students. In short, Jen called the bilingual unit separatist by giving evidence of a double standard, the bilingual and mainstream students’ not mixing, and alleged special placement of the bilingual students on the top sports teams. Her daughter in the bilingual unit, Lois, countered these claims. First, Lois challenged the evidence: there was no separate treatment (bilingual teachers were strict also) or separation (the bilingual and mainstream students mixed in the option classes). Second, Lois dismissed the relevance of comparison between the bilingual and mainstream students based on the same criteria because the bilingual unit emphasized different things. Although Jen did agree with Lois’s points, Jen insisted that the unit was separatist. Considering Jen’s specific subject positions, her assertion of the unit as separatist can be understood at several levels. First, I argue that it was partly caused by her sense of exclusion as a Pākehā from the current biculturalist developments in general. In an interview at school, Nancy (Jen’s daughter in mainstream class) told me that Jen felt left out as the only Pākehā in the family. Like Pam, Jen may have called the unit separatist out of a sense of exclusion from Māori things. It is a noteworthy twist that this alienation from Māori culture was the very reason that Jen saw value in the bilingual unit: as she said, in the bilingual unit her children could acquire knowledge about Māori culture that she could not offer. Second, I suggest that Pākehā parents were influenced by peer pressure. A Pākehā parent whose child belonged to the bilingual unit in a different context told me how other Pākehā parents thought she was “crazy.” She had to explain herself to them. It was clear that Jen valued the bilingual unit, as she had sent her child there, but her critical view of the unit appeared to me to be a downplaying of her support of the bilingual unit. Third, Jen’s being the mother of both a bilingual and a mainstream student created ambivalence in her opinion of the unit. To be precise, Nancy, who had been in the bilingual unit in primary school, told me that she left the unit because she was “not learning anything” and felt intimidated by the students there. Jen’s critique of the unit, as a mother of one child who felt uncomfortable in the bilingual unit and another child who enjoyed being in the unit, was focused on the element that caused conflict between her children, rather than on the unit’s teaching content. That is, Jen did not conflate the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students with that of Māori vs. Pākehā students. Instead, she problematized the former regime’s division of students, although with a firm understanding of the cultural focus of such a program. In sum, when Jen called the bilingual unit separatist, she was dealing with her ambivalent position. The interaction between Jen and Lois was, then, not only a contestation of views but also a process of working through the contradictions in Jen’s feelings.

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What Is in the Claim of Separatism? The above discussion shows that not all the parents who called the bilingual unit separatist resented the presence of the unit at Waikaraka High School—Leila, Pam, and Jen all acknowledged the merit of having the unit. A closer look at the above interview results indicates that these parents were commenting on something larger than Waikaraka High School’s bilingual unit. I suggest that, by conflating or resisting the conflation of the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students (institutional belonging based on different cultural focus in learning) and of Māori vs. Pākehā students (ethnicity), these parents were commenting on two things: biculturalism in general and the place of ethnicity in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The conflation of two regimes of difference allowed Ken, Leila, Pam, and Jen to connect the discussion of a particular program at Waikaraka High School to the discussion of biculturalism in general. It did so in the following ways. First, the issue of division at school was connected to the ethnic division within the nation via the call for national unity. Ken and Leila resented the division between the bilingual and mainstream students as that between Māori and Pākehā students and called for Māori and Pākehā to be “one.” Given past policies that called for Māori to assimilate to Pākehā ways of life when they sought to make “one people,” following the nation-state’s model of one-people, one-nation, this call to be “one” evoked an assimilationist tone, which biculturalist efforts have been countering (Bishop 1996). This kind of denouncement of division reflects a similar trend on the national level: the opposition leader Don Brash, for instance, criticized biculturalism by saying that Aotearoa/New Zealand was heading toward a “racially divided nation” (Pearson 2005). Second, critique of the alleged special treatment of the bilingual students— special amenities (Ken) and looser disciplinary measures (Pam and Jen)—but not of the special treatment of the upper-track students or Year 13 students evoked contemporary assertions of the “unfairness” of having separate rules for different ethnic groups at the national level. For example, there was Pākehā resistance to Māori customary rights, especially fishing rights, that gave differential treatment to Māori based on the promises in Treaty of Waitangi (Scott 1995). Third, Leila’s reference to how her child was threatened by the bilingual students, allegedly due to the division, reflects generalized Pākehā anxiety toward Māori in the face of biculturalist efforts to change the existing power relations (see Sharp 1990). Researchers have argued that monoculturalists fan the dominant group’s fear that minority group members will attack dominant group members once the minority group members find out about the injustice done to them (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997). Fourth, Pam drew from her and her children’s experience outside the Waikaraka High School—the primary school where she taught, another primary

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school her children attended, and her night classes—to show her sense of exclusion from learning Māori culture in general because of her “color.” Such an atmosphere in the wider society developed with the emergence in the 1980s of the Kaupapa Māori, which seeks Māori control of Māori lives in the spirit of biculturalism, as mentioned in chapter 1. While some Māori called for prohibition of Pākehā involvement in Māori lives (cited in Bishop 1996: 14–17), others accepted Pākehā involvement as long as Māori remained in control. The latter cited the Pākehā’s responsibility as treaty partners to work toward Māori well-being (Bishop 1996: 17–19). They redefined the duty of Pākehā who were sympathetic to Māori causes: not to know more about Māori culture, but to confront their own society’s (in)tolerance issues (Tareta Poananga cited in Mannion 1984: 105). In response, some liberal Pākehā withdrew from their activism for ethnic justice. Others redirected their attention to learning the construction of their own ethnicity and possible racism, as discussed in chapter 1 (King 1985; Spoonley 1991b). Pam was among the former. The conflation of the regime of bilingual vs. mainstream students with that of Māori vs. Pākehā students allowed these parents to disapprove of biculturalism in general, using their take on the bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School. This observation supports some researchers’ arguments that the claim of separatism is an assertion of Eurocentric monoculturalism over biculturalism, as mentioned earlier (Ballara 1986; Johnston 1997; Spoonley 1988; Walker 1990a; Wetherell and Potter 1992). However, I argue that the claim of separatism was more than mere disapproval of biculturalism. We ask again: considering that the school divided students in many ways, why was the division between bilingual and mainstream students, considered as the division between Māori and Pākehā, more problematic than others? It may be an outcome of the historical construction of ethnicity as a hindrance in creating the political organization of nation-states (May 2001). While this reasoning suggests that the claim of separatism was a denunciation of the ethnic division, I argue otherwise. I assert that the parents’ calling the bilingual unit separatist, but not other school institution that divides students, suggests that their claim of separatism was based on and reproduced the meaningfulness of ethnic division by making that division count more than others, contrary to its apparent claim.7 Other divisions went unnoticed as unworthy of concern. That is, the claim of separatism illuminates contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand’s sociocultural conditions that make only certain differences among people count (McDermott and Varenne 1995; also see the introduction for discussion). It reflects one of the ways a modern nation-state discursively and symbolically shapes individuals’ sensitivity (Borneman 1992). Because the way to express this attention was through condemnation (“separatism”), a paradoxical situation was created whereby the claim that the Māori–Pākehā division was problematic emphasized the importance of that division. That is, the sociocultural condition behind the claim of separatism was

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a tension between assimilationist monoculturalism and an emphasis on MāoriPākehā difference. The sociocultural condition was a result of three recent social transformations with which these parents sought to come to terms. The first was Aotearoa/New Zealand’s becoming a nation in the Asia-Pacific region, in which Māori culture provided the whole nation with a sense of history and legitimacy (Bell 1996; Mead 1997). Ken’s sense of victimization, Leila’s fear, and Pam’s resentment of her exclusion from Māori culture arose in this symbolic dominance of Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s nationhood (Belich 2001). This significance of Māori culture for nationhood also encouraged Māori culture to stand apart in order to maintain its autonomy in the hegemonic presence of Pākehā culture all around (see Bishop 1996; Salmond 1975; G. Smith 1990a). Non-Māori access to Māori culture was kept under tight control, for example by the bilingual unit. This situation led to tension between the treatments of the division of Māori and Pākehā cultures: disavowal (so that Pākehās are neither dominated by nor excluded from Māori culture) and support (for Māori culture’s autonomy). The second development was the change in the meaning of a commitment to racial/ethnic harmony in the wake of the Kaupapa Māori movement of the mid 1980s. It produced a tension in liberal circles regarding the Māori-Pākehā division: between its conventional suppression (Pākehā’s desire to sympathize with Māori) and its newly encouraged maintenance (Pākehā’s letting Māori direct their own cultural development), as discussed earlier. Pam felt that her interest in Māori culture, born of her good will toward Māori (suppression of Māori-Pākehā division), was no longer welcome in the context of Kaupapa Māori. Pam’s denunciation of the division between Māori and Pākehā indicates her struggle to deal with this change in how to show commitment to racial/ethnic harmony. The third development was a division of labor in a settler nation in the era of globalization. A seemingly uncontrollable flow of investment, immigrants, and media images from abroad as a result of massive deregulation since the mid 1980s generated a fear of losing New Zealand’s distinct nationhood (Kelsey 1995; my interviews). These globalization processes encouraged a division within the nation into a part that retrospectively secured a distinct and stable nationhood with local roots (viewed as the Māori domain) and a part that prospectively sought changes in order to keep pace with developments in the world (viewed as the Pākehā domain). This reflects the opposing timeframes of the cultural politics of indigenous people and settler nationalism: the former tend to aim at revitalizing and reframing “traditional” culture as the focus of their current resistance to the dominant culture (Friedman 1992; Greenland 1991; Keesing 1982a, 1982b, 1989); and the latter tends to frame its culture as “new” in order to differentiate itself from the mother country (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 1989; King 1985). In sum, Māori and Pākehā domains in this division of labor were divided in order to come together. These developments were conducive to an Aotearoa/New

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Zealand’s nationhood in which assimilationist monoculturalism and biculturalism are held in tension. Those parents who called the bilingual unit separatist were then expressing their personal sentiments on these developments and searching for their places in such nationhood. Ken put himself on the side of the assimilationist position. Leila expressed her fear alongside anxiety about whether or not showing it can be construed as racist. Pam resented what she perceived as exclusion from what she felt she was entitled to. Jen felt ambivalent as a Pākehā married to a Māori with their children in both bilingual and mainstream classes. Calling the bilingual unit separatist helped these parents articulate their sentiments. They did so by suggesting conflation of the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and that of Māori vs. Pākehā students.

Reducing the Claim of Separatism In this chapter, I showed that a division between the bilingual and mainstream students became a worrisome instance of separatism to some parents when they conflated it, or saw others conflating it, with an ethnic division. The conflation of the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and of Māori vs. Pākehā students allowed parents to comment on biculturalism in general via their take on the bilingual unit. By using the concept of separatism, these parents, I argue, simultaneously criticized and emphasized the significance of ethnic division as they negotiated their own positions and expressed their personal concerns arising from their positionalities within the current developments in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Specifically, the claim of separatism reflected and reproduced a new imagining of Aotearoa/New Zealand. In the context of biculturalist transformations, a challenge to its national symbol of racial/ethnic harmony, and rapid globalization, the distinction between Māori and Pākehā was uplifting and reassuring to some and problematic to others, yet was also meaningful to all, unlike other kinds of divisions. In short, the claim of separatism was not so much a blanket opposition to biculturalism, as some researchers have framed it, but a nuanced process by which people negotiated, contested, and generated Aotearoa/ New Zealand’s new social arrangements and nationhood. Through the claim of separatism, which is based on the homologies of regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and Māori vs. Pākehā students, subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood were shaped and articulated. The alternative understanding of the claim of separatism offered in this chapter leads us to a suggestion that furthers the one that Stephen May (2001) made to convince the dominant group of the need for social justice. In this chapter, I showed that while some parents recognized the need for social justice and even supported bilingual education, they articulated their personal concerns and

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sentiments by using a concept of separatism that evoked moral resentment. I suggest, then, the need to seek terms other than separatism to articulate such personal concerns in a way that does not imply a blanket moral denunciation of biculturalism. The terms ought to be invented through dialogue with those who use the term separatism in that way. Such exploration opens up a way to create new alliances towards social justice. In the next chapter, I will examine how this conflation was erased when the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and of Māori vs. Pākehā intersected with that of tracking to create an illusion of Māori underachievement.

Notes 1. Although often seen as variations of separatism, segregation in the American South and South African Apartheid differed largely. According to George Fredrickson (1988), the former was a way of sharpening the status hierarchy between white and black in an attempt to prevent class conflict by dividing farmers racially. The latter’s territorial segregation was a result of its being a white settler society that excluded nonwhites, and of whites being a minority who required artificial protection such as restricted suffrage. 2. In this case, calling the tracking system separatist was not a suggestion of ethnic separation by the tracking system, unlike cases in the United States in which tracking was seen as a covert ethnic resegregation (Wells and Serna 1996). However, there was some concern about ethnic element in tracking. See chapter 7 for discussion. 3. There was a common perception of a “zero-sum game” of learning Māori culture and learning “academic” subjects. See Ken’s and Pam’s interviews in this chapter. 4. However, some bilingual students did perceive that bilingual students were underachievers in the mainstream “academic standard,” as will be elaborated in chapter 7. 5. As to teachers’ views, seventeen out of thirty-four interviewed mainstream teachers saw the unit as separatist. In contrast, no bilingual teachers saw the unit as separatist. They instead asserted alternative views on the issue. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Beth, the founder of the bilingual unit, said that the school divided students all the time when it placed them in the music class, cooking class, etc., so she did not believe that the bilingual unit was alone in being separatist. The school kaumatua (a Māori elder who stood as an authority figure for the bilingual students and a non-elected member of the Board of Trustees) told me that the bilingual unit was less about separating students than upgrading the situation of Māori students and giving them confidence. 6. http://www.twor.ac.nz/ngaako/mlawphi/intro.html; www.twoa.ac.nz 7. See Adely 2007 for a similar discussion on how the new nationhood of Jordan affected people not through imposition but through spawning debates at multiple levels regarding its legitimacy.

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I MAGINING “F AILURE ” The Illusion of Māori Underachievement and Institutional, Ethnic, and Academic Regimes of Difference

% The Illusion of Māori Under-Achievement “There are not many Māori in the [upper-track] stream class.” This was a statement I often heard at Waikaraka High School. I took such an assertion to be a concerned one urging action to change the situation. I came to realize later, however, that for Māori students, being in the mainstream upper-track class and the bilingual unit were mutually exclusive choices. Thus, this concerned statement was inaccurate worry that suggested Māori underachievement where it did not exist. This chapter examines three discourses that contributed to the illusion of Māori underachievement: (1) “cultural background does not matter in tracking”; (2) “there are few Māori in the upper-track class”; and (3) “achieving Māori students leave the bilingual unit for the upper-track class.” It does so by tracing ways in which intersections of institutional, ethnic, and academic regimes of difference are overlooked, evoked, and created. Chapter 5 showed that when mainstream parents called the bilingual unit separatist, they conflated the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and of Māori vs. Pākehā students. Chapter 5 also illustrated how students’ identification practices were contingent on their membership in either bilingual or mainstream classes, encouraging the conflation of these regimes. This chapter examines how the relationships between these regimes changed when the regimes intersected with the regime of difference based on tracking. Also, while chapter 5 dealt with regimes of difference concerning the student body, this chapter examines how they relate to the regimes of difference of programs and their cultural focuses. In the first discourse, when many of the mainstream parents I interviewed expressed the view that cultural background did not matter in tracking, they

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overlooked the conflation of the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream classes and Māori cultural focus vs. Pākehā cultural focus. They overlooked the fact that, being only in the mainstream, tracking excluded those who wished to learn Te Reo in the bilingual unit. This act of overlooking became a basis of the concern in the second discourse, on there being few Māori in the upper-track class. In this second discourse, many mainstream parents and teachers simultaneously overlooked and relied on the conflations of the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and Māori vs. Pākehā students discussed in chapter 5. They overlooked the conflation when they assumed that both Māori and Pākehā students were in mainstream classes, thus being concerned about the small number of Māori students in upper-track class. However, many parents also relied on the conflation of these regimes when they did not recognize as Māori those mainstream (especially upper-track) students who may be considered Māori. This combination of overlooking and relying on the conflation of these regimes of difference led them to miss the fact that many Māori students were in the bilingual unit. Meanwhile, many bilingual students and parents evoked a new regime of difference when talking about tracking: bilingual vs. mainstream upper-track classes/students. It was based on the perception that achieving Māori students left the bilingual unit for the mainstream upper-track class. Here, by intersecting the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream classes/students with that of upper- vs. lower-track classes/students, they also created an illusion of Māori/ bilingual students’ underachievement. However, this illusion overlooks the presence of ex-bilingual students in the mainstream upper-track class as well as the fact that structurally, the bilingual unit was opposed to both the upper- and the lower-track classes of the mainstream. I examine this intersection of regimes of difference by analyzing my interviews with bilingual students and parents as well as my daily participant observation at school. This ironic production of an illusion of Māori underachievement, given bilingual education’s aim of bolstering Māori students’ self-esteem, cannot be understood by examining each regime of difference—bilingual vs. mainstream or Māori vs. Pākehā or upper- vs. lower-track—on its own. The meaning of each category in a regime of difference was produced not only at the intersections of regimes of difference (see Hall 1985) but also in the gaps between the ways people related regimes of difference. In what follows, I will first lay out the background of the discussion by describing cultural elements in tracking and comparing the operation of bilingual, mainstream upper-, and mainstream lower-track classes. Then I will introduce and discuss parents’ opinions about the cultural element in tracking, the concerned statement about “the small number of Māori in the upper-track class,” and bilingual students’ and parents’ perceptions of the relationship between the bilingual unit and mainstream upper-track class. I conclude the chapter by discussing the effects of such an illusion and how to avoid reproducing it.

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Selection of the Upper-Track Students and the “Cultural” Schools rank students (Foucault 1977). The tracking system at Waikaraka High School was an explicit manifestation of such a ranking. How the criteria were set reflected what kinds of individuals/groups the school system valued and wanted to produce (Varenne and McDermott 1999). Despite the official meritocracy of the French education system, for example, Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) argue, it is the bourgeois habitus, which is taught at home and not at school, that matters in the child’s “succeeding” in the school system. Researchers show that this works in a similar manner regarding ethnicity: students of ethnic minority groups could be disadvantaged in the education system due to assessment criteria that are distant from their everyday experience (see May 2001; Oakes 1985). The selection criteria of a tracking system are also based on certain cultures and lifestyles that are valued and certain ways of knowing that are equated with “intelligence” (Wells and Serna 1996). In the tracking system at Waikaraka High School, there may have been some cultural bias in the selection criteria as described above.1 However, in this section, I trace instead three structural elements of school organization that led cultural bias to enter into tracking at Waikaraka High School. These elements constitute a significant context for the discussion in the rest of the chapter. First, tracking existed only in the (Pākehā-culture focused) mainstream at Waikaraka High School. As described in chapter 3, there was one bilingual Form class for each (equivalent of) Year from Years 7 to 10. Only the mainstream part of each Year was tracked, there being one upper-track class and two or more unrated lower-track classes. As of Year 11 there was no bilingual unit, and students from the bilingual unit joined the mainstream for all the subject classes. Year 11 was tracked into one upper-track and four lower-track Form classes. Starting in 1998, Year 11 had subject tracking in English, mathematics, and science classes. Before Year 11, the bilingual students structurally could not be in any upper-track class (see Table 6.1). Table 6.1

Number of Classes and Their Labels Mainstream Form class Bilingual Form class

Upper-track

Lower-track

Total

Year 7/8

1

1

6

8

Year 9

1

1

2

4

Year 10

1

1

2

4

Year 11 (until 1997)

0

1

4

5

Year 11 (as of 1998)

0

Subject tracking

5

Year 12

0

No tracking

5

Year 13

0

No tracking

1

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Second, some selection processes structurally deterred those who studied Māori culture at school (for example, students in the bilingual unit in the primary school) from joining the upper-track class. As described in chapter 4, to select a Year 7/8 upper-track class, teachers went to four local primary schools that supply prospective Year 7 students for the following year. At the main supplier for Waikaraka High School, only mainstream students were considered in the assessment for the Year 7/8 upper-track class, despite the fact that some of its bilingual students do decide to join the mainstream class upon entering Waikaraka High School. In fact, in the 1997 Year 10 mainstream classes, there were four students who had belonged to the bilingual unit in primary school but joined the mainstream upon entering Waikaraka High School. Such students were not considered for the upper-track class upon entering Year 7. The exceptions were the cases in which students moved from the bilingual unit into mainstream classes individually after they entered Waikaraka High School, as will be discussed later. Third, in 1998, when Year 10 students became Year 11 and all bilingual students joined the mainstream as of Year 11, there was some bias against bilingual students in the selection process. In English class, there was no standard examination for all the Year 10 students, and a major part of the selection process of upper-track students was left to the teachers’ discretion. As described in chapter 4, teachers gave conflicting information regarding the input of the bilingual teacher in the selection process, and there were no ex-bilingual students in the Year 11 upper-track English class in 1998. In mathematics, however, the standard examinations taken by both bilingual and mainstream students were used in selecting upper-track students. Two bilingual students joined the Year 11 upper-track mathematics class in 1998 (in the same class, there were two other ex-bilingual students who had joined the mainstream when they were Year 10). Those who left the bilingual unit voluntarily before they were in Year 11 could enter an upper-track class upon a teacher’s approval. In sum, Waikaraka High School’s arrangement created a situation in which students’ will to learn Māori culture by joining the bilingual unit made it difficult for them to enter the mainstream upper-track class.

Comparison between the Bilingual, Mainstream Upper-Track, and Mainstream Lower-Track Classes How did students’ daily experiences differ according to their membership in the bilingual unit, mainstream upper-track, or lower-track class? In this section I briefly compare social studies classes of these different Year 10 Form classes in 1997 (for a detailed description, see Doerr 2000). I observed nineteen sessions of the bilingual class (10 IF/NV), eighteen sessions of the upper-track class (10

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MO), nineteen sessions of a lower-track class (10 GO) and twenty-four sessions of another lower-track class (10 LM), all of which were social studies classes. Richard, a Māori teacher, taught the bilingual class (10 IF/NV). Alice, a Pākehā teacher, taught both upper- and lower-track classes (10 MO and 10 GO, respectively). Jack, a Pākehā teacher, taught another lower-track class (10 LM). Here, I compare these classes regarding five aspects of classroom features and practices. First, in terms of the class sizes, in the Year 10 of 1997 the bilingual class was smaller than any of the mainstream classes. There were seventeen students in the bilingual, twenty-nine in the mainstream upper-track, and twenty-five and eighteen in the two lower-track classes. Various factors determined the small size of the bilingual class, most significantly the policy that one could leave the unit at any time but could not join except in Year 7, the prerequisite of knowledge of Te Reo, and the negative stereotype of the unit (see chapter 5). This small size, the whānau spirit or family-inspired relationships among teachers, students, and parents, and the fact that the same students stayed together in the class every year, unlike in the mainstream, made the bilingual classes more close-knit than mainstream classes. In contrast, the upper-track class had the largest number of students because the many mainstream students’ (and their parents’) desire for placement in the upper-track class pushed its size to the maximum. Second, in terms of how the classes were run, bilingual classes were situated in between the upper-track and lower-track classes. In all three types of classe that I observed, the greatest share of class time was spent by students individually doing assigned activities and worksheets while talking to the teacher and peers casually. The bilingual class had student presentations, which also occurred in the upper-track class but not much in the lower-track classes. The bilingual unit did not have much group work, which was seen in the upper-track class but not the lower-track class. The way classes were run reflected each teacher’s teaching style. However, when the same teacher taught both upper and lower-track classes, the differentiated class activities reflected the teacher’s expectations about the ability of each student body. For example, Alice, who taught both upper- and lower-track classes, assigned group work only to the upper-track class because she viewed it as requiring greater skills and maturity from students. Third, in terms of Māori culture and language, little Te Reo was spoken in any of the Year 10 social studies classes, including the bilingual class. Although Richard had learned Te Reo during his years as a teacher, he did not use much Te Reo in classes because, he said, he did not want to translate the textbook and worksheets, which were all written in English, into Te Reo. Fourth, in terms of presentation, the bilingual teacher Richard presented class materials in a way that related them to Māori positions. Although the department head set the length of the module, the learning objectives, and the skills to be assessed following the national curriculum, each teacher decided what to teach and how. For example, as mentioned in the introduction, in the Middle

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East module,2 Richard explained the position of Palestinians as similar to that of the Māori as an indigenous people struggling for decolonization. In contrast, Jack, who taught a mainstream lower-track class, compared Israel and Aoteroa/ New Zealand in terms of climate and the size of the territory and population. Fifth, the bilingual students missed two hours of class every week to practice kapa haka (see chapter 9). Even though kapa haka was performed mostly for the school, the bilingual students’ commitment to it was not officially acknowledged in the mainstream educational structure. For example, they received no credits toward the Unit Standards for their participation in kapa haka (see Harrison and Papa 2005). I now turn to how students and parents perceived the differences and similarities between these classes.

De-culturing Program and Students: “No Cultural Bias in Tracking” In my standard written survey, I asked the parents of Year 10 students, “Do you think cultural background matters in the streaming [tracking] system?” and followed up with an in-person discussion. This question was intentionally broad so that I could solicit various responses on the issue of culture and ethnicity in the tracking system. Here, I review the answers to this question as windows on some parents’ thoughts about cultural elements in the tracking system and their views on the relationships between regimes of difference (Table 6.2). As will become clear, their answers were related to their subject positions in terms of their ethnicity and which class their children belonged to at school. Out of seventy-six parents of Year 10 students of 1997 whom I interviewed, forty-two answered “no” to the above question. Two of them underlined their Table 6.2 Answers to the Question “Do You Think Cultural Background Matters in the Streaming [Tracking] System?” Parents of Year 10 mainstream students Answers

Parents of Year 10 bilingual students

Upper-track

Lower-track

28

14

0

42

Probably

2

0

0

2

Yes

3

2

2

7

Don’t know

0

2

1

3

No

Total

Other

0

0

1

1

Unanswered or answered N/A

1

11

9

21

34

29

13

76

Total

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answer “no,” and some answered “no, not at all,” “no—definitely not,” and “absolutely not.” One wrote, “not at all as previously said, it’s ability that counts.” I categorized them all as answering “no.” Two replied “probably.” Seven answered “yes,” which I will elaborate on later. Although not shown in the table, among these seven, six of them were parents of self-identified Māori students, five of whom had children who (once) belonged to the bilingual unit (either the Year 10 students that I focused on or their siblings). Another parent who said “yes” was a self-identified Samoan. Three said they did not know. Twenty-one either did not answer or put “N/A” as the answer. Some parents of lower-track students put “N/A” to all the questions about the tracking, showing their perception that tracking was only for students in the upper-track class (see chapter 4). Thus, the answer “N/A” did not mean that the cultural background did not matter. One bilingual parent answered, “I think teachers need to be sensitive to individuals’ cultural backgrounds,” which I categorized as “other.” In terms of subject positions, parents of upper-track students tended to say “no.” Out of thirty-four interviewed upper-track parents, twenty-eight wrote “no.” Two said “probably” and three said “yes.” Of the ones who answered “yes,” two had children who had moved from the bilingual unit to the upper-track class, and one had another child in the bilingual unit. One did not answer. Fourteen out of twentynine interviewed lower-track parents said “no.” Eleven did not give an answer, and two (one Māori and one Samoan) said “yes.” Two said they did not know. I did not ask this question to most of the thirteen parents of the bilingual students whom I interviewed, because there was no tracking system in the bilingual unit and some parents did not know about the system (see chapter 4). They were included in the nine answers categorized as “unanswered or answered N/A.” However, two answered “yes,” which I elaborate on later, and one answered “don’t know.” No one answered “no” or “probably.” The answer categorized as “other” is described above. Most parents who said “yes” to the question had children in the bilingual unit and/or identified themselves as Māori or Samoan, as mentioned. There were various reasons behind their response of “yes.” First, some emphasized that cultural background, as an important part of one’s being, needed to be considered in tracking: one Māori parent in the lower-track class said that “to understand that person [student], they [teachers] need to know their cultural background,” and a parent of a bilingual student wrote that the “cultural needs of students is a very integral part of their learning style.” Second, some stated that the atmosphere of the upper-track class made Māori students uncomfortable: a parent whose child had moved from the bilingual unit to the upper-track class said that old prejudice was slow to fade. Another parent, whose child also had moved from the bilingual unit to the upper-track class, said that students from the bilingual unit did not belong in the upper-track class because the upper-track class was culturally Pākehā. Bilingual students felt out of place in the upper-track class, she said. Third, some emphasized the ethnic composition of the existing upper-track class: one Pākehā

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parent (whose husband was Māori; one of her daughters was in the upper-track class and the other was in the bilingual class) wrote that cultural background matters although she thought it should not. She said a lot of “white kids” as well as “Asians” got into the upper-track class, but not many “Māori” students. What caught my attention most in this interview was other parents’ strong rejection of the suggestion that students’ cultural background may matter in the tracking system. I suspect two reasons for this. One is the existence of the accusation of institutional racism at school in general in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Some scholars and politicians have pointed out a cultural bias against Māori students at schools (Mead 1997; Simon 1989; G. Smith and L. Smith 1996; Walker 1990a, 1996), which led to a national movement to include Māori culture in schools (Sissons 1993; Walker 1990a). This context might have made my survey question seem like an accusation of institutional racism. Another possible reason is my being a non-New Zealander. Some parents reacted to my outsider status in portraying to me what an Aotearoa/New Zealand school should be, as opposed to discussing problems as shared social concerns with an insider. Their answer, “no,” to the possible cultural element in tracking suggests that they meant that once a student is in the mainstream, he/she would be selected to be in the upper-track class regardless of his/her cultural background. In other words, they were talking about whether or not discriminatory acts existed on the part of teachers selecting the students within the mainstream for the upper-track class. In doing so, they overlooked arguments they made when they claimed the bilingual unit separated Māori and Pākehā students by placing them in bilingual and mainstream classes, respectively (see chapter 5) (see Table 6.3). They also failed to see the cultural focuses of the bilingual and mainstream classes that make students’ decisions to join mainstream classes an act of choosing not to study Māori culture and language in the bilingual unit. That is, they were not conflating the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and Māori vs. Pākehā in terms of cultural focus of the programs (see Table 6.4). Rather, they saw the mainstream as culturally neutral (see Table 6.5). Researchers argue that whiteness makes itself invisible precisely by asserting its normalcy and cultural transparency. In turn, whiteness’s transparency depends on presenting others as marked (Baldwin 1985; Frankenberg 1997; Fusco 1988; hooks 1989, 1992). The dominant group’s unmarked status as “normal” and “regular” is both the source and effect of its dominance. This is a way that not talking about cultural difference and ethnicity paradoxically prevents us from correcting inequality arranged by cultural difference or ethnicity (Pollock 2004). Table 6.3 Overlooked Conflation of Regimes of Difference When Talking About Tracking (1) Institutional regime of difference Ethnic regime of difference

Bilingual students

Mainstream students

Māori students

Pākehā students

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Table 6.4 Overlooked Conflation of Regimes of Difference When Talking About Tracking (2) Institutional regime of difference

Bilingual unit

Mainstream class

Regime of difference of cultural focus

Māori culture

Pākehā culture

Table 6.5

Regime of Difference Evoked When Talking About Tracking

Institutional regime of difference Regime of difference of cultural focus

Mainstream upper-track class Mainstream lower-track class Culturally neutral

Culturally neutral

*This and following tables pictorially represent how some view the relationship between regimes of difference. Categories put in the same column indicate that people conflated these categories in their perception. However, at Waikaraka High School, while failure to recognize cultural bias in the mainstream program partially led to its normalization, which may have marginalized Māori students, noticing the ethnicity of the students led paradoxically to similar results: the production of an illusion of Māori underachievement.

De-culturing the Program and Ethnicizing Students: “Few Māori in the Upper-Track Class” As introduced at the beginning of this chapter, the commonly-heard statement, “there aren’t many Māori students in the stream [upper-track] class,” simultaneously overlooked and relied on the conflation of the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and of Māori vs. Pākehā in terms of both cultural focus of the programs and student body. The statement was based on the erasure of this conflation (see Tables 6.3 and 6.4) because, if they did conflate them (that is, if they believed all the Māori students were in the bilingual unit because of the cultural focus of the program), there should be no reason for concern in having few Māori students in the mainstream upper-track class. Their making the absence of Māori students in the upper-track class an issue indicates their belief in the existence of Māori students in the mainstream (that is, erasure of the above conflation). What was evoked instead was the regime of difference of mainstream uppervs. lower-track students partially conflated with that of Pākehā vs. Māori (see Table 6.6). Table 6.6

Evoked Regimes of Difference Partially Conflated with Each Other

Institutional regime of difference Ethnic regime of difference

Mainstream upper-track students

Mainstream lower-track students

Pākehā students

Pākehā and Māori students

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Simultaneously, however, they relied on the conflation of the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and of Māori vs. Pākehā students, which was a result of their viewing mainstream students with Māori ancestry as Pākehā (see Table 6.7). This view was common and was one of the contexts that led many respondents to call the bilingual unit separatist, as described in chapter 5. Even the Form teacher of an upper-track class did not recognize the Māori ancestry of three students in his upper-track Form class, as described in chapter 5. That is, simultaneously (a) overlooking the conflation of the regime of difference between bilingual vs. mainstream and of Māori vs. Pākehā in terms of the student body (that is, assuming that there should be both Māori and Pākehā students in the mainstream upper-track class) and (b) accepting the conflation in terms of student body3 (that is, not seeing Māori students in mainstream uppertrack class) led to the faulty, although unwitting, argument of mainstream parents and teachers that there were no obstacles to Māori students being chosen for the upper-track class. It was to overlook the facts that mainstream classes were focused on Pākehā culture (that is, de-culturing the program; see Table 6.4) and that because many Māori students were in the bilingual unit for that reason, the small number of them in the mainstream upper-track class was not a sign of Māori underachievement. That is, they “ethnicized” students when they did not need to—the small number of Māori students in the mainstream uppertrack class was due to the program’s cultural focus, not due to students’ ethnicity (or, more precisely, ethnically determined life chances and opportunities for academic achievement). This concerned yet misleading discourse emerged in the sociocultural environment—what McDermott and Varenne (1995) call “culture”—that notices ethnicity as a significant factor in one’s life experiences (see chapter 5) in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The “underachievement” of Māori students has been mentioned often in government reports, in mass media and in academic writing since the 1960s. Māori urbanization during the post–World War II economic boom drew attention to inequalities in housing, education, health, employment, and crime (see chapter 1). Several government reports provided statistical data that attracted media coverage (Sharp 1990). In the 1990s, the time of my fieldwork, statistical records of education (New Zealand Ministry of Education 1997b: 35, 40, 42, 62), as well as academic writing (Harker 1994; Pearson 1990; Walker 1990a, 1996) broke down numbers by ethnicity to show achievement rate by ethnicity. For example, in the New Zealand Official Yearbook 1997, it was reported that, in 1995 in the whole of Aotearoa/New Zealand, 3,566 out of 10,073 (35 percent) Māori students left secondary school without Table 6.7

Conflation of Regimes of Difference Underlying the Discourse

Institutional regime of difference Ethnic regime of difference

Bilingual students

Mainstream students

Māori students

Pākehā students

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any qualifications, whereas 4,666 out of 36,328 (13 percent) Pākehā students did so (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 234). An identification of Māori underachievement usually provided a reason to critique the existing system of education in order to improve it. As described in chapter 1, in the early 1970s, the reported low examination pass-rates and low school-leaving ages among Māori were interpreted to be due to the lack of recognition of Māori culture and language at school and prompted calls for the inclusion and affirmation of Māori culture, including Te Reo, within school curricula (Sisson 1993; Mead 1997). When the situation for Māori academic achievement had not improved by the mid 1980s, the focus shifted to Māori gaining autonomy in educational decision-making, which spawned the Māori-run alternative schools Te Kohanga Reo, Kura Kaupapa and Whare Kura (Mead 1997; Simon 1989; Sissons 1993; G. Smith and L. Smith 1996). In the case under discussion in this chapter, sensitivity to ethnicity entered the perceptions of tracking, but half-heartedly. The topic of tracking made these parents and teachers focus only on one part of the school—the mainstream— overlooking other regimes of difference they were aware of, while eyes trained to notice ethnic differences made them ask a question of ethnicity. They were playing along (Varenne and Cotter 2006) with a discourse prevalent in Aotearoa/ New Zealand, even if it contradicted the actual situation in Waikaraka High School, and perpetuating the culture that notices certain things in certain ways. This led to an unexpected and ironic result of bilingual education.

Culturing the Upper-Track Class and Students: “Achieving Māori Students Leave the Bilingual Unit” Bilingual students and parents contributed to the illusion of Māori underachievement by perceiving that achieving Māori students leave the bilingual unit for the upper-track class. Such achieving students’ efforts to find a place for themselves in either the bilingual unit or the upper-track class created the perception that learning Māori culture was the opposite of achieving “academically.” Here, they intersected two regimes of difference—that of bilingual vs. mainstream and that of mainstream upper- vs. lower-track classes—creating a new, unbalanced regime of difference of bilingual unit vs. mainstream uppertrack class (see Table 6.8). Table 6.8

A New Regime of Difference Created by Talking About Tracking

Institutional regimes of difference Cultural focus of the program/ Ethnic regime of difference

Bilingual unit/students Māori cultural focus/ Māori students

Mainstream upper-track class/students Pākehā cultural focus/ Pākehā students

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The perceived opposition between the bilingual unit and the upper-track class not only implied that the upper-track class had a Pākehā culture focus, but also suggested a link between the ethnicity of a student and his/her academic achievement. In what follows, I first introduce a parent’s view on how high-achieving students experienced the arrangement between the bilingual unit and the tracking that only existed in the mainstream. I then discuss the experiences of two students who moved from the bilingual unit to the mainstream upper-track classes. Deciding between the Bilingual Unit and the Upper-Track Class During the interview, Norma, a parent of a Year 10 bilingual student, told me that being in the bilingual unit or in the upper-track class was an either-or choice for a Māori student at Waikaraka High School, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. This statement inspired me to write this chapter. She said the school was sending a message that one is either Māori or intelligent, but not both. In all my interviews, there was only one other person, a mainstream teacher, who made a similar point. As a mother wanting the best for her child’s academic future (based on the assumption that the mainstream upper-track class provides a “better education” than the bilingual class) and as an advocate of bilingual education, Norma said she had to make her decisions from conflicting positions. She decided to send two of her children to the bilingual unit, but she sent her third child to the mainstream (who was then accepted into the upper track). She also asked: “If a bilingual student is intelligent and was taken out from the bilingual unit to be put in the mainstream upper-track class, what kind of message is it sending to the students left behind in the bilingual unit?” Movements from the Bilingual Unit to the Upper-Track Class During the academic year starting from January and ending in December 1997, three Year 10 students moved from the bilingual unit to mainstream classes. Two of them voluntarily left the bilingual unit and joined the upper-track class, and one was told to leave the unit because of a “disciplinary problem” and joined the lowertrack class. When all the bilingual students joined the mainstream classes upon entering Year 11, some went to the upper-track and others to the lower-track classes. I introduce below the case of 009, who voluntarily moved to the mainstream when he was Year 10, and the case of Hussein, who was among those whom teachers sent to an upper-track mathematics class upon entering Year 11 in 1998. 009: Leaving the Bilingual Unit to Enter the Upper-Track Class At the beginning of his year as a Year 10 student, 009 moved from the bilingual unit to the upper-track class in 1997 (before my arrival in the field). He told me

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he had done so because outside the bilingual unit there were more opportunities in terms of subjects he could take. The bilingual students lost one out of three option classes because of the mandatory Te Reo class. His mother told me on another occasion that she had suggested his transfer, both because in her view the teachers in the bilingual unit lacked motivation and because the transfer at Year 10 would make adapting easier when 009 joined the upper-track class in Year 11. The assumption, which turned out to be correct, was that 009 would go to the upper-track class if he was in mainstream. When I asked 009 if he thought the tracking system had an influence on his friendship with other bilingual students, he said yes. However, when I asked him to elaborate, he hesitated and said that his friendships were not affected. During an interview carried out separately, his parent said students who moved from the bilingual unit to join the upper-track class were called “traitors” by other bilingual students, implying a hardship 009 may have suffered. He was often cheerful and talkative in the upper-track class that I observed. Outside the class, he was usually with students from the upper-track class. Hussein: Entered the Upper-Track Class in the Year 11 Shuffle Hussein did not choose to leave the bilingual unit but was put in the upper-track mathematics class by teachers upon becoming Year 11. His parents did not know that he was in the upper-track class when I interviewed them in early 1998, in contrast to the strong involvement of parents in the case of 009. I asked Hussein in early 1998 if his friendships were affected by his joining the upper-track class. He said his friends from the bilingual unit teased him, saying that he was joining the “brainy class” and a class “for the ballheads.” Ballhead is a word both bilingual and mainstream students often used to refer to skinheads. When used by the bilingual students, the term ballhead tended to include not only extreme right-wing white supremacists, but also people who are not sympathetic to Māori causes in general. Hussein said he had not wanted to go to the upper-track mathematics class at first. He said: “I didn’t know Pākehās. There were only three Māoris [those who were once in the bilingual unit] in the class. But it’s all right now.” He said he used to think all Pākehā were ballheads, but now that he was in the upper-track class, as mentioned in the introduction, his feelings were somewhat different: “They are all right. Some are ballheads, though.” In the upper-track mathematics class, Hussein usually sat with 009 and two other ex-bilingual students. I had not seen them together much during the previous year, which indicated that they were sticking together as ex-bilingual students. Hussein said he still hung out with his old friends from the bilingual unit. During recesses in 1998, I did see him with ex-bilingual students in lower-track subject classes more than with uppertrack mathematics students.

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In terms of the workload, Hussein said Year 11 was “a lot of work . . . just like” Year 9 in the bilingual unit: the bilingual teacher from that year had given them a significant amount of extra homework, besides the curriculum work. This shows his perception that mainstream upper-track class was as much as work as one of the bilingual classes. From these interview results, I argue that academic achievement and learning Māori culture opposed each other in the perception of many bilingual students. As Norma argued, the exclusive relationship between the bilingual unit and the upper-track class forced some Māori students to choose between learning their culture and the prospect of academic achievement, as many parents and students perceived the upper-track class to have extra resources (see chapter 4). Such an exclusive choice became visible to all when some bilingual students voluntarily left the bilingual unit for the mainstream upper-track class, as in the case of 009: the message to others was that to achieve academically, you must leave Māori culture behind and therefore become a “traitor.” However, students who entered the upper-track at Year 11, like Hussein, were not seen as “traitors.” This was probably because it was not their will to leave the bilingual unit. Nonetheless, the comments in Hussein’s interview that bilingual students felt the upper-track mathematics class consisted of “ballheads” indicates that ex-bilingual students considered the new Year 11 upper-track class to be Pākehā and the lower-track class to be mixed (Māori and Pākehā). Hussein himself, however, felt that the workload was similar in the mainstream upper-track and the bilingual class. Here, in terms of both the cultural focus of the program and the student body, these bilingual students and parents viewed the regimes of difference [A] of the bilingual vs. mainstream as intersecting with the regime of difference of upper vs. lower track (see Table 6.9), creating a regime of difference of bilingual students vs. only upper-track students in the mainstream (see Table 6.8). The rigorousness of classroom practices in bilingual classes ranked in between mainstream upper- and lower-track classes, and having bilingual students who could meet the criteria of the upper-track class—such as 009 and Hussein—did not convince people in and out of the bilingual unit that one could be both a bilingual student and an academic achiever. Rather, people seemed to see some Table 6.9 Intersection between the Regimes of Difference of Bilingual vs. Mainstream Class/Students [A] and the Regime of Difference of Upper- vs. Lower-Track Class/Students Regime of difference [A]

[Bilingual class]

[Mainstream class] [Mainstream class] Regime of difference

*The same type of parentheses indicate belonging to the same regime of difference.

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bilingual students’ will to leave the unit for the upper-track class as a sign that the bilingual unit was not good enough for these students, or that learning Māori culture hindered “academic achievement.” This move could be interpreted as moving from an untracked (mixed ability) class to an upper track in the tracked classes, rather than moving from the bilingual unit to a mainstream class for academic achievement. However, the sociocultural environment where the discourse of “Māori underachievement” is prevalent seems to pull the interpretation of certain acts into the prevalent discourse (see Varenne and Cotter 2006). Here, the relationships between the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream upper-track students and of Māori vs. Pākehā students was conflated (see Table 6.8) to a degree that a student’s ethnicity might shift depending on the program. For example, joining the bilingual unit and learning Māori culture was often viewed as “being Māori,” as indicated by Norma’s comment that the message from school was that one is “either Māori [join the bilingual unit] or intelligent [join the mainstream upper-track class].” Also, as shown in chapter 5, many (although not all) mainstream (upper- or lower-track) students with Māori ancestry, who could be considered Māori, often identified themselves as Pākehā who have Māori in them. This identification practice is a feature of ethnicity that is related not only to ancestry but also to cultural ties, commitment, and self-identification (Wolf 1994). If achieving students left the bilingual unit, then those who were left in the unit—“Māori students”—came to be seen as underachievers. Several bilingual students told me that bilingual students were good at sports and mainstream students were good at schoolwork. A Māori student in the mainstream class said that bilingual students told her, “You think you are too good for us,” indicating their perceptions of the reason why she had not joined the bilingual unit. In short, due to the way it intersected with tracking, bilingual education aimed at lifting the self-esteem of bilingual students ironically created the perception among bilingual students that the bilingual unit was for underachievers. The regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students suggests not only that there was a full range of academic ability of students on each side but also that structurally the bilingual unit was opposed to both upper- and lower-track classes of mainstream, not just the upper-track class. This understanding of the bilingual unit through the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream was deformed by its intersection with the regime of difference of upper- vs. lower-track students, “culturing” only the mainstream upper-track as Pākehā and creating an illusion of Māori underachievement as its opposite.

Fighting the Effects of the Illusion of Māori Underachievement The discussions in chapter 5 and in this chapter indicate that parents evoked various regimes of difference depending on what they were talking about. Within

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the same interview session, parents evoked different kinds of regimes of difference—bilingual vs. mainstream students, mainstream upper- vs. lower-track students, bilingual vs. mainstream upper-track, and Māori vs. Pākehā students—and related them differently depending on the topic of discussion. The question of tracking was actually asked right after they discussed the pros and cons of having a bilingual unit at Waikaraka High School, in which many of the same parents conflated these regimes of difference. Mainstream parents and teachers as well as bilingual students and parents, though in different ways, created the illusion that Māori are underachieving. They also created intelligible categories through which one came to be a viable social subject. “Pākehā high-achievers” and “Māori underachievers” were such categories. “Māori and bright” or “Pākehā and underachieving” became not viable, which Kimberlé Crenshaw (1992) has called intersectionality. Such intelligible categories suggested by the illusion of underachievement reproduced the structure of domination in three ways. First, the low intelligibility of “Māori and bright” could have reproduced the structure of domination by the willing act of the dominated, as they produce who they are through perception of themselves and others (see Fajans 1997). Paul Willis has convincingly illustrated the irony of how the counter-school culture of working-class male students, set against obedience to school-sanctioned values, made them willing to “fail” at school while feeling empowered (Willis 1977). In the Aotearoa/New Zealand context, if striving toward academic achievement (school-sanctioned values) was seen as a Pākehā thing by the bilingual students, as Hussein’s case showed, then the bilingual students may have avoided thriving in that direction in order to resist being identified as Pākehā-like. Second, students who were Pākehā and not “achieving” academically could have been marginalized because they did not fit into either of the intelligible categories of “Pākehā high achievers” or “Māori underachievers.” Even though there existed various works on institutional biases against Māori students in the educational system, as mentioned earlier (Mead 1997; Simon 1989; G. Smith and L. Smith 1996; Walker 1990a), underachieving Pākehā students lacked such reasoning and were therefore stigmatized as being responsible for their own underachievement (see MacLeod 1987). Third, the perception of Māori as underachievers affected teachers’ views of students whom they saw as Māori. For example, I heard from a parent whose daughter went from the bilingual unit to the upper-track class when she turned Year 11, that her daughter felt special attention from the teacher in the uppertrack class: every time the teacher talked about students who might need special help with work, her daughter felt that the teacher was looking at her. This was despite the fact that she was one of the top students in the upper-track class. Her mother told me this student understood the situation to be based on the stereotype of Māori and ex-bilingual students as underachievers. I observed a

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similar case in the Year 11 upper-track mathematics class. When an ex-bilingual student answered a question, the teacher asked him to clarify the calculation. The teacher did not ask this when mainstream students answered questions. The interaction implied that the teacher thought this student had reached the answer by mere guessing. This ex-bilingual student explained the calculation, and murmured, “Gee! I’m not dumb!” Such an incident, although small, indicates this mainstream teacher’s perception of ex-bilingual/Māori students as underachievers. This is significant, given the power of discretion that teachers have on deciding students’ tracking at school (see chapter 4). How can school administrators and the school community expose this false link between ethnicity and academic achievement? I suggest three possibilities. The first is to analyze and point out overlooked regimes of difference when discussing certain issues. The coexistence of various regimes of difference used in different contexts resembles what Ruth Frankenberg (1993) called “discursive repertoires” of modes of thinking about race from which individuals learn, draw upon, and enact their strategies for thinking through race. What we need to add to this, from analyzing the cases in this chapter, is a juxtaposing and comparison of these context-dependent repertoires to reveal what people are overlooking in discussion in a particular context. For example, when mainstream parents and teachers are talking about tracking and evoke only the regime of difference of mainstream upper- vs. lower-track students, we can evoke the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream. Second, we can reveal the cultural bias of the currently unmarked (by many mainstream people) upper-track class institutionally and discursively. Such unmarking of the upper-track class was what Norma was doing when I interviewed her about the tracking system. I suggest that the upper-track class be explicitly considered, if not called, the “non–Te Reo upper-track class”—that is, the class for the students who chose not to learn Māori language/culture at school. The other side of this effort, then, is to explicitly recognize that both achieving and underachieving students, not just the latter, are included in the bilingual unit. The bilingual class is an all-ability (not tracked) class composed of students who have chosen to learn Māori language and culture. This conflates the regime of difference of the bilingual unit vs. the mainstream with that of Māori and Pākehā in terms of culturally focused content, rather than in terms of students’ ethnic affiliations. In this way, we can rearticulate (Hall 1985) what it means to be a bilingual student: to learn Māori culture in a full academic range. This distinction between cultural focuses of school programs and the students’ ethnic identifications is a crucial one when discussing marking the unmarked dominant culture. The conflation of these regimes in terms of people—bilingual vs. mainstream students and Māori vs. Pākehā students—is an oversimplified and static understanding of the situation that overlooks the students’ complex identification practices, as discussed in chapter 5. It also marginalizes Māori students

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in the mainstream class, who should be able to claim that they are or have Māori and, at the same time, are mainstream upper- or lower-track students. On the other hand, the evocation and conflation of these regimes in terms of the cultural focus of the program—bilingual unit vs. mainstream classes and Māori vs. Pākehā cultural focus—allows clear recognition of relationships between programs and aims of their students and avoids a misleading statement such as “there are not many Māori in the upper-track class.” The third way to stop the reproduction of the illusion of Māori underachievement is to accommodate the needs of students who otherwise would wish to leave the bilingual unit. Possible ways to do this despite the small class size of the bilingual unit include individualized tutoring for achieving bilingual students and differentiated roles (for example, peer tutoring) and work for different levels of bilingual students in class. Such arrangements could prevent achieving Māori students from leaving the bilingual unit for the mainstream upper-track class. In this chapter, I have shown how the gap between conflating and not conflating regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and Māori vs. Pākehā students, together with the angled intersection of regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream and mainstream upper- and lower-track students, created a discourse of Māori underachievement. As a result, culturally intelligible categories were created through which one came to be a viable social subject while other ways of existence were marginalized. This focus on the relationships between regimes of difference allows us to understand and suggest measures to prevent the processes by which the ironic production of a negative stereotype of Māori students through bilingual education came about. In the following chapters, I show how the focus on the relationships between regimes of difference allows us to see different ways a bilingual education encourages students to challenge Pākehā hegemony and their effects.

Notes 1. For an excellent satirical critique of this cultural bias in standard tests in New Zealand, often used for the basis of tracking, see Archer, Oppenheim, Karetu, and George (1973). 2. As an education in citizenship, social studies (and, earlier, history) changed its outlook in 1977, moving away from celebrating the greatness of the British Empire toward teaching about Aotearoa/New Zealand’s position in the world (McGeorge 1992; Shuker 1992). It covered various countries in the world, leaving the actual choice of the country to each school (Department of Education 1977). The Middle East was among the regions Waikaraka High School chose (which were South Africa, ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Pacific Island States, India, and North and South America in Year 9; and the Middle East and Germany before and during World War II in Year 10). 3. This denial is linked to the denial of conflation of these regimes of difference in terms of cultural focus of the program (that is, “no cultural bias in tracking”) because the cultural focus of the program affects the students’ choice to join that program.

7

L AUGHING Language Politics in the Classroom

% Making Mistakes Everyone makes mistakes. But mistakes by teachers are special. Teachers’ mistakes sometimes elicit laughter, other times, contempt. What makes some mistakes laughable and others not? Who laughs and who does not? And what does this tell us about cultural politics and regimes of difference in the classroom and in wider society? This chapter and the next one examine various kinds of such mistakes. This chapter focuses on mainstream teachers’ mistakes in pronouncing Te Reo names and on the resulting laughter by some ex-bilingual students. I analyze the interaction regarding how the teachers and students revealed, ruptured, negotiated, or (re)established a structure of authority, regimes of difference, and the place of Te Reo and its speakers in mainstream classroom. In the next chapter, I will discuss ex-bilingual students’ use of laughter in an attempt to disrupt and negotiate regimes of difference and make, control, or avoid alliances with me—a researcher from Japan who was also serving as a quasi teacher’s aide. It was well known among mainstream teachers that bilingual students and exbilingual students laughed at mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo names. This routinized laughter calls for detailed analysis primarily because pronunciation of Te Reo was politically loaded in the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s past assimilation policies, which reduced the number of Te Reo speakers, and acknowledgement since the 1970s of a need for sensitivity toward Māori culture with special attention devoted to Te Reo pronunciation in an effort to alleviate inequality between Māori and Pākehā in various domains. The mispronunciation of Te Reo by broadcasters caused great public debate in the 1970s (Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Sissons 1993; Walker 1990a; also see chapter 1 of this book). Te Reo occupies a significant part of Māori culture, which was originally an oral-only culture. Many Māori believe that Te Reo “is the very essence of all

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things Māori. Without it, all else becomes meaningless and pointless” (Kaaretu 1995: 214; also see Mead 1997). This sensitivity to Te Reo and its correctness in the bilingual unit contrasted with the lack of it in the mainstream classes. I suggest that mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo words indicated the gap between the regime of difference of Te Reo vs. English in the bilingual unit (where the languages were treated as equal) and that in the mainstream class (Te Reo was treated with less respect regarding its correctness, compared to English). It was this gap that encouraged (ex-)bilingual students to laugh at the mispronunciation, redefining the meaning of mispronunciation as well as hierarchical relationships in the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream, Māori vs. Pākehā, and Te Reo vs. English. Such redefinition was possible because the ex-bilingual students intersected these regimes of difference with that of teacher vs. students. In what follows, I will describe an episode in which a mainstream teacher mispronounced Te Reo names and the ex-bilingual students laughed in response, and other episodes in which teachers made mistakes; introduce teachers’ perceptions of bilingual students; analyze the cases; and conclude with a discussion of a new kind of pedagogy—Countering Pedagogy—that these students’ actions suggested.

A Teacher’s Mistake and Students’ Laughter The case of laughter I analyze here occurred in the first session of a mainstream Year 11 mathematics class, in which the bilingual students of the previous year were joining the mainstream class for the first time. From observing Year 10 classes in the previous year, I was familiar with everyone but those who were taking the class for a second time. Taking attendance, Ann, a Pākehā mainstream teacher, read students’ names aloud from a list. She mispronounced some Māori names. For example, she read “Taipari” as “Tay-par-eye” instead of “tah-ih-pah-rih.” Te Reo has an open syllable structure, in which each syllable consists of a consonant and a vowel or just a vowel. Because English has a stress-timed syllable structure, English speakers who pronounce Te Reo transcriptions according to the English syllable structure often mispronounce the transcription (that is, they anglicize it). Every time Ann mispronounced a name, some ex-bilingual students laughed loudly enough for the teacher to hear. Some students repeated the name using Te Reo pronunciation. Others mimicked Ann and teased the students whose names were mispronounced. Some mainstream students who already knew their fellow students’ names grinned. Ann hesitated but soon ignored the laughter and went on calling the roll. This contrasted with her reaction later in the same class when students pointed out that she had made mistakes in some mathematics calculations on the board: she apologized and corrected the mistake immediately.

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The next few times that I sat in on this class, Ann continued to mispronounce Te Reo names, and students continued to laugh out loud. After a week of mispronunciations, I needed to choose between watching Ann continue to be laughed at or letting her know the correct Te Reo pronunciation. I decided on the latter, and, with some help from a bilingual teacher, I made a list of the students’ names, transliterated so as to sound as similar as possible to the correct Te Reo pronunciation. With the list, she pronounced the names correctly from the following class onward. When at last she pronounced the Te Reo words correctly, there were no special reactions—no obvious surprise, disappointment, or approval—from the ex-bilingual students. They just did not laugh. Ann is a Pākehā teacher in her late forties who was born and raised in the South Island, where the Māori population is smaller. She moved to the North Island when she was twenty years old. She had lived and taught in the Waikaraka area since 1985. When I interviewed Ann at her house a week after this incident as part of my teacher interviews, I asked her a standard question about the positive and negative aspects of the bilingual unit. The positive aspects she mentioned were the bilingual unit’s making Waikaraka High School distinctive and responding to the needs of the local Māori community. The bilingual unit also gave its students a sense of identity, knowledge about culture, language, and ancestry, and confidence, she said. The negative aspects she mentioned were a lack of discipline in the bilingual students, which would affect outsiders’ views towards the school as a whole. She said that the bilingual students were almost “gang-like,” and that the boys especially disrupted the system through peer pressure not to work hard. She said, “they are nice kids individually, but not well motivated.” She usually taught Year 11 mathematics classes in which mainstream and ex-bilingual students mixed, as in the class I observed. She said she felt she did not relate to exbilingual students well because some of them did not want to work. During my observation in her class, Ann ran the class very efficiently. She explained things clearly and responded to students promptly when they had questions. She made me feel welcome and useful in class by suggesting that students ask me questions they might have about their work, especially when Ann was busy answering the questions of other students. I observed thirty-six sessions of her classes (she taught two Year 11 lower-track mathematics classes) in 1998, and I saw only one other episode in which students laughed at Ann which I discuss in chapter 8.

Other Mistakes by Teachers It was well known among mainstream teachers that (ex-)bilingual students would laugh at them if they mispronounced Te Reo words. For example, Kim, a Pākehā mainstream teacher who taught a Year 10 bilingual mathematics class because of

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a shortage of bilingual teachers, told me that when the bilingual students were intolerant of her incorrect Te Reo pronunciations, laughing at her and belittling her, she asked them, “Do I laugh at you when you say English or math terms wrong?” The bilingual students stopped laughing, she said. I never heard of a case in which (ex-)bilingual students became overtly angry at the mispronunciation of Te Reo. Even teachers who knew how to speak Te Reo risked incurring the laughter of the (ex-)bilingual students by speaking it in front of them. For example, Nick, a Pākehā mainstream teacher who could speak Te Reo, told me during my standard teacher interview that he would not dare speak Te Reo in front of (ex-)bilingual students because “they will laugh at me and challenge me,” implying a fear of making even the smallest linguistic mistakes. He said this was a common feeling among Pākehā mainstream teachers who could speak Te Reo. Yet mispronunciation of Te Reo sometimes caused only small giggles among (ex-)bilingual students, if the mainstream teacher and (ex-)bilingual students had a good rapport. Such was a reaction to mispronunciation by Kurt, a Pākehā mainstream teacher who once taught the bilingual unit’s English class due to a lack of bilingual teachers. In my interview, he told me that he felt his stint in the bilingual class was inappropriate because he did not know any Te Reo, but that he got along well with students (one bilingual student told me that Kurt was “the best”). In the Year 11 mainstream English class that I observed, where ex-bilingual and mainstream students mixed, he pronounced the Te Reo title of a book, “Pounamu Pounamu,” as “poh-nam poh-nam” instead of “po-oo-na-moo po-oo-na-moo.” Some ex-bilingual students in the class looked at each other and giggled quietly, some of them copying Kurt’s pronunciation. However, there was no loud laughter as in Ann’s case, owing, I suspect, to Kurt’s good rapport with the ex-bilingual students. The (ex-)bilingual students talked about the mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation as funny. However, the funniness often had a sense of disdain: one bilingual student, who often talked about mainstream teachers’ negative attitudes toward bilingual students, told me while laughing that mainstream teachers “can’t even say Māori words right.” Mistakes in mathematics or English misspellings met with contrasting reactions. Students did not laugh at mathematics teachers’ mistakes in math calculations; rather, they simply pointed out the mistake. The teacher acknowledged the mistake, apologized, and corrected it. However, when a mainstream teacher misspelled an English word in a Year 11 economics class, some mainstream students complained viciously. There was no laughter. Parents also viewed teachers’ English mistakes, even when the subject of the class was not English, as a lack of the teachers’ competency in general. Some parents withdrew their children from elective classes for this reason. The teachers’ reactions to the bilingual students’ laughter need to be seen in light of the teachers’ perceptions of bilingual students, which I turn now.

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Perceptions about (Ex-)Bilingual Students I interviewed thirty-four mainstream teachers and five bilingual teachers (there were thirty-eight mainstream and five bilingual teachers at Waikaraka High School in total). Out of thirty-eight mainstream teachers, thirty-four were Pākehā, two were Māori (one of them was an ex-bilingual teacher, whom I designate as such for the rest of this discussion), one was from England, and one was from Canada (both of these were often considered Pākehā because of their European descent). All five bilingual teachers identified themselves as Māori. From the interview, five images of bilingual students emerged, as briefly introduced in the introduction of this book. First, eighteen mainstream and four bilingual teachers said the bilingual students were (perceived as) “difficult to teach,” as they allegedly had no discipline and/or respect for teachers and/or did not follow rules and/or lacked motivation. One thought this was because the bilingual students saw the school rules as Pākehā rules, and others thought it was due to their alleged low socioeconomic status. Two mainstream and five (ex-)bilingual teachers said this perception was due to the type of students whom the bilingual unit ended up acquiring—those lacking motivation and commitment—not to their being Māori. Some teachers attributed it to the bilingual students’ peer pressure to not work hard. Bilingual students were aware that teachers viewed them as difficult students. A mainstream teacher recalled how a class of bilingual students had told her that they were the worst students and few teachers liked them. Teachers had different takes on this situation, however. Some teachers said that the bilingual students’ behavior was the same as mainstream students’, but the bilingual students tended to be singled out because they were in a group (two mainstream teachers and the principal) or because other people were racist (two bilingual teachers). Two other bilingual teachers commented that because bilingual students’ learning styles and behavior patterns differed from those of Pākehā students, they should not be judged by the Pākehā disciplinary scheme. Four mainstream and one bilingual teachers mentioned that the bilingual students’ class behavior depended on the teacher. As one mainstream teacher said: “Once you are known to them, they are friendly and accepting. They can be a lot friendlier than mainstream students.” The second image painted by interviewed teachers (fifteen mainstream teachers) was that of bilingual students intimidating mainstream students. One mainstream teacher described how mainstream students were afraid to walk past a crowd of bilingual students at the bilingual unit, which was located at the entrance to the school (see chapter 3). In relation to this, twenty-one mainstream and two bilingual teachers mentioned an us/them attitude between bilingual and mainstream students (see chapter 5; also Doerr 2004). However, one mainstream teacher said that mainstream and bilingual students mixed in Sunday school, which he helped run.

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The third image was that bilingual students had self-esteem. Ten mainstream and two bilingual teachers raised it as a positive consequence of having the bilingual unit. Indeed, raising Māori students’ self-esteem was one of the aims of establishing the bilingual unit, according to one of the cofounders of the unit. A fourth image was that of unity among the bilingual students (expressed by eight mainstream and one bilingual teacher). A mainstream teacher said that in contrast to mainstream students, bilingual students looked after each other, being especially protective of the younger and weaker ones. Two mainstream teachers mentioned fondly how bilingual students would burst out singing in unison while they were doing writing work in class. Another mainstream teacher said that Māori students were individually manageable and approachable but in groups were obstinate, defiant, awkward, and collectively against him. The fifth image of the bilingual students was one of arrogance (the perception of four mainstream teachers). This image was the other side of the coin of their self-esteem: one mainstream teacher said that because the bilingual students were identified as important, in that they represented the bicultural aspect of the school, they began to think that Māori culture was more important than Pākehā culture. Five other mainstream teachers stated that bilingual students put down Pākehā culture and were racist against Pākehā. In contrast to bilingual students, mainstream students with Māori ancestry kept a low profile. While eight mainstream teachers said they viewed them as the same as other mainstream students (some of them did not realize that some of these mainstream students had Māori ancestry; see chapter 5), four mainstream and one bilingual teachers worried that there was nothing that catered to their cultural needs in the mainstream. One viewed them as the most troubled. In my observation in a Year 11 classroom where ex-bilingual and mainstream students sat side by side, I felt that Māori mainstream students were somewhat embarrassed about their lack of knowledge of Māori culture despite their Māori ancestry. For example, when the teacher showed a Māori flax weaving pattern in a mainstream geometry class, ex-bilingual students were beaming with pride, telling mainstream students how weaving works and about different patterns they could make. In contrast, Māori mainstream students were unusually quiet. However, Māori mainstream students who were cousins of ex-bilingual students, or knew them from Māori community activities, often acted as a liaison between ex-bilingual students and other mainstream students when making acquaintances at the beginning of Year 11. I never saw or heard of mainstream Māori students laughing at teachers’ Te Reo mispronunciation. Given this background—the ways students treated mistakes by teachers and the teachers’ perceptions of bilingual students—how, then, shall we understand the effects of the ex- bilingual students’ laughter at mainstream teachers’ Te Reo mispronunciation? In the next section I examine the effects from the angles of five different issues: respect for Te Reo, cultural bias in legitimated knowledge

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and authority, Te Reo’s place in mainstream classes, bilingual students’ authority over Te Reo, and bilingual students’ anxiety of being in mainstream classes.

Analyzing Laughter Interpreting Mispronunciation as Disrespect Henri Bergson (1956) argued that laughter serves as a corrective action for socially unapproved behavior. James Mish’alani (1984) elaborated such laughter’s effect as having two components: brandishing (a potentially embarrassing or humiliating correction), and suspension of its brandishing. To laugh at someone implies a message of “see the damage I can inflict, but I won’t.” I argue that the bilingual students’ laughter in part brandished disapproval of the mainstream teachers’ ignorance of Te Reo without physically forcing them to learn Te Reo pronunciations. As mentioned, in the contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand context, displaying ignorance of Te Reo, intentionally or not, constituted disrespect for Te Reo, its speakers, and Māori people, because concern over language use is often not about language itself but about race/ethnic relations (Hill 2001; Kroskrity 2000; Woolard 1998). Some Māori scholars, such as Sydney Moko Mead, argue that because nearly anyone can pronounce Te Reo names by learning the pronunciation rules, failure to do so raises moral, political, sociological, and psychological questions: it is a matter of attitude toward Māori culture (Mead 1997; also see Ballara 1986; Kaaretu 1995). That is, mispronouncing Te Reo words indexes not only the speaker’s communicative competence as a citizen of a Māori-Pākehā bicultural nation but also the speaker’s attitude toward being a citizen of a bicultural nation. In particular, with the aim of raising the self-esteem and academic achievement of Māori students, various aspects of Māori culture were incorporated at school as of the mid 1970s, as described in chapter 1. Marae-based courses were held for principals and senior teachers to improve their understanding of Māori culture. As part of the Taha Māori program, 1985: A Starter Kit for Māori in Schools stressed the importance of Te Reo for national identity, cultural tolerance, and Māori “personal identity and self-worth.” Among things the booklet suggested teachers do was to pronounce correctly Māori children’s names, teachers’ names, local place names, and Māori words in public use. This act, the booklet suggested, represents positive recognition and valuing of Māori identity by the teacher and school (Sissons 1993). Because actions in the “public sphere” carry official overtones (Hill 1995), the pronunciation of Te Reo words in public indicates not only the speaker’s position toward biculturalism but also the state of biculturalism. In the context of the bicultural national imagining, on the one hand, and continued struggles for a greater number of Te Reo speakers and non-Māori tolerance toward Te Reo

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on the other (Benton and Benton 2001; Kaaretu 1995; Mead 1997), the frequent public mispronunciation/anglicization of Te Reo words indexes tokenism of the bicultural nationhood. It connects to what I call the power of ignorance. Some Pākehā’s ignorance of Te Reo is based on the colonial assimilation policies that repressed the use of Te Reo in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Insisting on and justifying such ignorance rather than correcting it, then, is to further perpetuate the relations of dominance. While the possession of legitimate knowledge is often considered as empowering its possessor in the field of education (Aronowitz and Giroux 1993; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Olneck 2000), in certain contexts, such as that of postcolonial Aotearoa/New Zealand, ignorance becomes a source of power (also see Doerr 2008; under review). It was in this context that an intense public debate occurred in the late 1970s over whether or not broadcasters’ anglicization of Te Reo words should be allowed. Broadcasters now try to use correct Te Reo pronunciations. Teachers’ Te Reo pronunciations in class, especially during roll call, belong to this public sphere in which bilingual and ex-bilingual students measure the teachers’ attitudes toward Te Reo, as well as the position of Te Reo in mainstream classrooms. For ex-bilingual students especially, the contrast between how Te Reo pronunciation was dealt with in the bilingual unit and in mainstream classroom highlighted the disrespect shown toward Te Reo mispronunciation. As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, Barbara Johnson (1982) suggests that contradictions between the messages of different teachers serve as a springboard for learning. Students learn something that teachers did not intend to teach: that ignorance is not innocent. In the case of the bilingual students, experiences from both the bilingual and mainstream classes taught the bilingual students, I argue, something neither type of teacher intended to teach: how to sense disrespect for Māori culture. One has to have been in a Te Reo environment (like the bilingual unit) in order to point out Te Reo mistakes. Also, only by comparing the way teachers in the mainstream and bilingual classes related to Te Reo can students sense disrespect in the ignorance of Te Reo. That is, in the gap between the hierarchy within the regime of difference of language—Te Reo vs. English— in the bilingual unit (where both languages are treated with equal respect) and mainstream classes (mistakes in Te Reo did not matter, while mistakes in English did; English was treated with more respect than Te Reo), the ex-bilingal students sensed the disrespect in Te Reo mispronunciation. Although mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo words indexed their disrespect toward Te Reo and its speakers, the (ex-)bilingual students did not automatically laugh at all mispronunciations in Te Reo. It depended on the teacher who mispronounced it, as some teachers recognized and the contrast between Ann’s and Kurt’s cases suggested. The (ex-)bilingual students were, then, using Te Reo as a resource to challenge some teachers, but not all mainstream teachers as a group. Nonetheless, when some (ex-)bilingual students did laugh, it made

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a strong impression on the school community, sending a message about bilingual students and their attitudes about Te Reo. As mentioned, most mainstream teachers were well aware of this behavior. Also, a Pākehā Year 11 mainstream student said that some ex-bilingual students’ laughter at mainstream teachers’ Te Reo mispronunciations made her realize for the first time that ex-bilingual students cared about such things. That is, ex-bilingual students’ laughter at mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo words was an antihegemonic action with cultural implications, not simply a common student practice of exploring the teacher’s tolerance (D’Amato 1993). I discuss four such cultural implications—denial of mainstream teachers’ authority based on Pākehā-centered knowledge; place of Te Reo in mainstream classrooms; assertion of bilingual students’ authority over Te Reo; and relief from the cultural alienation of ex-bilingual students in mainstream classroom—in the following subsections. It is ironic, then, that this challenge to disrespect often created the impression that (ex-)bilingual students, not the teachers, were “disrespectful.” Teachers often interpreted the laughter as rude behavior rather than a message (as in Kim’s case). Also, the (ex-)bilingual students’ laughter, paradoxically, reproduced Te Reo’s marginality by responding to mistakes in it with laughter (see Bergson 1956). This becomes clear when we consider the aforementioned teachers’ mistakes in mathematics or English, which were too serious to laugh at. Nonetheless, by laughing, the (ex-)bilingual students drew the attention of those who could care less about the pronunciation of Te Reo words to the point that it does matter, thus initiating a negotiation with the teachers regarding the place of Te Reo, its speakers, and Māori people in mainstream classrooms. It was a rejection of “playing” along (Varenne and Cotter 2006) with a sociocultural environment that rendered the correctness of Te Reo trivial. It was a rejection of the hierarchical regime of difference—Te Reo vs. English, in which hegemonic English prevailed in public spaces—and a suggestion that a regime of difference be created in which Te Reo and English received equal respect. Other responses might have worked better if the aim had been to make mainstream teachers respect Te Reo. Correcting the teacher’s pronunciation would have achieved the aim without being considered disruptive. A formal complaint to the teacher could have gotten the point across and been taken more seriously (see Freeman 1998). The laughter, however, had other effects that these strategies would not achieve, such as challenging mainstream teachers’ authority’s cultural bias and relieving ex-bilingual students’ anxiety, which are some of the issues I discuss below. Mainstream Teachers’ Authority’s Cultural Bias The ex-bilingual students’ laughter revealed the mainstream teachers’ ignorance of Te Reo, which otherwise could have gone unnoticed in the mainstream classes. Also, the laughter simultaneously acknowledged and denied the authority of the

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teacher: laughter pointed out that the teacher should know (acknowledgement of authority), thus it is laughable otherwise; but the teacher does not know, thus should not be in a position of authority (denial of authority). Authority is an aspect of the active structuring of particular kinds of scenes, in which all participants work together to produce a peculiar asymmetry among them (Mullooly and Varenne 2006). The teacher’s response to this denial of authority set the tone for the teacher-student relationship. Ann usually cared more about improving students’ mathematical knowledge than asserting her authority as a teacher, as her immediate apology and correction when she made mistakes in mathematical calculations show. When she made mistakes in Te Reo, however, she at first ignored the laughter and its message that she had made mistakes. Compared to her response to her mistakes in mathematics, this act—probably derived from her not being concerned with asserting her authority and from concentrating on mathematics matters in class—unwittingly suggested that mistakes in Te Reo were not correctable or not worth making efforts to correct. The common perception, which Ann shared, that the bilingual students were disruptive may have contributed to Ann’s ignoring it as “another disruptive act,” rather than a message. This act of ignoring allowed the students to continue to laugh at her mispronunciation. The laughter reversed, for the time being, the hierarchy in the regime of difference of teacher vs. students by referring to the amount of Te Reo knowledge they had. Later, as mentioned earlier, Ann learned the proper pronunciation, which stopped the laughter. However, in hindsight, the list of correct pronunciations that I gave her may have served only to “shut the students up” by superficially masking an expression of disrespect. I realized later that what mattered was not merely to stop her from mispronouncing Te Reo words but to make her want to pronounce Te Reo words correctly out of respect for Te Reo. Instead, the challenge to a teacher’s ignorance of Te Reo was contained by the piecemeal knowledge of Te Reo pronunciation that I had provided. The way the laughter was stopped sent a message, however: correct Te Reo pronunciation was considered “proof” of respect. In contrast, some teachers, such as Kim, compared Te Reo mispronunciation to mistakes in mathematics or English and reframed the teacher-student relations in terms of reversed roles—“I don’t do that to you, so don’t do that to me.” By this, Kim acknowledged that the bilingual students knew more than she did about Te Reo. However, she neutralized the corrective power of laughter by confusing the expression of respect. Indeed, teachers did not laugh at students’ mistakes in English or mathematics. Instead, they gave poor grades. In these cases, even though its demand for respect was contained, the laughter revealed the cultural bias of the mainstream teachers’ knowledge that supported their authority over students (Willis 1977). By bringing a new way to claim authority—one based on the knowledge of Māori culture—into mainstream classrooms, the ex-bilingual students’ laughter juxtaposed two kinds of knowledge and put into relief the Pākehā cultural bias in the usually unmarked mainstream knowledge. This is exactly what critical multiculturalists aim at doing

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(Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997; also see Olneck 2000). Here, mainstream teachers’ ignorance of Te Reo differs from the cases of disparity between home and school cultures that minority students often encounter (Jacob and Jordan 1993) because both bilingual and mainstream teachers represented school for students, making the issue not that of home vs. school but that of different ways to claim authority over others at school. The Place of Te Reo The assertion of respect for Te Reo through laughter ruptured a regime of language difference and hierarchy prevalent in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The hierarchy of language, English and Te Reo, was often measured by the degree of its perceived global usefulness. For example, some mainstream parents doubted the value of teaching Te Reo at school, saying Te Reo was too local to be useful in “today’s global world” compared to “globally useful” English (also see Kaaretu 1995; Phillipson 1992). This view of “global usefulness” assumes English’s efficacy, perpetuating the ideology prevalent in the ESL industry (Pennycook 1994; Phillipson 1992), and dismisses the “global usefulness” of Te Reo with its close ties to other Polynesian languages (Michelle Elleray, personal communication). Also, the establishment since the 1980s of various units that focused on Māori cultural advisories for government departments and ministries indicated that knowledge of Te Reo was useful in getting employment in such offices (Sissons 1993). The bilingual students’ laughter challenged this regime of language difference and hierarchy and asserted a regime of difference between languages based instead on their importance to Aotearoa/New Zealand’s nationhood. By revealing these teachers’ ignorance of Te Reo, the bilingual students’ laughter challenged the token use of Te Reo in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s bicultural national imagining: some mainstream New Zealanders could not even pronounce Te Reo names. The laughter, which evoked some embarrassment in those who mispronounced Te Reo words, appealed to non–Te Reo speakers’ responsibility, as members of a bicultural nation, to be engaged with Te Reo. Like carnivalistic laughter (Bakhtin 1984: 164), laughter urged a shift of authorities and orders. Its public nature, shown in front of all students, and the fact that it was aimed at a mainstream teacher, not students, are significant (see Hill 1995). Reversing the hierarchy within the regime of difference of teacher vs. students helped lever the position of Te Reo in the regime of difference of Te Reo vs. English more strikingly. It was the intersecting of these two regimes of difference that emphasized the message that the laughter sent. Bilingual Students’ Authority When Ann mispronounced Te Reo words, the ex-bilingual students’ laughter not only defined this as mispronunciation but also indicated their right to do so.

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The (ex-)bilingual students’ assertion of authority over Te Reo echoes the spirit of Kaupapa Māori, Māori control over Māori culture (see chapter 1). Some researchers have critiqued this sort of connection between language or culture and a particular ethnic group, arguing that it wrongly treats culture as the property of an ethnic group by reifying and overemphasizing the homogeneity of culture (see Turner 1994). This position has been critiqued in turn by Sam L. No’eau Warner (1999), who says that such a view undermines the right of the ethnic group to make decisions about its own language. I suggest that what is at issue is not the ownership of, but the authority over a language. Such authority does not necessarily reify culture or a group because authority is something that is produced through interaction, and thus is relational and contextual (Mullooly and Varenne 2006). We can see such authority in the Māori protocol establishing the authority to speak first in meetings. In each Māori meeting, one’s authority to speak is determined relationally based on gender, seniority, and one’s relationship to a particular marae (Māori community meeting place) in a given mix of people at the meeting. It is ultimately the rules of the host hapū that determine what aspect of a person gives him/her authority to speak first at a particular meeting. A person who speaks in violation of this could be challenged (Kaaretu 1992; Salmond 1975), which is an act of reestablishing the authority of the host hapū. Just as speakers at a marae submit themselves to the rules of the host hapū, those who say Te Reo words should, the laughter suggested, submit themselves to the authority of the (ex-)bilingual students regarding the language use. This suggestion was well taken by mainstream teachers like Nick, who would not dare speak Te Reo in front of bilingual students, as mentioned earlier. While one may argue that such fear shuts out those non-Māori who do pronounce Te Reo words correctly, it reminds them to respect the authority of (ex-)bilingual students over Te Reo. Anxiety of the Ex-Bilingual Students Many bilingual students felt anxious about joining the mainstream class in Year 11 after spending four years in the bilingual unit with the same peers, although this arrangement was aimed at empowering them by familiarizing them with both Māori and Pākehā ways of schooling. Some bilingual students did welcome the change, describing it positively in my interviews as learning about “both sides of the school culture” and making new friends. However, many expressed uneasiness. For example, one ex-bilingual student told me, three months into Year 11, that she did not like being in the mainstream because she was used to being with the same group of students. As another ex-bilingual student put it: “Last year, we were all in one class and relied on each other. This year, there are hardly any of us in the class. We cannot have fun any more. It’s boring . . . but it’s all right. We all go to the beach together.” That is, the strong unity among bilingual students,

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also observed by some teachers as mentioned, made it even more difficult for bilingual students to be scattered in five mainstream classes in Year 11. Whether ex-bilingual students felt comfortable in the mainstream or not sometimes depended on the teacher and fellow students in class. One ex-bilingual student decided not to take a certain elective class in Year 11 because he felt that the mainstream teacher teaching the class “acts like she owns the school and owns us.” Six interviewed Year 11 ex-bilingual students voluntarily left their assigned mainstream Form class to join the optional bilingual one after they attended that class once and saw the class dynamics and which mainstream teacher and students were in their Form class. Mikhail Bakhtin (1968) described laughter as liberating fear in the people who laughed. I borrow this interpretation here and argue that the laughter not only allowed the ex-bilingual students to challenge disrespect to Te Reo but also helped ease the intimidation they felt from the mainstream teachers and classmates. Mainstream teachers’ ignorance of Te Reo was, for the ex-bilingual students, both the epitome of the intimidating alienness of mainstream classes and a welcome break in the mainstream teachers’ façade of mastery. In this context, the bilingual students’ laughter at mainstream teachers’ mistakes in Te Reo, I argue, eased their anxiety about being in the unfamiliar mainstream classes. The laughter helped the ex-bilingual students not to bend to the hegemonic forces that rendered them inadequate in the mainstream classes. Moreover, the ex-bilingual students’ laughter also may have forged an alliance with some mainstream students, creating a sense of “difference” between those who saw the mistake and those who did not. Not all the ex-bilingual students reacted in the same manner, however: some laughed loudly, and others corrected the teacher. Those non-Māori who knew correct Te Reo pronunciation (linguistic competence) and those who knew the fellow students’ names (familiarity) all got the ex-bilingual students’ laughter. The laughter temporarily put those who were usually not considered Māori on the Māori side. This situation, however, also created the danger of marginalizing Māori mainstream students who did not speak Te Reo. Here, the bilingual students’ laughter ruptured the official biculturalist regime of difference of Māori vs. Pākehā and pointed to a possibility for new alliances based on language competence and familiarity. This becomes important in the discussion in chapter 8. In sum, at Waikaraka High School—where Māori culture was considered an important part of school life, where more than half of the interviewed teachers saw bilingual students as undisciplined and arrogant, and where bilingual students had to join the mainstream class after four years in the bilingual unit with same classmates—the ex-bilingual students’ laughter at mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo words carried culturally loaded effects. Its meaning was sensed in the gap between the hierarchy in the regime of difference of Te Reo vs. English in the bilingual unit and that in the mainstream classes. The laughter

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was an act of temporarily reversing a hierarchical regime of difference between the teacher vs. students by intersecting it with the regime of difference based on one’s knowledge of Te Reo pronunciation. The students’ laughter asserted that Te Reo ought to be more respected in classrooms and their authority over it ought to be acknowledged, while also easing their anxieties in unfamiliar mainstream classrooms. I conclude this chapter with a discussion of how to incorporate these analyses into strategies to empower minority students.

Toward Countering Pedagogy This chapter has analyzed indigenous minority students’ anti-hegemonic actions at a school in Aotearoa/New Zealand. As Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997) put it, it is often at the unsuspected level of “innocent” everyday interactions that oppression accomplishes its hurtful work. However, in general, research aimed at transforming society to render it sensitive to a minority language has tended to focus on macrolevel reforms. For example, Joshua Fishman (1991), who focused on ways to change institutional structures and motivate individuals from linguistic-minority groups to learn and use their minority language, fell short of offering strategies for individuals to challenge daily actions that bolster the dominance of mainstream languages. Also, in arguing for a need for individuals to counter the violation of their linguistic human rights, Robert Phillipson, Mart Rannut, and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (1995) focused only on the legal domain, not on daily encounters. A focus on the macro level carries the risk of overlooking discursive exercises of hegemonic practices in daily life. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, Te Reo revitalization was hailed as a success (Henze and Davis 1999): the number of speakers increased (see introduction), Te Reo was recognized in 1987 as Aotearoa/New Zealand’s other official language, besides English (see Mead 1997; Statistics New Zealand 1997), and Te Reo has played a symbolic role in asserting Aotearoa/New Zealand’s unique nationhood (Bell 1996). However, as mentioned in chapter 1, Te Reo was still marginalized at various levels. For example, Steven Chrisp (1997) describes people’s use of Te Reo in Aotearoa/ New Zealand as diglossic: Te Reo is used for Māori matters (for example, at Te Kōhanga Reo), while English is used for the rest of everyday life. A scholar of Māori studies, Tiimoti Kaaretu (1995), observed that in everyday life, sensitivity to Māori language was “nil.” At school, English was the only compulsory language, and some mainstream parents in my interviews doubted the value of teaching Te Reo at all, claiming that it hindered English skills and was not practical enough in a global world, as mentioned. The use of Te Reo in school functions, especially in speeches, met with complaints from mainstream parents who claimed that it was rude because they did not understand the language, as introduced in chapter 3 (also see Doerr 2008).

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When researchers have investigated minority language speakers’ daily encounters with hegemonic norms, their proposals tended to center around useful survival strategies rather than ways to transform the society. For example, A. Suresh Canagarajah (1999; also see Heller 2003; Rampton 1995) argues that if teachers raised students’ awareness of the links between various languages and job opportunities in a particular society, minority language speakers could empower themselves by purposefully code-switching between languages and appropriating the dominant language of the society according to their needs. While bringing some benefit to the speaker, such code-switching does not challenge and potentially end the marginalization of minority languages in society. The analysis of the (ex-)bilingual students’ laughter in this chapter shows that the bilingual unit succeeded in creating students who can become part of transforming society. The (ex-)bilingual students were able to stand up for their culture without abandoning schooling. The bilingual unit gave the bilingual students not only confidence in their culture but a ruler by which to measure the mainstream teachers’ respect for Te Reo. This systematicity led to the routinized anti-hegemonic behavior of laughing at mainstream teachers’ mistakes in Te Reo, which suggests a counterexample to Freeman’s (1998) view that encountering mainstream discourse ruins the production of alternative discourses in a bilingual school. However, the laughter also, ironically, perpetuated a negative stereotype of (ex-)bilingual students as “disrespectful” and risked a backlash by mainstream teachers seeking to contain such anti-hegemonic actions. Such negative views also can have concrete influences on institutional operations. The reputation of the bilingual unit affected not only parents’ decisions to send their children to the unit, which was vital to the existence of the unit, but also other parents’ support for the existence of the unit, which was becoming increasingly important as the schools competed for student enrollment in the new free market of education (Codd 1990). Moreover, the laughter risked further marginalizing Te Reo by trivializing mistakes in it. How, then, does one counter disrespectful behavior toward one’s language and culture in general when such behavior is so hegemonic that challenging it appears, ironically, “disrespectful”? This is a pressing question for minority language speakers in many countries (Phillipson et al. 1995). Building on the antihegemonic nature of the laughter, I suggest developing a Countering Pedagogy, a proactive pedagogy aimed at involving students in developing ways to effectively challenge insensitivities that devalue their culture, including language, in daily life. Countering Pedagogy can be used in any classes that deal with oppression and hegemony at any age level. Countering Pedagogy can also be useful in any classes when the issue of recognized difference—may it be language difference, cultural difference, gender difference, class difference, and so forth—is dealt with. Countering Pedagogy derives from the idea of critical pedagogy (Giroux 2001; Giroux and McLaren 1989). Viewing the school as a site of contestation,

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resistance, and possibility for social transformation, Henry Giroux (2001) argues for critical pedagogy that links pedagogy to social change and connects critical learning to the experiences that students bring to the classroom. Resistance, according to Giroux, is an oppositional behavior that both critiques the relations of dominance (re)created at school and takes the notion of emancipation as its guiding interest. Countering Pedagogy is a kind of critical pedagogy, but it has a narrower focus in two ways. First, it focuses on encounters with different messages from various people in diverse domains. All students are included in the discussion, as everybody can be marginalized in certain ways by being put in certain regimes of difference—in age, language, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, religion, political beliefs, etc. The discussion involves not only warning them about, and preparing them for, messages that are hostile to their views, subject positions, and cultures, but also using the difference in these messages to foster critical, analytical, and proactive skills to understand others and one’s own culture. Countering Pedagogy includes analyzing, as this chapter did, unintentional as well as intentional insensitivity to culture. It can also lead to critical reflection of one’s own actions toward other marginalized groups. While some teachers’ own personal philosophy leads them to include such messages in their teaching of students, a systematic development of such a pedagogy would serve to prepare students for an unfamiliar environment and messages. Second, Countering Pedagogy is action-focused. Countering pedagogy directly engages students in executing effective anti-hegemonic actions without the risk of creating negative stereotypes of themselves in doing so. For example, Countering Pedagogy would encourage discussion among the (ex-)bilingual students about how to develop less risky and more effective ways to (1) communicate to non-Māori what is considered disrespectful to Māori culture, (2) reveal to people that their taken-for-granted hegemonic mainstream Pākehā norms are just another culture, (3) assert authority over Māori culture, and (4) suggest to non-Māori ways to make Māori students comfortable in the mainstream environment. That is, Countering Pedagogy directs the acts of challenging the marginalization of Te Reo so that (ex-)bilingual students can not only attain self-esteem as Te Reo speakers without sacrificing their will to reach “academic achievement” in English-dominated mainstream schooling, but also choose actions that urge mainstream teachers and schools to expand the notion of “academic achievement” to include knowledge of and skills in Māori culture. For example, a teacher can lead a discussion soliciting students to share their experience of being made fun of because of the language they speak: how they felt, how they reacted, and what their reaction resulted in. A teacher can encourage students to analyze these experiences by connecting actions to the historical, political, and cultural backgrounds of individuals involved. A teacher can also ask students to think of various alternative ways they and others could have acted and the results they could have created. A discussion can be expanded to

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the research on similar experiences by various individuals throughout the history, how they reacted, and what the outcome was. In short, Countering Pedagogy is sharing strategies to transform society through daily actions. Whereas critical pedagogy’s main focus is on raising critical awareness of students and teachers for future emancipatory actions, Countering Pedagogy is based on a deepening of such an understanding, down to the nuts and bolts of carrying out emancipatory actions. Such discussion in search of effective anti-hegemonic actions is also useful in interactions in the “private sphere,” where challenging culturally insensitive actions is more difficult, as someone who does so is often considered a “bad sport” (Hill 1995). Countering Pedagogy urges us to engage in practices at the micro level and provides opportunities for marginalized students in any society to explore ways to respond to and proactively challenge cultural and other insensitivities in daily life, which may go unnoticed by researchers because of cultural and other sensitivities at the macro, institutional level. These proactive actions at the grass roots will help transform hegemonic norms from the bottom up, as they empower minority-language speakers as agents of social transformation. The bilingual students’ laughter was spawned in the gap between two kinds of regimes of difference of Te Reo vs. English and challenged the marginalization of Te Reo in mainstream classroom through the intersections of the regimes of difference of Te Reo vs. English and teacher vs. students. Other aspects of this routinized laughter become visible at its intersection with another regime of difference involving recent Asian immigrants, which is the topic of the next chapter.

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L AUGHING G LOBALLY Creation of Alliances and Globally Homologous Regimes of Difference

% Asians in Aotearoa/New Zealand When a mainstream teacher mispronounced Te Reo names, ex-bilingual students laughed, revealing, rupturing, and negotiating a structure of authority, regimes of difference of teacher vs. student and of Te Reo vs. English placed in hierarchical relations, and the place of Te Reo and its speakers in mainstream classroom, as discussed in chapter 7. In the same mainstream class, ex-bilingual students laughed at another thing: mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of my Japanese name. This laughter, however, had very different effects: it put me on their side, pulling me into their language politics at a very personal level. This chapter analyzes one such episode and two other episodes in which ex-bilingual students attempted to make, control, or avoid alliances with me—a Japanese researcher from a university in the United States also serving as a quasi teacher aide at an Aotearoa/New Zealand school. I interpret these episodes against the backdrop of the ambiguous position of Asians, with whom I was often identified, in the contemporary cultural politics of Aotearoa/New Zealand. As described in chapter 1, Aotearoa/New Zealand’s new alliance with Asian states in the 1990s became visible through the influx of a highly publicized, albeit small, foreign investment from Asia1 and wealthy Asian immigrants mainly from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This was one result of the 1986 Business Immigration Policy (BIP), which changed immigration patterns in Aotearoa/New Zealand by viewing the investment proposal rather than the country of origin as the important element of an immigration application (Dale and Robertson 1997; Ip 1995, 1998; Kelsey 1995). Viewing this change, some Pākehā, according to Jane Kelsey (1995: 340), felt they were “losing control of their identity, their economy, and their country” (emphasis original; also see Bedford 2002; Matthews 1996).

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Some described this reaction as a resurfacing of the “Yellow Peril” hysteria of the nineteenth century (Fleras and Spoonley 1999). Also in the 1990s, deregulated schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand sought a new source of revenue in ESL education for foreign students who came predominantly from Asia (Dale and Robertson 1997). As described in chapter 1, the number increased significantly in the mid 1990s. While fee-paying students no longer had to pay high fees once they had immigrated and become citizens of Aotearoa/New Zealand, recent Asian immigrants and fee-paying students from Asia were often lumped together as new and wealthy Asians. It is worth noting here that these new immigrants from Asia were not identified with Asian New Zealanders who are descendants of Chinese and Indians who immigrated in the late nineteenth century (Ip 1998; Moloughney, Ballantyne, and Hood 2006; Bandyopadhyay 2006). As discussed in chapter 2, since the mid-twentieth century they have kept a low profile in national cultural politics. At Waikaraka High School there were some Asian New Zealanders, but they were rarely singled out and were almost never lumped together with Asian fee-paying students or new Asian immigrants. In Aotearoa/New Zealand’s official regime of difference of biculturalism, these “new” Asians, along with Pacific Island people, occupied an ambiguous position. Sometimes they were considered an ethnic group (multiculturalist position); sometimes they were included in the broad concept of Pākehā, although at its margin (biculturalist position) (Pearson 1990). Hardly ever were they included in the category of Māori, and most of the time they were totally excluded from the picture. In particular, Māori and Asians occupied opposite positions in three ways. First, the new Asian presence called for multiculturalism, which challenged the recognition of Māori’s special status in the form of biculturalism (Ip and Pang 2005; Palat 1996; Walker 1996). Second, Asians embodied global traffic in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Campbell 1996; Chapple 1996; Holm 1996; Matthews 1996), whereas Māori were seen to secure a unique nationhood despite increasing global traffic (Bell 1996). The presence of Asians became an epitome of changing alliances and globalization, especially because of the wealthy lifestyle of consumption and the alienness of their culture (Beal 2006; Campbell 1996; Matthews 1996). As an indigenous people, Māori represented a unique culture of Aotearoa/New Zealand, despite the dynamic changes in Māori culture itself (Bell 1996; Mead 1997). Third, some Māori viewed the new presence of Asians as a threat to Māori causes. For example, Ranginui Walker (1996) argued that the BIP suppressed Māori struggles by swamping them with “outsiders [Asians]” who had no obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi. However, this view suggests that new Asian immigrants would be less bound by the treaty than would new European immigrants, perpetuating a view that some ethnic groups remain marked as “outsiders” for generations, while other groups, such as immigrants of European descent, quickly become “Pākehā” or “New Zealanders” (see Campbell 2005). Also, with the party policy of limiting immigration to fewer than 10,000

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people per year, the Māori politician Winston Peters claimed that “New Zealand is ours” and brought his party, New Zealand First, into a partnership with the coalition government in the 1996 election. He was made deputy prime minister, but by 1997 his party had lost many of its supporters (Bedford 2002; Campbell 1996; Chapple 1996; Holm 1996; Matthews 1996). Still, there were some Māori who encouraged connecting with Asians in some joint ventures for mutual benefit (Sir Paul Reeves, quoted in Ip and Pang 2005: 183). In Waikaraka, there were not many wealthy Asian immigrants, who tended to be concentrated in urban areas. However, Waikaraka High School had several Asian fee-paying students who were viewed by local students as wealthy. The teachers and students at Waikaraka High School often lumped me in with the new Asian presence. Some teachers suggested that I do research about fee-paying students from Asia, so besides my main research activities, I interviewed teachers and parents about the fee-paying student program and visited events that involved fee-paying students. Some bilingual students identified me as a new Asian, as described in chapter 3. This chapter analyzes the ways the ex-bilingual students positioned me in various regimes of difference and how such positionings reflect or rupture current ambiguous positions of Asians and show possibilities for new alliances between Māori and Asians. In what follows, I will introduce three episodes of ex-bilingual students interpellating me and analyze them in light of (1) how they used homologous, globally shared regimes of difference in transforming my subjectivity and (2) the kinds of alliances they attempted to make between Māori and Asians.

Laughing at Mispronunciation of a Japanese Name The first example occurred in the same session of the mainstream Year 11 mathematics class in which ex-bilingual students laughed at Ann’s (mainstream teacher) mispronunciation of Te Reo names, analyzed in chapter 7. After the roll was taken and ex-bilingual students laughed at Ann, Ann suggested that students ask me mathematics questions when they needed help. When she pronounced my name Neriko as “ne-REE-kou” instead of “NEH-dhi-koh,” the same ex-bilingual students laughed at Ann’s pronunciation. These students knew the correct pronunciation of my name not only because they knew me from the previous year but also because Te Reo and Japanese have similar phonemes and syllable structure. At first, I was ambiguous about this laughter. I felt sympathy for Ann: knowing the historical context of colonialism, I understood the ex-bilingual students’ resentment of Ann’s continued Te Reo mispronunciation; however, the mispronunciation of my Japanese name had very different implications (Japanese was never put under assimilationist policy and was officially supported by Japan’s

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government) and did not warrant laughter. I suspected that the bilingual students were forming an alliance with me in order to safeguard themselves from being punished for laughing, which was considered a “disruptive” behavior. Soon, however, I realized that there was something more to it with which I agreed, as I describe below, and did not urge them to stop laughing (usually, being a quasi teacher’s aide, I urged students to “behave” in the classroom). This incident transformed my subjectivity. Until then, it had never occurred to me to (let anyone) laugh at mispronunciation of my name. I still would not laugh at it myself. In the case of mispronunciation of my Japanese name by anglicizing it, my silence was due in part to the valorized position of English in Japan while I was growing up. The valorization made English accents in pronouncing Japanese words somewhat fashionable (Oishi 1990; Tsuda 1993). It was also due to the security of the Japanese language’s existence, which was fully supported by the Japanese government. However, the laughing ex-bilingual students alerted me to a new meaning of mispronunciations of my name, overriding my subject position as a willing ESL learner and admirer of things English and imposing in its place the subject position of victim, like Māori, of disrespect to the language I speak. That is, they involved me at a very personal level in their language politics: I was no longer simply observing Māori causes; I had personally experienced language hegemony in the same classroom. The change of my subject position was accompanied by a change of the regime of difference in which Ann and I were placed: from that of a valorized “native” English speaker vs. a willing ESL speaker and admirer of things English to that of a speaker of a dominant language vs. a speaker of a dominated language. The regime of difference in which ex-bilingual students and I were placed also changed from that of minority students vs. minority sympathizers to that of victim of domination vs. another victim of domination. This co-victim status I now shared with the bilingual students was suggested in other contexts as well. The casual greeting I received from bilingual students—“How’s racism in the States?”—that I presented in the introduction to this volume was one such example. Also, a bilingual teacher asked me to talk to her class about my experience of racism in the United States (this discussion did not materialize due to time conflict). No mainstream teachers or students asked me questions about racism. Another example was when a bilingual student whose family I boarded with pointed out that his Pākehā relatives were racist to me because they talked to me very slowly, despite my speaking fluently, as described in chapter 5. He said: “they just saw your [Asian] face and thought you cannot speak English.” I was so used to people speaking to me slowly because English is my second language that his comment caught me by surprise. The laughter suggested a possibility of a Māori-Asian alliance against Pākehā cultural/linguistic hegemony. Such a move would be significant for Asians, whose position was ambiguous in the cultural politics of Aotearoa/New Zealand at the

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time, official biculturalism sitting uncomfortably with multiculturalism. That is, the laughter ruptured the official biculturalist regime of difference of Māori vs. Pākehā and suggested a possible position of Asians allied with Māori. However, the alliance was dictated by ex-bilingual students, as I show next.

Suggesting the “True” Name of Waikaraka On another day in Ann’s class, Tim, one of the ex-bilingual students who had laughed at Ann’s mispronunciation in Te Reo and Japanese, told me that the real name for “Waikaraka” was “Waikoru.” I said, “Really? I didn’t know that.” He responded, “Yeah, all the books said the name is Waikaraka, but Māori used to call the place Waikoru.” This exchange took place as students were solving mathematics questions and I was walking around the desks to see if students had any questions. Other ex-bilingual students were grinning. Seeing the grins, I wondered if I was being fooled and asked these other students if Tim’s assertion was true. They kept grinning, and some said, “It’s true.” “Okay,” I said, and believed Tim. Mainstream students stayed out of this conversation. A while later in the same class, Tim repeated that the real name for Waikaraka was Waikoru. I said, “Yeah, I didn’t know that.” Tim looked at other ex-bilingual students and grinned. Other students grinned back. Seeing that interaction, I asked, “Are you pulling my leg? Is it really true?” They just grinned. By that time, I was convinced that Tim was teasing me. I later asked a bilingual teacher whether Waikaraka used to be called Waikoru and the answer was no. Tim’s action suggested that, regarding Māori culture, the information carried by an oral tradition is “truer” than that in written documents. Being originally an oral-only language, Māori elders passed on their knowledge in waiata (song) and whaikōrero (oratory) to the younger ones (Kaaretu 1992; Salmond 1975). From attending various meetings at marae, I was aware that some waiata and whaikōrero included information that was never, sometimes consciously, written down: the orator sometimes mentioned that fact. That was why I assumed that Tim had heard the name “Waikoru” from his elders. I suspect that Tim guessed that I would believe him, and that I would believe Māori oral knowledge, even that held by students, over and above the history books. Thus, Tim must have sensed my respect for Māori culture’s oral tradition. However, he teased that respect. I felt that Tim was telling me to “back off” before co-victim status developed into an overidentification with Māori to make me a Māori “wannabe” or intrusive Māori sympathizer. Note that Tim did not fool me so that he could laugh at me with his friends behind my back or so that I would embarrass myself later with wrong knowledge about Waikaraka. Instead, he needed me to know that I had been fooled, thus bringing it up again and making sure that I realized that I was being teased. Tim’s suggesting that I “back off” in this way resonated with

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the call of Kaupapa Māori advocates: sympathetic non-Māori should not learn Māori culture but instead confront mainstream Aotearoa/New Zealand society’s tolerance issues (Toreta Poananga cited in Mannion 1984). Tim’s message, then, urged me not to become an “honorary Māori,” but to fight, as an Asian together with Māori, against the cultural insensitivity of some English speakers. The responses to the call of Kaupapa Māori varied. The Pākehā mainstream teacher Nick, who speaks Te Reo fluently, told me that he would not speak Te Reo to bilingual students for the fear they would challenge him for his smallest mistakes, as mentioned in chapter 7. He did not resent this, but rather respected the bilingual students’ authority over Te Reo. Pam, an Australian-born parent of a mainstream student, told me that she felt only Māori were welcome in the Te Reo classes she was taking. She took it to be “separatist” because it divided people by ethnicity (see chapter 5). Not only because I knew of the alternative subject position that Kaupapa Māori advocates suggested but also because I was familiar with a similar claim by minority groups around the world (Warner 1999), I viewed Tim’s teasing as a warning to avoid the regime of difference of patronized Māori vs. intrusive Māori enthusiast in favor of the regime of difference of co-victim of cultural insensitivity vs. another co-victim.

Soliciting Mispronunciation In a different Year 11 mathematics class at the beginning of the same year, Hone (pronounced “hoh-neh”), an ex-bilingual student, asked me to read the name of a local sports team on a student’s T-shirt, “Puke.” Students were solving exercise questions in mathematics, and I was walking between desks to answer questions from students. Hone was repeating this class and did not know me from the previous year. Because I happened to know the word, as Puke was also a local place name, and I knew Te Reo, I read it correctly—“puh-keh”—not realizing Hone’s intent. Hone then told me, disappointedly, that he had thought I would read it the English way, “pewk.” This episode indicated his initial assumption that I would not know and/or respect Te Reo pronunciation. It shows Hone’s acknowledgement of Te Reo’s marginality in that he expected certain people in Aotearoa/New Zealand to be ignorant of Te Reo. Who were these “certain” people among whom Hone included me? I suggest two groups. The first group of people would be Waikaraka High School’s mainstream teachers, given that it was well known that mainstream teachers often mispronounced Te Reo words and that bilingual students laughed at them (see chapter 7). Also, as he was meeting me for the first time in a mainstream class and did not seem to know that I used to visit bilingual classes as a researcher/quasi teacher’s aide to bilingual teachers, I suspect that Hone saw me as a mainstream researcher/quasi teacher’s aide. The regime of difference evoked was that of mainstream vs. bilingual. Second, his challenge also indicated

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that he saw me as an outsider. Because “Puke” was a local place name, anyone who had enough local knowledge could read it correctly. The regime of difference alluded to here was that of Waikaraka insiders vs. outsiders. Here, my Asian appearance apparently did not prevent Hone from challenging me, in contrast to the way some ex-bilingual students forged an alliance with me as discussed previously. Rather, I suspect that my Asian appearance suggested my “outsider” status, common in Aotearoa/New Zealand, as I mentioned. This indicates that the Asian-Māori alliance is contextual and cannot be readily assumed. In fact, Māori and Asian can be enemies: a bilingual student told me how a Korean feepaying student had called his Māori friend a “nigger,” to which the Māori student responded with “chink,” resulting in a fight. As he told this story, he said to me, “no offense,” indicating that he identified me as part of the group that might be called “chink.” When I read the word “Puke” correctly, my correct pronunciation disappointed Hone as it disagreed with Hone’s assumptions about me. My unexpected and apparent mastery of Te Reo pronunciation also posed an intrusion to Hone’s authority over Te Reo. However, there also emerged an unexpected camaraderie between Hone and myself as people who knew/respected Te Reo pronunciations. In sum, Hone’s action simultaneously illuminated subject positions that some exbilingual students would assume that I occupied (“mainstream” and “outsider”) and let me assert, although not consciously, subject positions (of familiarity with Te Reo and Waikaraka) by pronouncing the word “Puke” correctly. Hone’s action made me reflect on my subjectivity and how others would see my subjectivity.

Global Homologies of Regimes of Difference and Minority Group Empowerment In all three episodes described above, the ex-bilingual students’ actions suggested to me alternative subject positions and affected my subjectivity. This impact on me was possible because, I argue, the suggested subject positions were personally intelligible to me as they were constituents of regimes of difference that were homologous to ones I was familiar with. For example, in the first episode, when exbilingual students laughed at Ann’s mispronunciation of my Japanese name after they laughed at her mispronunciation of Te Reo names, they evoked the hierarchical regime of difference of English (dominant language) vs. Japanese (minority language) in which the correctness of the latter was considered trivial. However, paradoxically, I was not aware of that regime of difference due to the valorization of English in Japan, as mentioned. It was when that regime of difference was juxtaposed with the regime of difference of English (dominant language) vs. Te Reo (minority language), which I was familiar with because it was problematized more as an effect of colonialism, that I realized the hierarchical relationship between English and Japanese that lay behind the mispronunciation of my Japanese name.

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These regimes of difference are homologous to the globally shared regime of difference of dominant-language speakers vs. dominated-language speakers seen in linguistic human rights (Phillipson et al. 1995; Whiteley 2003) and language revitalization movements (Fishman 1991). In the second episode, the regime of difference Tim implied—that of patronized Māori vs. intrusive Māori enthusiast— resonated with the one resisted not only by Kaupapa Māori adovicates but also by many minority groups I was familiar with around the world (Warner 1999). In the third episode, the regimes of difference Hone assumed between himself and me were also homologous to the regimes of difference of minority-language speakers vs. mainstream-language speakers (Fishman 1991; Phillipson et al. 1995) and of insider vs. outsider, which were globally available. Consider an opposite case. When I was taking Te Reo classes, I learned to introduce myself following the Māori custom, framing my subject positions in landscapes—the mountain and river near one’s birthplace—and in reference to one’s ancestors (Kaaretu 1992; Salmond 1975). This interpellation did not significantly transform my subjectivity because I did not share regimes of difference that link/differentiate people based on landscapes or ancestry. The ex-bilingual students’ actions, occurring in a mainstream classroom in which ex-bilingual students were the minority, presented a way to draw individuals to their cause, but in a manner they saw fit. This was done by taking my language as a resource in a way I had never considered, and by appealing to my views on oral traditions. Inspired by these effects of ex-bilingual students’ actions, I suggest a strategy to understand and support an oppressed minority group: convince the wider public, including those who came from other societies, by interpellating them in homologous regimes of difference that are intelligible to them. In creating a strong, emotional, and lasting transformation of subjectivity, as suggested in this chapter, new alliances among people with diverse backgrounds can be forged through interpellations. Such a transformation of subjectivity can also lead to a person’s revelation that he/she has been an unintended accomplice in the oppression of certain groups of people. For example, my previous acceptance of anglicization of my Japanese given name supported the hegemonic dominance of English in the Aotearoa/New Zealand context. Such revelations encourage us to act differently so as to alleviate the effects of the (indirect) acts of oppression. There are, however, some risks involved in creating alliances by evoking homologous regimes of difference and alternative subject positions. First, subject positions may move in the opposite direction—a supporter of an oppressed group may become a supporter of a dominant group’s causes for domination. One example is the mobilization of the concept of “separatism” against biculturalism by invoking South African apartheid (Scott 1995) without taking into account the history of colonization and marginalization of Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I suggested in chapter 5 that, in such a case, the conversion should be countered with a suggestion of yet another alternative subject position to support the

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oppressed group. Second, reactions to the suggested alternative subject positions vary depending on one’s existing subject positions (Morley 1980), just as a Te Reo–speaking Pākehā teacher and a mainstream mother had varying reactions to the Kaupapa Māori movement, as I described earlier. Attempts to create an alliance need to be followed up and constantly adjusted, as in Tim’s case. Third, evoking homologous regimes of difference should not lead to an imposition of other regimes of difference on local politics (see Whiteley 2003). Instead, we should aim to make such alliances a starting point to learn the specificities of local relations of dominance and ways to alleviate them. Such homologous regimes of difference suggest globally shared regimes of difference. Richard Wilk (1995) calls such regimes “global structures of common difference.” He argues that people are becoming different in very uniform ways around the world. “Global structures of common difference” are emerging, organizing diversity by celebrating particular kinds of diversity and allowing us to communicate our differences to each other in ways that are more widely intelligible. Some researchers argue that the effects of the emergence of such global structures of common difference on oppressed groups are negative: they limit ways of being, especially when oppressed groups seek to be heard on the global stage. For example, Peter Whiteley (2003) discusses how adapting a globally circulating structure of difference limited the ways Hopi language in the United States could be revitalized, because the idea of property rights behind the global discourse of language revitalization was in conflict with Hopi linguistic philosophy. At the national level, regimes of difference are seen as forcing oppressed groups to shape their political claims in accordance with such regimes in order to be heard, limiting ways of being: for example, a regime of difference of indigenous people vs. settlers delegitimate the indigenous people’s being simultaneously “authentically indigenous” and “modern” (Clifford 1988; Povinelli 2002). From the cases I examined in this chapter, I argue instead that global structures of common difference can allow for unexpected alliances between persons from different backgrounds because they can interpellate individuals from diverse backgrounds into subject positions that are intelligible to them. Keeping various risks discussed above in mind, I suggest that we can take advantage of the proliferation of global structures of common difference to create alliances against relations of dominance in various parts of the world. Such alliances, however, need to be seen carefully, as I discuss next.

Uneasy Alliances The cases introduced in this chapter show that the bilingual students’ laughter at the mispronunciation of my Asian name ruptured the existing bicultural regime of difference, rearranging it by placing Asians on the Māori side. These two groups, which often represented opposite poles—Māori, a partner in biculturalism

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and secures unique nationhood against increasing global traffic (Bell 1996), and Asians supporting multiculturalism rather than biculturalism and embodying that traffic in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Campbell 1996; Chapple 1996; Holm 1996; Matthews 1996)—were linked as peoples whose languages were not respected by mainstream English speakers. This move was significant, given the ambiguous position, discussed earlier, of Asians within Aotearoa/New Zealand’s contemporary cultural politics. It was an uneasy alliance, nonetheless. One concern was that it could develop into intrusive relationships in which Asians sought to dominate Māori cultural politics, which Kaupapa Māori advocates would resent. I interpret the episode in which an ex-bilingual student sought to distance my sympathy from Māori to be a manifestation of such a worry. Also, it cannot be assumed that Asians would respect Māori culture. There were tensions between Māori and Asians at the national as well as the local level. It was no coincidence that I was chosen as a target for laughter in the “Puke” episode. The acknowledgement of such uneasiness can be turned into a positive force, however. With the concept of “uneasy alliance,” I suggest a way of viewing and forming social relationships: understanding alliances as uneasy, on the one hand, acknowledges that despite the parties’ intentions to support each other, historical and contemporary situations at various levels interpellate individuals into subject positions of privilege or marginality; on the other hand, this acknowledgment encourages individuals to constantly act to overcome being constrained by such subject positions. Following V. N. Voloshinov’s argument about contextually understood meanings of words (Voloshinov 1973), Elizabeth Povinelli suggests a new way of viewing the social relationships that connect people. Rather than seeing people as members of unchanging categories, she focuses on the processes by which people from different backgrounds seek to link to each other in a given context. This is what she calls connectivity (Povinelli 2001). I suggest that what I call “uneasy alliance” is a kind of connectivity that links people from different backgrounds in a particular context but without a guarantee of future alliance, which in turn urges them to constantly and actively recreate the link. In sum, this chapter has suggested possible alliance-making, albeit uneasy and requiring constant maintenance, between Māori and Asians but also others, through globally shared homologous regimes of difference. While this chapter has discussed possible alliances between Māori and Asians, the next chapter analyzes the cases in which Māori and Asians occupied two separate domains in the imagining of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s nationhood.

Notes 1. Most foreign investment was sourced from Australia and the United States (Kelsey 1995).

9

D ANCING Cultural Performance and Nationhood

% Dancing in the School One day I heard a teacher telling students that I would perform a Japanese dance if they “behaved.” It caught me by surprise. It was in a Japanese language class for Year 7/8 “taster” students, who were trying out each elective classes for several weeks in order to make their decision for the year-long elective class taken in Year 9. I visited this Japanese language class not so much for my own research as to give something back to Waikaraka High School in return for its generosity in allowing me to carry out my fieldwork. Being a “native speaker” of Japanese, I thought I could be of some help in the class. I visited nineteen sessions of Year 7/8 Japanese language classes in 1997. This suggestion that I dance for students occurred in my second week at Waikaraka High School. I had told Peter, the teacher of the Japanese language class, that I knew how to perform Japanese “traditional” dance, Nihon buyou, when I was talking to him a couple of days earlier in the staff room. However, no arrangement had been made then. Looking at my surprised face—I thought I was to perform on the spot—Peter assured me that I would be able to perform Nihon buyou at a later date. During my fieldwork, I encountered two kinds of routinized dance performances: one by the kapa haka group and one by visiting short-term “fee-paying” students from Thailand. Kapa haka is a Māori cultural dance performance. Joining the kapa haka group was mandatory for all bilingual students (mainstream students could join also). The kapa haka performance was staged as part of a ceremonial Māori greeting. A group of short-term fee-paying students from Thailand came to Waikaraka High School twice a year. At the end of its stay, each group staged a Thai dance performance, which was framed as educational entertainment. My Japanese dance, although not routinized, belonged to the latter category of educational entertainment.

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During my fieldwork, kapa haka and fee-paying student performances were never staged side by side. Why were these two kinds of dance performances— Māori and Asian—positioned differently at Waikaraka High School? Researchers argue that, in the era of increased needs of recognition of difference and objectification of culture, “global structures of common difference” are emerging, creating common ways to frame and express cultural differences (Taylor 1994; Wilk 1995). However, the cases from Waikaraka High School that I examine in this chapter show diversification of the expressions of cultural difference— one that suggests respect for the culture and one that suggest exoticism—each of which, however, may be globally shared (see Doerr 2008). In this chapter, I ask the following questions. What were the effects of bilingual students’ kapa haka performances being framed not as an educational entertainment but as part of a ceremonial greeting? What were the effects of Asian performances presented as educational entertainment and exoticized during a time when Asian economic power was becoming more visible in Aotearoa/New Zealand? Why did I, as a researcher at a school, end up performing a Japanese dance for students? What were the effects of Māori and Asian performances being staged separately? I seek answers to these questions by situating these performances in the political, economic, and educational landscape transformed by biculturalism, neoliberal reforms, and Aotearoa/New Zealand’s new international alliances in the late 1990s. That is, rather than reading bodily movements as text (Desmond 1994), I see the structures in which dance was placed. I argue that biculturalism set the stage for respectful celebration of Māori dance performances because (1) biculturalism based on partnership between Māori and Pākehā encouraged Māori autonomy in cultural matters, and (2) as the culture of the indigenous people, Māori culture marked the unique nationhood of Aotearoa/ New Zealand and its roots in the Pacific. As to Asian dance performances, I argue that both neoliberal reforms and Aotearoa/New Zealand’s new position in the Asia-Pacific region simultaneously promoted and dismantled essentialisms and spawned a new kind of exoticism that distanced Asian cultures and kept Aotearoa/New Zealand as “West” in relation to them. I then argue that the postcolonial nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand as a bicultural (not multicultural) and “Western country in the Asia-Pacific region” was imagined in the gap, the non-intersection, between two regimes of difference—that of Māori vs. all Aotearoa/New Zealanders (evoked in kapa haka performance) and that of Asians vs. Westerners (evoked in Asian dances)—separated by these dances not being staged together. People’s comments on performances were guarded because of their considerations to avoid hurting performers’ feelings. For example, a teacher said of the Thai students’ dance concert, in a cynical tone, that “everyone is polite and smiling.” For this reason, I draw on not only students’ teachers’ and parents’ comments about cultural display in general by Māori and Asians but also the wider

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social arrangement in which the performances were positioned. In the sections that follow, I describe and analyze kapa haka performed by the bilingual students, a Thai dance performed by visiting fee-paying students, and the Japanese dance performed by myself. I then explore what the separation of Māori and Asian dance performances tells us in terms of the regimes of difference they evoked and discuss the possibility of a new relationship between regimes of difference that could lead to a new, inclusive, and equitable nationhood.

Dances that Represent: Kapa Haka Kapa Haka Performances Kapa haka is a generic term used today to describe Māori “traditional” performances of haka (dance), moteatea (traditional chant), the poi dance (dance with strings with a fist-size ball at one end), and waiata-a-ringa (action song) (Kaaretu 1993; Kaiwai and Zemke-White 2004). In Māori societies, haka had a multitude of functions: to amuse or to welcome visitors, or sometimes to ready a group for war. Involving movement of hands, arms, legs, feet, voice, tongue, and eyes, haka is an emotional yet disciplined dance (Kaaretu 1993). After a period of decline in the nineteenth century due to missionaries discouraging it as “savage,” haka was revived as part of a Māori cultural renaissance at the beginning of the twentieth century. During that time, kapa haka was codified, but it also incorporated much Euro-American influence: for example, Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” was performed by kapa haka groups with Te Reo lyrics. Kapa haka in the first half of the twentieth century developed in response to Pākehā fascination with “exotic” Māori who are “savage” and “sexual” in forms that are not threatening (Kaiwai and Zemke-White 2004: 142–153). After World War II, kapa haka flourished as newly urbanized Māori created multi-tribal kapa haka groups to nurture their cultural practices away from home, and as professional kapa haka groups performed for a burgeoning tourism industry. Also, several national kapa haka competitions flourished, some of them started back in 1934. The largest national competition began in 1972. There is also an annual national kapa haka competition of secondary students, in which the kapa haka group of Waikaraka High School participated (Kaiwai and Zemke-White 2004; Kaaretu 1993; Murray 2000). Waikaraka High School’s kapa haka group performed also for Waikaraka High School. During my fieldwork, there were five occasions when kapa haka was staged: (1) the farewell assembly for the retiring principal; (2) a farewell party for departing bilingual teachers; (3) the end-of-the-year awards ceremony called Prize Giving; (4) the welcome ceremony for new bilingual students; and (5) the welcome assembly for the new deputy principal.

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The format of the ceremonial greeting of the local hapū of Waikaraka is as follows: A tangata whenua (host) woman calls in the manuhiri (guests) to the marae. The tangata whenua and manuhiri sit face-to-face with a large space in between. The tangata whenua give mihi (welcome speeches in Te Reo) followed by kapa haka. Persons from both sides give speeches, each of which is followed by kapa haka by the people of the speaker’s side. The tangata whenua form a receiving line and greet the manuhiri. Then, both parties move on to the dining room for food (for tribal variations, see Salmond 1975). The kapa haka performances at Waikaraka High School served as the song/dance after the speech in this structure of the ceremonial greetings. Of the occasions enumerated above, 1 and 3 were structured as school assemblies, without a clear distinction between hosts and guests, while occasions 2, 4, and 5 followed the Māori style with the alternations of speechsong/dance set by the hosts and guests. On occasion 5, the new deputy principal brought her old school’s kapa haka troupe, thereby forming a guest group. The kapa haka group represented Waikaraka High School. It is worth noting here that there was no kapa haka performance for welcoming fee-paying students from Asia. On occasion 1, members of the school rugby team danced a kind of haka widely known as a Māori war dance. It resonated with the convention that members of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s national rugby team, the All Blacks, dance a haka before international matches. The rugby teams represented the whole school or nation in performing Māori dance. This indicates the nationalistic register the Māori dance performance has in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Baralla 1986; Bell 1996). All the rest of the performances were done by the kapa haka group made up of bilingual students, it being a compulsory activity for them. Members of the kapa haka group had two hours a week of practice within school curriculum hours, instructed by the bilingual teachers and some local volunteers. Many of Waikaraka High School’s kapa haka group members also belonged to a kapa haka group at local marae, attending their practices regularly. In kapa haka performances, there are usually two to three rows of performers facing front. Performers usually wore the school uniform, though sometimes they wore a Māori costume: grass skirts on top of shorts for male students and grass skirts on top of a skirt and embroidered tank tops for female students. Performers usually sang songs themselves as they danced, sometimes to a guitar played by one of the students. Their whole body moved as they danced, accentuated by stomping feet, constantly vibrating hands, protruding tongues, and dilating/ rolling eyes full of expressions. The dances looked well practiced and the dancers looked comfortable performing. I was familiar with kapa haka because I had been part of a kapa haka group in 1992, when I did a nine-month period of fieldwork in another town for my master’s thesis for a university in Japan (see Doerr 1993, 1995). During that fieldwork, I joined the kapa haka group at a local high school, practiced with them, traveled with them, and performed on stage with them at the national kapa haka

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competition for secondary students. During the fieldwork in 1997–1998, however, I did not join the kapa haka group. Performers’ Views The bilingual students’ opinions about performing kapa haka varied. Three male students said performing kapa haka “sucks” in casual conversations and in response to the standard interview question “What do you feel about doing kapa haka at school?” These students left the kapa haka group when it became optional in Year 11. There were other bilingual students who enjoyed kapa haka performances, but only for certain occasions. For example, JMMK, a female student, said it depended on who and what the ceremony was for: she would enjoy performing kapa haka at a farewell party for a bilingual teacher who had taught her over the years. I asked if she minded doing kapa haka for someone she did not know, and she answered, “It is all right.” She said she did not enjoy performing for the kapa haka competitions. She also belonged to the kapa haka group at a local marae. Taija, a male student, said kapa haka was “good, but sometimes the school comes up with some stupid idiotic reasons [for doing the performance].” For example, he had had to do kapa haka for one person who was visiting Waikaraka for only two days and whom none of the students in the kapa haka group knew. He thought it was a “stupid reason” for doing kapa haka. MUNCH, a male student, said how he felt about performing kapa haka depended on the significance of the occasion. Who was being welcomed did not matter to him. In short, for those students who enjoyed kapa haka, what mattered was not the kind of audience, but the person to whom the performance was addressed or dedicated (JMMK and Taija) or the importance of the occasion (MUNCH). Audiences’ Views Mainstream students usually sat through powhiri (Māori-style ceremonial greetings), sometimes lasting for over half an hour, without complaining. As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, mainstream students were often hesitant to express their current views about bilingual students or their activities. However, some of their parents reported the students’ feelings. For example, a Pākehā mother of two mainstream children told me: “Kids are sick of Māori things at school and don’t like it. But, if I mispronounce a Māori name, they correct me. They have a grudging respect not to culture itself so much but to Māori protocol. They have respect to Māoris, but they don’t show it . . . The important thing is not to ‘like’ but to ‘respect’ Māori culture and to learn to live with different culture . . . Kids would describe it [mihi] as ‘blah blah blah’ and ‘usual stuff.’ But if someone attacks it, they’ll defend it. They see it as familiar and boring, but they accept it.”

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As for parents, they had strong opinions about the use of Te Reo in powhiri, usually in mihi before the kapa haka performance. Out of sixty-three parents of mainstream Year 10 students and thirteen bilingual Year 10 students that I interviewed, nineteen mainstream and nine bilingual parents accepted mihi without qualification; twenty-nine mainstream parents approved of mihi if it was accompanied by English translation, nine mainstream parents approved, if it was brief; eleven mainstream parents disapproved of having mihi because not everyone understood Te Reo; and one bilingual parent said Te Reo was not used enough at school. Among those who approved of mihi at school, twenty mainstream parents said the reason was that there was a large Māori community in Waikaraka. One of them added that he accepted mihi because Māori were part of Aotearoa/New Zealand (for details, see Doerr 2008). Although these parents were commenting on the use of Te Reo in mihi, not kapa haka performances, their comments point to their views on the place of Māori culture at Waikaraka High School. The Politics of Respect Kapa haka performance’s meaning is diverse, as is true of any dance (Desmond 1997; Reed 1998). For example, in the early twentieth century kapa haka was performed for Pākehā audiences as a display of the “exotics” (Belich 2001: 210; Kaiwai and Zemke-White 2004: 148–149). In the 1960s, David Murray (2000) reports, kapa haka was performed at school by both Māori and Pākehā students for intercollegiate sporting events and social events. Pākehā performers recalled their understanding that kapa haka demonstrated school unity and spirit with a sense that it belonged to all New Zealanders, Māori and Pākehā (Murray 2000: 348). However, in the 1980s this exoticization and appropriation of kapa haka changed in response to pressures from two directions. First was a call for more respect for Māori culture. One incident that brought the issue to public attention was the haka party incident in 1979. A group of Māori activists called He Taua (the avengers) assaulted a group of Auckland University engineer students who routinely staged a mock haka despite years of Māori students’ complaints. The general public perceived the raid as a gang’s invasion of the university. Māori leaders argued that the physical violence of He Taua was no worse than the cultural violence of the haka party. He Taua members were charged with rioting and sentenced to periodic detention. According to Ranginui Walker, the whole incident exposed the raw nerve of racism hidden under the national myth of racial harmony in Aotearoa/New Zealand and led to a change of attitude toward Māori culture in the 1980s (Walker 1990a). The haka party incident spurred the development of Kaupapa Māori—a call for Māori control of Māori life and culture—described in the introduction (see Bishop 1996; G. Smith 1990a). This shift of positioning of kapa haka was reflected in the opinions of Pākehā men who used to perform kapa haka as schoolboys in the 1960s. Murray (2000) reports that in the 1980s, they felt that kapa haka was always associated with Māori, no matter when and where it was performed.

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Another factor that changed the way kapa haka performances were situated was the New Zealand government’s embrace of biculturalism starting in the mid 1980s, as described in chapter 1. Jeffrey Sissons (1993) argues that the New Zealand state began using kapa haka and other Māori cultural items to display its biculturalist position. The display of Māori culture, free of exoticism, as part of nationhood also helped the Aotearoa/New Zealand government root itself in the Asia-Pacific region (Kaiwai and Zemke-White 2004). Māori culture now represented the whole nation while keeping its distinctiveness from Pākehā culture. Thus, welcoming ceremonies for the state’s official guests were done in Māori style, including kapa haka, and were presented with respect. While situated in this contemporary sociocultural environment, the meaning of performance varies depending on the individuals and contexts. Kapa haka at national competitions in the 1990s tended to be tied to tribal identification. Kapa haka performed for tourists denoted exoticization of Māori culture, in the eyes of Māori who were not involved in the tourist industry. However, for those involved in the tourism industry, dancing for tourists was important business they regarded as their iwi’s “tradition” because their iwi had been involved in the tourist industry for many decades (Murray 2000: 352–353). In the international rugby matches, haka performed by the All Blacks, the national rugby team of Aotearoa/ New Zealand, indexed Aotearoa/New Zealand’s national pride. The uniqueness of Aotearoa/New Zealand was often represented by kapa haka (Belich 2001; Bell 1996). When I attended a social meeting of Japanese teachers who were visiting schools all over Aotearoa/New Zealand for a month as a kind of cultural exchange, the Japanese teachers performed kapa haka for guests—their New Zealander host families, who were all Pākehā. In that context, kapa haka suggested Japanese teachers’ appreciation as well as identification with “Aotearoa/New Zealand” culture (there were no Māori in the meeting). In the school context, the shift in understanding the position and meaning of Māori culture at the national level was felt in the occasions and songs the kapa haka group performed at school. According to its school yearbooks, Māori club members used to perform dances and songs for entertainment at birthday parties and meetings of golf clubs and Rotary clubs. It was not until the late 1970s that the Māori club began performing waiatas, which are songs passed down from their ancestors that are similar to ones that the kapa haka group performed during my fieldwork. This shift reflects contemporary resistance to exoticization and a preference for learning kapa haka in order to nurture Māori cultural heritage with respect, not just for entertainment. The leader of the club noted: “[waiatas are] boring, but because of the importance of this aspect of our culture, [we are learning waiatas]” (Waikaraka High School 1979: 14). The way kapa haka was positioned at Waikaraka High School during my fieldwork in the late 1990s—as part of greeting guests on behalf of the school—resonates with this new framework of kapa haka performance: controlled by Māori and treated by others with respect as representing Aotearoa/New Zealand. The place of kapa haka performance could

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be tokenistic, nonetheless, as in the case of the New Zealand government’s use of Māori culture (Mead 1997; Sissons 1993). In sum, the kapa haka performance evoked a metonymic regime of difference of bilingual students vs. all the students, without othering the bilingual students. It was a part of powhiri addressed to someone in particular (performers’ views), as part of something that serves the local Māori community (audience’s view), and as part of Aotearoa/New Zealand culture (audience’s view). This contrasts with the position of Asian culture, as seen in the ways Asian dance performances were framed at Waikaraka High School.

Exoticized Dance: Thai Dances and Japanese Dance Money and Cultural Difference The Thai and Japanese dance performances under discussion involved both money and a celebration of cultural difference. They involved money because of the new free-marketization of schooling through the 1989 education reform, described in chapter 1. As this free-marketization encouraged schools to generate more nongovernmental income, schools actively recruited fee-paying students who would pay high fees (to the school, host families, and Ministry of Education) to attend Aotearoa/New Zealand schools in order to experience the “Western” life and learn English (Bennett 1998; Dale and Robertson 1997; Fiske and Ladd 2000). At Waikaraka High School during my fieldwork in 1997, there were five long-term students (three from Korea and two from Japan) and two groups of short-term fee-paying students (both from Thailand). Also, behind the existence of the Japanese language class1 was an increased need to attract students in order to raise per-pupil government funding, also introduced by the education reform of 1989. The market value of the Japanese language had increased since the 1980s, as Japan boosted business relationships with Aotearoa/New Zealand. Also, at the time of my fieldwork in 1997, the Japanese ranked second (after the Australian) in the foreign exchange earnings of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s tourism (the country’s top foreign exchange earner) (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 330). Thus, teaching Japanese was held to be attractive to students because Japanese language skills would increase students’ employability in the business and tourism industries. Waikaraka High School began offering Japanese language classes in 1992. The Thai and Japanese dance performance under discussion also involved a celebration of cultural difference. When I did standard interviews with parents of Year 10 students about their views on the fee-paying student program (see Table 9.1), twenty-five out of the seventy-six parents who responded approved of the program, saying that their children would learn and appreciate other cultures.

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Parents’ Views on the Fee-Paying Student Program Number of answers

Views Approved, because their children would learn and appreciate other cultures

25

Approved, because of the monetary benefit to the school

5

Disapproved, because it should not be prioritized over the needs of citizen students

5

Disapproved, because fee-paying students were not getting what they were paying for Total number of parents interviewed (some gave more than one answer)

5 76

Besides this benefit, five parents mentioned the monetary benefit for Waikaraka High School. As negative opinions, five parents said it should not be a priority above the needs of the citizen students, and five others were concerned about the monetary-driven aspect of the program, wondering if the fee-paying students were getting everything they were paying for. Many teachers recognized benefits similar to those articulated by the parents above (see Table 9.2). During my standard interview of teachers, over half (twenty-one out of the thirty-nine who responded) answered that the program was good for the citizen students because they could meet people from different cultures, which would lead to understanding and tolerance toward different cultures and to an appreciation of their own culture. However, seven teachers qualified their answers by saying that, in practice, students did not really mix with, or sometimes did not accept, the fee-paying students. One teacher said, “Students don’t give a damn.” While five teachers appreciated the monetary benefit of the program, eleven teachers resented this aspect. Some of them considered Waikaraka High School to be “ripping off” the fee-paying students because they saw that the school lacked customized facilities and enough specially trained teachers. Five teachers

Table 9.2

Teachers’ Views on the Fee-Paying Student Program

Views Approved, because citizen students would learn tolerance toward different cultures and appreciation of their own culture

Number of answers 21

Approved, but in practice felt students did not care

7

Approved, because of the monetary benefit to the school

5

Disapproved, because the program was monetary-driven

11

Disapproved, because it was an unfair burden on teachers

5

Total number of teachers interviewed (some gave more than one answer)

39

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found having fee-paying students who were learning English in their classroom to be an unfair burden on them. Hosting fee-paying students at home also involved both learning about a different culture and monetary gain. Host parents told me the following reasons for becoming host families: to give their children a “first-hand educational experience” of a different culture, for parents to enjoy learning about different cultures, and to gain income ($150.00 [NZ] per week). The cultural difference implied in these conversations was often that between Asian and Pākehā, if not between “Asian” and “Western” culture. The Pākehā culture here was often portrayed as a middle-class one. This was reflected in the kinds of families that became host families, which were chosen by the teacher in charge of the fee-paying program at Waikaraka High School. A single mother told me about her anxiety when she thought about becoming a host family: she felt her family was “not good enough” and decided against it in the end. Also, Māori families rarely became host families, indicating the regime of difference of Asian vs. Westerner evoked in the fee-paying student program. While people seemed to celebrate the fee-paying students’ cultural difference, certain differences were accepted and celebrated as learning experiences, and others, not. For example, a host parent told me that a Thai student had made her wardrobe very damp by hanging her wet laundry in it because she was too embarrassed to hang it outside. Another Thai student refused to eat anything unless it was spicy, which the host mother discovered only after trying many foods. Other cultural differences were considered intolerable: an Iranian male student treated female teachers and students as inferiors and engaged in what was considered as sexual harassment. This student was moved to a different school. While fee-paying students were encouraged to act like New Zealanders, they were discouraged from acting too much like New Zealanders. For example, the handbook for fee-paying students, which detailed how to adapt to New Zealand life, contained the following instruction: although host siblings might talk back to their parents because independent thinking and its expression were encouraged, fee-paying students ought not to copy this. Also, a teacher told me about a host parent’s complaint that a Korean fee-paying student insisted on going to a party that many of her Aotearoa/New Zealander peers would be attending. When the host mother did not allow her to go to the party, the student kicked a hole in the wall and was moved to another host family. The same host parent told me that a Japanese fee-paying student kept a pornographic magazine, bought in Aotearoa/New Zealand, in his room. He was moved to another host family also. That is, the reasons that fee-paying students got in trouble were not necessarily related to their “cultural difference” but to their similarity to teenagers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In short, teachers and host parents domesticated the differences and sameness of the fee-paying students by giving various sanctions to the fee-paying students’ actions.

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Japanese language class also involved learning a different “culture.” For example, the teacher who replaced Peter in 1998 made and served Japanese rice balls in class. The classroom was decorated with posters of Japanese scenery and advertisement flags from a Japanese lunchbox store, probably brought from Japan, hanging from the ceiling. There were several kimonos (Japanese “traditional” clothes) on hangers, and students could try them on over their uniform. The teacher taught Japanese culture not only to involve students but also to make them culturally sensitive to Japanese business partners and customers with whom they may be working in the future. In sum, although monetary concerns set the stage for the Thai and Japanese dance performances, they were framed by a particular kind of celebration of cultural difference promoted at school. The regime of difference evoked in such a celebration was that of Asians vs. “Westerners” or Pākehā. I now turn to these performances given to celebrate safe cultural difference. Dances by the Thai Fee-Paying Students, October 1997 In October 1997, eighteen high school and university students and an organizing teacher from Bangkok, Thailand, visited Waikaraka High School for three weeks as short-term fee-paying students. They spent their time visiting nearby cities, and visiting classes and displaying their culture—via photos and small crafts—in the school library at Waikaraka High School. Their stay ended with a Thai dance concert held in the evening at the school hall for the Waikaraka High School community. This was the only school-wide event involving short-term fee-paying students. While they were preparing for the concert, several Thai students told me that they had learned their Thai dances after coming to Aotearoa/New Zealand (for contrasting cases, see Gershon and Collins 2007). Many of them complained about having to perform them. Most of them had brought costumes for performance, however, in anticipation of such an occasion to display Thai culture. The whole school was invited to the concert. It was, as it were, an advertisement for the fee-paying student program, which not all teachers or parents supported. The school hall was full. The concert was opened by a Waikaraka High School teacher who acted as the master of ceremonies. The performance began with a male Thai student and a female Thai student in “traditional” Thai costumes performing a song of romance. The students first explained the dance and the performed it to music from a cassette tape on an otherwise empty stage. It was followed by a village dance by two couples, male and female, dancing in pairs, in a circle, and then in pairs. The dances were not very polished and the dancers giggled often. They looked embarrassed to be on stage. They performed several more similar dances. Each dance received a big round of applause. In the middle of the concert, there was a performance from the Waikaraka High School side: a Pākehā student in regular clothes sang George Gershwin’s

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“Summertime” accompanied by her father playing the guitar. It was the only performance by a student of Waikaraka High School. In stark contrast to the Thai dance performances, there was no mention of the uniqueness of Aotearoa/ New Zealand culture nor any mention of the cultural meanings of the song “Summertime”—the minority status of its composer, a Jew, or the character who sings it in Porgy and Bess, an African American woman in the U. S. South2. It was framed as an individual performance of “Western,” if not culturally unmarked “universal” music, by a talented student. This contrast of dance performance items evoked a regime of difference between Asian (Thai) vs. “Westerner.” After the last Thai dance performance, the Thai teacher urged the host families to go up on stage to dance with the students they were hosting. The stage soon became full. A Japanese in a Japanese Language Classroom As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, I was asked to give a Japanese dance performance when I was helping out in a Japanese language class for local Year 7/8 students. There were thirty-odd students in the class. As mentioned in chapter 3, I usually occupied an ambiguous position in classrooms—in between students and the teacher. However, this was not so in the Japanese class. First of all, as a “native speaker” of Japanese who had grown up in Japan, my knowledge was paramount. I was treated as an expert on everything Japanese, such as wearing a kimono. This was based on the ideology of “native speaker,” which assumes the “native speaker’s” absolute and complete competence in his/ her first language and culture. The ideology is related to the one-nation, oneculture, one-language myth established through the emergence of the modern nation-states (Bauman and Briggs 2000; Doerr in press; Pennycook 1994). Both Peter and I were buying into this ideology throughout these interactions in the Japanese language classroom. Secondly, I was a Japanese specimen. After my first visit to the Year 7/8 Japanese class, Peter said to me, “It was good for the students to see a ‘real live’ Japanese. It got students’ concentration going [sic].” He seemed to have said it in order to show his appreciation for my visiting, which I received as kindness at that time. In class, some students seemed to have found me undeniably “different.” For example, a student asked if I believed in [the Christian] God, as if to confirm what she had heard before. I replied that I believed in different kinds of gods. She was dumbfounded. In contrast, in other classes in which I was asked questions about Japan, I was not treated as a specimen. Three social studies teachers asked me to speak about my life in Tokyo (urban study module) and my experience with racism in the United States (social injustice module). While the latter discussions could not be realized due to scheduling problems, in these cases, I was less on display than telling stories based on my experience.

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Thirdly, in Peter’s Japanese language classroom, I became a living diversion for the students within the scope of the curriculum, and, therefore, a bribe when controlling students. Peter had several ingenious ways to get students’ attention when they were distracted: urge them to yell out all fifty Japanese phonemes; urge unison singing of Japanese songs; and call on a student to say a Japanese phrase. I was a new addition to this list, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Right after Peter said I would dance if they behaved, a student who often got scolded by Peter yelled out to me, “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to!” Another student, who was labeled a “troublemaker” by Peter, said the same phrase. They were kind comments and I felt camaraderie with the speakers, being at the mercy of the teacher’s authority. That is, while my dance performance might have been a spectacle and a way to learn about Japanese culture for most of the students, to some sympathetic students it was a sign of the victimhood of being under the teacher’s authority. Nevertheless, I agreed to perform. Japanese Dance Performance I began learning Nihon buyou, a form of Japanese “traditional” dance, after I spent a year in Aotearoa/New Zealand as a Rotary exchange student in 1986– 1987. Being an exchange student involved displaying “Japanese culture” to New Zealanders. Before leaving Japan, I had taken a crash course in Japanese flower arrangement. However, after viewing my Japanese friend, another exchange student, perform Nihon buyou for a New Zealander audience, I felt it was a more fun way to exhibit Japanese culture. That is, I learned Nihon buyou with the aim of representing Japanese culture to foreigners. On the other hand, Nihon buyou was exotic to me as well: it was a somewhat fashionable object of nostalgia (see Ivy 1995) and novelty—not many Japanese people my age, including myself, even know the proper way to put on a kimono. Upon my return to Japan in 1987, I took private Nihon buyou lessons twice a week for five years and performed on stage over ten times in Japan. Nihon buyou is linked to Kabuki (Japanese all-male theater) in its mode of presentation. Roland Barthes analyzes the makeup and performance of Kabuki as acts of signification. For example, when a man plays the role of a woman, he does not copy nor provoke a real, physical body but only signifies her. The actor merely combines the signs of Woman (Barthes 1970: 88–91). Likewise, I choreographed movements that signify Japan through images seen on television commercials for Japanese products: twirling a fan, tilting the head, and walking pigeon-toed. From Peter’s tapes, I chose a two-minute song, the shortest one. I practiced the dance with music several times in my room in the evening, using the sliding doors as mirrors. Two weeks after Peter asked me, I performed Nihon buyou in the classroom. I went into Peter’s resource room across the corridor from the classroom, chose a

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kimono stored there, and put it on over my T-shirt and jeans. When I was ready, I came out of the room to the corridor and knocked on the door of Peter’s classroom. In the corridor, I saw and greeted a Year 10 mainstream student from another class who was sitting in the corridor. Unexpectedly seen wearing a kimono, I felt even more like an exotic than I did when I performed the dance. After all, Nihon buyou was for performing on stage, which I had done many times. But, being caught in a kimono, I suddenly felt unintentionally and helplessly exotic in my very essence. When I entered the classroom, the students stood up. On Peter’s cue, students bowed a greeting to me in Japanese. All the desks and chairs were pushed to the back to give space for me to dance. Peter started the cassette tape. All I remember was trying to listen to the flow of the music as I danced. The audience was very quiet. The song finished, and I heard students clapping. After the dance, Peter asked students for questions. They asked: Do Japanese wear kimonos all the time? Are Japanese houses built with paper? How long have you been dancing? What is that [kimono’s long] sleeve for? Are you married to an American? What is his name? Are there Japanese who cannot speak Japanese? Is it easy to tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese? I found all these questions interesting. Some questions—such as about my marriage—seemed irrelevant in the context of asking questions about Japan but seemed to show that the students viewed me as an individual person rather than a Japanese specimen that embodied Japanese people in general. Other questions— one about whether or not I can tell Japanese from Chinese—seemed to suggest my special cognitive skills as a Japanese, whether innate or learned. While I felt that I was taking control by consciously choosing the images to present in the Nihon buyou dancing, the question session made me feel unintentionally and helplessly Japanese beyond my control. At Waikaraka High School, Thai and Japanese performances were essentialized but also subverted, as I discuss next. Essentializing Asian Culture and Its Subversion What I mean by essentialism is the belief in an essence that is irreducible, unchanging, and therefore constitutive of a given person or thing (Fuss 1989). There are several related assumptions on which essentialism is based: a pure and original essence outside the boundaries of the social (that is, the natural provides the determinative starting point), a totalizing symbolic system (such as a universal patriarchy or generalized view of a culture), and the autonomy of a voice of a group of people (such as women or a certain ethnic group). However, essentialism is not monolithically coded but is instead historically contingent (see Carrier 1995; Fuss 1989). Various researchers have discussed the analytical futility and political potency of essentialism. On the one hand, researchers have challenged essentialism: as

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being based on the “false” concept of given essence that was actually historically constructed (Fuss 1989), as displacing political and discursive origins of various “identities” and therefore acting to preclude the analysis of the political process of their construction (Butler 1990), and as containing the subject within a fixed set of differences (hooks 1995). On the other hand, the political usefulness of essentialism in resistance against domination has been pointed out (Epstein 1987; Hall 1996; P. Smith 1988; Spivak 1993). From this debate, Diana Fuss argues that what needs to be investigated is not whether essentialism is good or evil, but what purpose or function essentialism might play. It is not essentialism (singular) but essentialisms (plural) that need to be investigated individually (Fuss 1989). Following Fuss’s lead, I argue that the ways a cultural item (Thai dance) was connected to the performers, without regard to whether or not they were able to perform the dance, shows the ethnicization of the person based on an illusion of an organizing cultural core or essence that allows them to perform these dances. The assumption was that any Thai would be good at Thai dance. This shows an essentialism in the framework of the Thai dance performances. This essentialism is enhanced through the global education industry, which treats the experience of different cultures as a commodity. Thai students paid money and came to Aotearoa/New Zealand to experience a “Western” life that was different from theirs. Also, the fee-paying student program was legitimated as teaching Aotearoa/New Zealand students about cultures that were different from theirs. In the case of Japanese dance, the performance itself was not so much an essentialization because Peter knew beforehand that I knew how to dance Nihon buyou. Also, in a Japanese class that was taught by another teacher in 1998, a Māori student performed karate (a Japanese martial art) for the students in class. That is, these performances were solicited based more on skills than on the performers’ ethnicity. However, it was hard to deny moments of essentialization of myself as a “real live” Japanese in the classroom, as described earlier. Thomas Popkewitz argues that once certain knowledge becomes the content of a school subject in which students’ ability is ranked, it becomes reified away from the heterogeneity of knowledge and debates that spawned the knowledge (Popkewitz 1998). In a similar vein, as teachers taught Japanese culture and what to expect from a Japanese person, a totalistic understanding of Japanese culture and essentialized Japanese persons was produced and taught in the Japanese language class (see Frekko in press; Kubota 2003). That is, although Peter may not have meant to essentialize my performance, it was situated in the discursive environment that essentializes Japanese people in the Japanese language classroom. On the other hand, there was some subversion of essentialisms. The Thai fee-paying students learned Thai dances at the last minute, and it showed in their performance. The essentialistic perception—that being Thai makes them natural-born performers of Thai dance—was subverted. Trying to evoke images of Japanese-ness in the audience’s minds, although some might have taken them

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as an expression of a Japanese essence, I felt a sense of agency that allowed me to feel less essentialized. Susan Manning (1997) suggests that stereotypes can be challenged through the framework that essentializes. At Waikaraka High School, then, essentialisms were subverted as a result of the performers’ reluctance (not enthusiasm, but still a performance on stage) or willingness (to create Japanese pastiche) to be an accomplice to the essentialization of themselves. New Exoticisms In these performances, there was also exoticism, a framework of spectatorship that displays persons and their performances as spectacles. According to Coco Fusco, the origin of cultural performances in the “West” was the display of people from the “non-West” in zoos, museums, and circuses, which reached its height of popularity in the nineteenth century. Such exhibitions were living expressions of colonial fantasies, fears, and desires, and they helped to forge a special place for nonwhite peoples and their cultures in the Euro-American imagination (Fusco 1995). Also, following homi bhabha, Amy Koritz (1997) suggests that exoticized dance embodies anxieties about the Cultural Other while also affirming the spectators’ mastery over the Cultural Other. The framework of the spectacle assumes, and at the same time perpetuates, an asymmetrical relationship between the displayed and the spectators: the spectacle distances and normalizes the spectators, while articulating the anomalous status of the displayed (Berger 1980; hooks 1992; Mulvey 1975; Stewart 1984). These features were seen in Thai and Japanese performances. The Thai students and I learned the dances for “foreigners” as entertainment, evoking a regime of difference of Asia vs. West. This was suggested in the contrast between Thai dances performed in “traditional” costumes (offstage they wore clothes very similar to New Zealanders’) that accentuated the cultural uniqueness of Thailand and a Waikaraka High School student in contemporary regular clothes, performing “Summertime,” an American song, to represent Aotearoa/New Zealand. Lumping Aotearoa/New Zealand with American culture, this contrast suggested the binary of “Asia” vs. “West.” The contrast in clothes (“traditional”/regular) suggested traditional/modern and spectacular/regular binaries that portray Thai as exotics to New Zealanders. In the Japanese dance, I evoked “exotic” features seen on TV commercials in the dance moves, as mentioned earlier. However, is this the same kind of exoticism that was seen during the nineteenth century? While Fusco claims that this legacy of colonialism is still alive and well in the West (Fusco 1995), I argue that there have developed new forms and effects of exoticism. They are new because the performers are considered to be economically more powerful than the spectators. The Waikaraka High School students’ voyeuristic consumption of the Cultural Other was preceded by the Other’s consumption of the students’ lifestyles. This indicates a

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peculiar reciprocity between the performers and spectators of these cultural performances. The Thai students’ desire to experience “Western” life and learn English was met by Waikaraka High School’s need for extra income. This exchange prompted the Thai students’ cultural performance, which softened the monetary-driven feature of the fee-paying student program for the school community and legitimized the presence of Thai students as cultural ambassadors rather than customers. However, considering that fee-paying students had paid fees already, the fee-paying students were overpaying. In my case, the Japanese language teacher’s need for a bribe and an educational entertainment for his students was met by my sense of obligation to Waikaraka High School and my need to find a place in Waikaraka High School. I was also grouped together with other Asians, whom many Waikaraka High School students thought were all wealthy (see chapter 8 for details). In this structure of reciprocity, performers were active accomplices in their own exoticization, as was the case to a lesser degree during colonial times (see McClintock 1995). Thai students’ last-minute learning of Thai dances and my learning Nihon buyou and getting involved in Japanese class are examples of such complicity. Although such complicity suggests the agency of the performers and a dismantlement of old-fashioned exoticism, the agency was limited because the performers were responding to an expectation in the structure of exoticism. Also, performers may feel exoticized before or after the conscious performance, as my case suggested. In the current context, I see two effects of this new kind of exoticism. First, the exoticized performance distanced Aoteroa/New Zealand culturally from the Asia-Pacific of which it was becoming part. For example, in 1993 the then Prime Minister Jim Bolger said at the Asia Society conference that he was an “Asian” leader (Ip and Pang 2005: 182). Aotearoa/New Zealand’s increasing dependence on Asia for trade continued to resonate powerfully in government statements and policy texts, as well as among the business communities. Ip and Pang (2005: 186) argue that in this context, Asians were desired for their potential for “building bridges” with Asia, but were viewed as incompatible with what Aotearoa/ New Zealand was as a nation (also see Beal 2006; Kelsey 1995). Resonating with this dilemma, the new exoticism suggested that Aotearoa/New Zealand had not become Pacific or Asian, but had joined the Asia-Pacific as a “Western” country (see Dale and Robertson 1997). Second, the exoticized performances can be interpreted as containing newly economically powerful Asians by assigning them into the “exotic” slot. The absence of an exoticized cultural performance by second- or third-generation New Zealanders of Asian or Pacific Island origin also supports this. This new exoticism did not, however, necessarily have a similar effect upon all the audience members. An audience is an unstable collective, Jane Desmond (1997) argues, which is diverse in particulars yet unified in a desire to

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see/experience/produce the event. Nonetheless, the audience’s subject positions influence the effects that the performance produces on them. For example, as stated earlier, in my interview with Kurt, a Pākehā mainstream teacher, he said cynically about the Thai concert that “everybody is polite and smiling, which is good.” He then said that no matter how much they paid, having fee-paying students in his class had been a big burden on him. Ben, a Pākehā mainstream teacher, said in my interview that “students don’t give a damn” about learning culture by having fee-paying students at school, as mentioned. Ben said the reality of the fee-paying student program was “rich Asians and parasites”: Aotearoa/ New Zealand students merely begged fee-paying students to give them money. That is, despite my interpretation of the Thai concert being a major experience of relations of dominance articulated through enactment of cultural difference, it was a superficial event (“everybody is polite and smiling”) for Kurt, who resented the program as extra burden on teachers, and was no event (“students don’t give a damn”) for Ben, who viewed students as being interested only in the monetary aspects of the fee-paying students’ visit. The former critiqued the superficiality of the cultural celebration, and the latter rendered it irrelevant. Also, the ways in which students viewed my performance differed, depending on their subject positions in classroom power dynamics. The two students who urged me to resist being displayed were “troublemakers” in the class. They saw my performance as an effect of Peter’s “tyrannical authority,” to which they also were forced to comply: they sided with me as a fellow victim of such a teacher’s authority. On the other hand, the student who stared at me for being a nonChristian had a more amicable relationship with the teacher: when Peter caught her eating candy, a criminal act in the classroom, she offered him some and went unpunished. This incident caused half an hour of uproar, infuriating students who had been punished earlier for the same offense. Compared to the “troublemakers,” her amicable relationship with the teacher may have allowed her to more easily take up the position of spectator viewing an exotic (pagan) whom the teacher was introducing to the students. This plurality of relationships to the performance seems to render useless the discussion of the meaning of the performance. However, we can view the performance as providing subject positions for variously located spectators, adding to their repertoire (see Morley 1980). The relevance of taking up one of these subject positions varied depending on each individual. The Thai and Japanese dances suggested subject positions, some conducive to coming to terms with current transformations of the society. In fact, I did not initially realize the unusualness of the situation—a researcher performing a dance for a group of students in the field. When I was discussing my fieldwork experience with my mentor and the dissertation committee chair, John Borneman, he found it intriguing that I had performed the dance during my fieldwork and suggested analyzing it. He said that he would never perform a dance in

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front of an audience during his research, even if people asked him to. That comment interpellated me, after the fact, as an exotic Other for the New Zealanders. Since the time of my exchange student year in my high school, I had become so used to being an exotic Cultural Other to New Zealanders that I did not even realize it. It had become something that I could offer to others, as it were, when I wanted to be of some use, as when I was seeking a way to give something back to Waikaraka High School for letting me do my fieldwork there. Here, interpellation occurred in the lack of homology of the regime of difference of researcher vs. researched in John’s fieldwork and that of my fieldwork: John pointed out the difference in these regimes of difference that one expects to be homologous. In short, the regime of difference evoked was that of Asia vs. West, with the former essentialized and exoticized, and the latter placed culturally higher as spectator. In arguing this, however, I do not claim that teachers and students at Waikaraka High School had a malicious intent to essentialize and exoticize Asians. My point is that the combination of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s free-marketization of education, its changing nationhood and international alliances, and the expanding global ESL industry framed the ways cultural difference were positioned and perceived, as cultural representations mediated political economic struggles (Hoem 2004; Turner 1994).

Regimes of Difference: Relationships between Kapa Haka and Asian Dances As mentioned earlier, there was no Māori-style welcome for the fee-paying students. A bilingual teacher told me that this was to avoid what she called a “diala-Māori” situation. Not every school visitor received a welcoming performance as this would necessitate a tremendous time commitment from the kapa haka group members. However, it was peculiar that there was no systematic involvement in general between the kapa haka group and the fee-paying students. It was as if the Māori-Asian relationship was ignored or avoided altogether. I argue that this was a phenomenon of diversification of cultural difference, in which the cultural differences of Māori and of Asians were put in separate domains. Such a diversification of cultural difference was apparent on other occasions. For example, in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the term separatism was mainly applied only to the bilingual unit to revitalize Te Reo, not to ESL programs for Asian students at school, who were either immigrants or fee-paying student visitors (Ballara 1986; Scott 1995; Sharp 1990; Spoonley 1988; Wetherell and Potter 1992). This was in stark contrast to the case of the United States, where critics of the politics of difference challenged both Afrocentric schools and the bilingual programs that taught ESL to Spanish-speaking students as “separatist,” putting them in the same domain of cultural difference (Barry 2001; Schlesinger

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1991). Also, as will be discussed, sociologists Augie Fleras and Paul Spoonley (1999) argue for separating discussions of the identity politics regarding Māori and regarding Asians into two different domains. This lack of a regime of difference that involves both Māori and Asians is peculiar, given the existing interactions between them in everyday life. On the one hand, I encountered situations in which, as nonwhite, the Asians were seen as allies of the Māori, as described in chapter 8. On the other hand, there were some incidents of antagonism between Asians and Māori. As described in chapter 8, a bilingual student told me about an episode of a fight started by a Korean student calling a Māori student a “nigger.” I also heard a Japanese fee-paying student express her view about Māori in general as “lazy” and “naughty.” Upon my asking how she came to view them that way, she mentioned that her host father, who was Pākehā, had told her about such general “characteristics” of Māori. At the level of school operation, a parent of a bilingual student resented the fact that the head of the Japanese language department, who was in charge of the fee-paying student scheme, had received a promotion instead of the head of the bilingual unit. And there existed tension between Māori and Asians at the national level, as described in chapter 8. Against this background, I argue that this lack of intersection of the regimes of difference between Māori vs. all New Zealanders (including Māori) and between Asians vs. Westerners allowed two different kinds of national imaginings to coexist without delegitimating each other. Working at different levels, kapa haka performances assured Aotearoa/New Zealand’s local roots in the Asia-Pacific region, while the exoticized performances by Asians eased anxiety over losing Aotearoa/ New Zealand’s status as an “England in the South Seas.” Not staged together, kapa haka and Asian performances created a new audience that could imagine two kinds of nationhood that did not threaten each other: at once rooted in the Asia-Pacific region and retaining “Western” status. They illuminate the contradiction of a settler society’s postcolonial nation building, and at the same time, its possibility. In short, it was in the gap between two regimes of difference that Aotearoa/New Zealand’s postcolonial nationhood could be imagined. On the other hand, I argue that this lack of occasion for staging Asian dance and Māori dance side by side circumvented multiculturalism and created sensibilities of a specific form of bicultural nationhood by avoiding a situation in which various ethnic groups were put side by side. The relationships between biculturalism and multiculturalism will be discussed in the next section.

Biculturalism or Multiculturalism? Are there any ways to create a nationhood based on biculturalism yet inclusive of those who are neither Māori nor Pākehā? This is a discussion with which I would like to conclude this chapter. As described in chapter 1, Aotearoa/New

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Zealand’s official policy since the 1980s has been biculturalism, laced with the multiculturalist concept of social equity applied to other minorities (Fleras and Spoonley 1999; Sharp 1990). However, in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the difference between multiculturalism and biculturalism is greater than the number of cultures involved. As mentioned in chapter 1, David Pearson describes biculturalism (in the sense of “bicultural distributivism”) as fundamental realignments of state arrangements and images of nationhood between Māori and Pākehā, with the Treaty of Waitangi acting as the pivotal focus. In contrast, the type of multiculturalism discussed in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Pearson argues, (1) suggests the integration of ethnic minorities into the state, giving them greater access to positions of status and power within existing institutional forms of governance, and (2) ignores the special status of Māori as an indigenous people and as a signatory to the treaty (Pearson 1990, 1991; also see Simon 1989). However, there can be different kinds of multiculturalism—liberal, pluralist, left-essentialist, critical (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997), managed or critical, insurgent, and polyvalent (Goldberg 1994). As briefly mentioned in chapter 1, in Aotearoa/New Zealand, there are four positions regarding the relationship between biculturalism and multiculturalism. The first is to postpone, if not reject, multiculturalism. For example, Paul Spoonley in his early works describes the demand for multiculturalism as (1) a shield for deflecting bicultural demands, and (2) a way to pit minority groups against one another (Spoonley 1988; also see Mead 1997, Pearson 1990, Simon 1989; Walker 1996). Arguing that biculturalism nurtures a tolerance for cultural differences that would eventually pave the way for multiculturalism, advocates of this position depict multiculturalism as only a future option (Benton 1981; Spoonley 1988). The second position argues for multiculturalism, transforming the current biculturalist national imagining. For example, in her earlier argument Manying Ip urges the Aoteaora/New Zealand government to proclaim the place of nonMāori minorities in the nation, outline the idea of ethnic diversity in policy, and enshrine it in legislation (Ip 1998; also see Loomis 1991). The third position is a rejection of multiculturalism. Ranginui Walker discusses Māori-Asian relations, sometimes with a hint of prejudice (see Palat 1996: 52), in terms of how the recent flow of Asian immigrants influenced the place of Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. First, he argues that the BIP that prompted this flow violated the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi because Māori people were not consulted in forming the policy. Second, he argues that the multiculturalist view behind the BIP was a direct negation of the Māori assertion of biculturalism, which gave special status to Māori as the indigenous people and a partner to the Treaty of Waitangi. Third, he asserts that the BIP was a covert strategy to suppress the struggles of the Māori by swamping them with “outsiders”3 who had no obligations to them under the treaty (Walker 1996). I interpret his view as calling for a kind of relationship that involves three parties without undermining the Māori-Pākehā relations based on the Treaty of Waitangi and biculturalism:

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Māori and Pākehā decide together the terms of the relationship with the third parties (Asians, Pacific Island people, etc.). In his willingness to engage both of the regimes of difference under discussion, Walker’s rejection of multiculturalism appears, paradoxically, as a starting point toward a new kind of multiculturalist relationship based on a new triad model of nationhood consisting of two treaty partners (Māori and Pākehā) and those whose place is legitimated by both treaty partners. The question, then, is who constitutes Pākehā. Do immigrants of European descent automatically become Pākehā and thus the treaty partners of Māori, while the positions of immigrants of non-Māori, non-European descent remain the object of negotiation? This question needs to be clarified in Walker’s discussion of ethnic relations and nationhood in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The fourth position keeps multiculturalism and biculturalism in separate domains. For example, in his later works, Spoonley, with his co-author Augie Fleras, argues that multiculturalism and “bi-nationalism” (what Sharp called bicultural distributivism; Fleras and Spoonley consider current “biculturalism” to be what Sharp called bicultural reformism) in Aotearoa/New Zealand are compatible. This was on the condition that each stay within its own domain (regarding immigrants and indigenous people, respectively), that the binationalism supersede the multiculturalist rights of immigrants, and that Māori be recognized as one of two national communities rather than one of many ethnic groups (Fleras and Spoonley 1999: 240–250). Others similarly describe New Zealand to be one nation, two peoples, and many cultures, thereby recognizing Māori’s special status as indigenous (domain of people) and the existence of other ethnic groups (domain of culture) (Mulgan 1989; also see Sissons 1995). In a similar spirit, Ip later argues, with her co-author, David Pang, that the New Zealand government represents not only Pākehā but all Chinese and other non-Māori New Zealanders. Thus, biculturalism can accommodate diversity without eroding Māori interest (Ip and Pang 2005). The separation of regimes of difference of Māori and other New Zealanders and that of various ethnic groups within Aotearoa/New Zealand resembles the dance performances discussed in this chapter. However, what they are offering is the separation of these regimes without othering Asian or other non-Māori, nonPākehā people. In that separation, then, we can see a nationhood of Aotearoa/ New Zealand that nurtures different cultures while prioritizing the position of the indigenous Māori.

Notes 1. Besides Japanese and Māori, French had been taught at Waikaraka High School. It was no longer offered during my stay. 2. This was pointed out by Jaime Taber (personal communications). 3. See chapter 8 for a critical discussion on this point.

10

C ONCLUSION

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D EPARTURE

% Living with Divisions Multiple regimes of difference are becoming more and more common features in life around the world, as ways to categorize people have come to be shared globally (Wilk 1995). School is one of the main institutions that not only create and enforce regimes of difference but also provide space for individuals to resist and negotiate regimes of difference. School differentiates students along various axes—by age, by elected subjects, by academic “achievement,” by the language they speak, by gender, and so forth—and gives them differential access to various human and material resources. In Meaningful Inconsistencies, we paid close attention to the ways the bilingual unit related the ethnic regime of difference of Māori vs. Pākehā to regimes of difference developed around the tracking system and the presence of Asian ESL students, all situated in the contemporary cultural politics, neoliberal transformations, and processes of globalization in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. Students, teachers, and parents live through such regimes of difference, relating them in diverse ways, sometimes supporting, but other times resisting, rupturing, and transforming existing regimes of difference and creating alternative ones. Institutionally suggested regimes of difference position individuals in certain ways: as “academic achievers” or “academic underachievers” (chapter 4), Māori or Pākehā (chapter 5), representatives of school or those being represented, and exotic Cultural Others or unmarked “regular” audience members (chapter 9). Relationships between regimes of difference structured at school suggested a postcolonial nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand that is simultaneously Pacific and Western (chapter 9). Individuals related to and suggested regimes of difference inconsistently, depending on the topic of discussion. Relating particular regimes of difference reflected as well as produced one’s positions on such matters as having tracking at school (chapter 4), the bilingual unit’s effects on students’ social life (chapter 5), and Māori academic achievement (chapter

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6). Such inconsistency created gaps between regimes of difference, from which subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood emerged. Tracing these daily practices, Meaningful Inconsistencies explored the ways in which subjectivities, ethnic relations, and a sense of nationhood emerged. Researchers have discussed the creation of subjectivities at the intersections of regimes of difference (Crenshaw 1992; Collins 1999; Frankenberg 1993; hooks 1989, 1992; Lott 1995; McClintock 1995; Roediger 1991, 1994; Stoler 1995; Wiegman 1995). Meaningful Inconsistencies showed that when bilingual students and teachers intersected the regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and that of mainstream upper- vs. lower-track students, an illusion of Māori underachievement emerged (chapter 6). Meaningful Inconsistencies illustrated that subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood emerged also in the gaps between multiple regimes of difference and in the act of evoking homologous regimes of difference and singling out regimes of difference at an Aotearoa/New Zealand secondary school. In the gap between conflating and not conflating regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students and that of Māori vs. Pākehā, an illusion of Māori underachievement was produced. Such an illusion created subjectivities and affected ethnic relations between Māori and Pākehā. An important background aspect was, ironically, concern about Māori underachievement, which led to efforts to improve the situation since the 1970s (chapter 6). Ex-bilingual students noticed and laughed at mainstream teachers’ mispronunciation of Te Reo words from the gap between the regimes of difference of Te Reo vs. English in which both languages were equally respected (in the bilingual unit), and that of Te Reo vs. English in which English prevailed over Te Reo to the degree that Te Reo words were anglicized/ incorrectly pronounced (in mainstream classes). Such laughter demanded a bicultural nationhood that was not tokenistic and ethnic relations that respected each other’s languages (chapter 7). When kapa haka (regime of difference of Māori vs. New Zealanders) and Thai and Japanese dances (regime of difference of Asia vs. West) were performed on separate occasions at Waikaraka High School, a postcolonial nationhood of Aotearoa/New Zealand as Pacific (represented by Māori) yet Western (opposite of Asia) emerged at the non-intersection, or in the gap between, these regimes of difference. In the background were neoliberal reforms that made schools sell services for extra income (fee-paying student program), globalizing forces that essentialized cultural difference as a commodity through global schooling and created a desire to learn “global” English, and Aotearoa/ New Zealand’s need to find new international allies (chapter 9). In the gaps between homologous regimes of difference, subjectivities and ethnic relations were also created. When ex-bilingual students laughed at a mainstream teacher’s mispronunciation of my Japanese name after they had laughed at mispronunciation of Te Reo names, homologies between the hierarchized regime of difference of English vs. Japanese and that of English vs. Te Reo (drawing

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on a globally shared regime of difference of dominant language vs. dominated language) drew me at a personal level into their language struggles, transforming my subjectivity. The laughter also called for ethnic relationships in which each other’s language was respected (chapter 8). Singling out certain regimes of difference among multiple regimes of difference reflected and (re)produced a nationhood that emphasized certain aspects of individuals. The regime of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream students (conflated with that of Māori vs. Pākehā) was singled out from many other regimes of difference at school as “separatist”. This act of singling out, which only becomes apparent in the multiplicity of regimes of difference, emphasized the importance of ethnicity in individuals’ subjectivity as well as of nationhood, putting in relief the tension between dividing and uniting two ethnic groups, Māori and Pākehā, in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s biculturalism in the late 1990s (chapter 5).

Suggestions for Changes Meaningful Inconsistencies explored three routes of proactive practices promoting social justice. First, it encouraged alliance-making. It urged the creation of alliances with those parents who called the bilingual unit separatist yet supported the unit. Since they used the term “separatist” to express their personal feelings about their subject positions, rather than a blanket opposition to the bilingual unit, I suggested working with such parents to create alternative discourses to express their feelings, thus reducing a damaging claim of separatism regarding the bilingual unit (chapter 5). I also suggested using global structures of common difference (Wilk 1995) to create alliances between minority groups and people from other areas in order to strengthen support for minority causes. Ex-bilingual students’ laughter at mispronunciation of my Japanese name by a mainstream teacher, which put me on the side of those whose language was not respected, showed the efficacy of such alliance-making, which nonetheless produced an “uneasy alliance” that needed to be maintained with actions (chapter 8). Second, Meaningful Inconsistencies encouraged clarification of misperceptions that were caused by certain ways regimes of difference were related to each other. For example, clarifying that the bilingual unit was a mixed-ability class, that it did not constitute the opposite of the mainstream upper-track class, and that the upper-track class was a mainstream class for those who had decided not to learn Te Reo would help reduce the misperception of Māori underachievement due to the ways the regimes of difference of bilingual vs. mainstream, Māori vs. Pākehā, and mainstream upper- vs. lower-track students were related to each other (chapter 6). Third, Meaningful Inconsistencies suggested a proactive pedagogy to involve students in developing ways to effectively respond to and challenge other peoples’ insensitivities that devalue their culture in daily life. Countering Pedagogy is a

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kind of critical pedagogy that places a narrower focus on the encounters with different messages from various teachers (for example, bilingual and mainstream) and on supporting proactive actions (chapter 7).

Departure Meaningful Inconsistencies’ analyses focused on the particular case of Waikaraka High School in the specific historical contexts of Aotearoa/New Zealand in the late 1990s. Since my fieldwork in 1997–1998, the social landscape of Aotearoa/ New Zealand has continued to transform. The neoliberal education reforms of 1989 were revised when the government changed from National (center-right) to Labour (center-left) in 1999. The Unit Standard became a full-fledged qualification system in 2002. The economic crisis in Asia in the late 1990s reduced the number of fee-paying students from Asia, leaving their numbers in the mid 1990s the highest to date. The analyses I offered in Meaningful Inconsistencies can be used in the analyses of daily practices in any school, especially those with bilingual units. Meaningful Inconsistencies illustrated that multiple regimes of difference are not mere repertoires of ways to understand relationships among people; instead, people relate them in certain ways, often inconsistently, and produce subjectivities, ethnic relations, and nationhood. In such processes, meanings are made not only at the intersections but also in the non-intersections of regimes of difference. My suggestion for future work in this era where regimes of difference are shared around the world is to analyze not only the ways certain regimes of difference influence people’s subjectivities and relationships to others, but also the ways people actively create subjectivities and relationships to others by relating these regimes of difference in diverse, and often inconsistent, ways.

G LOSSARY

% hapū

subtribes

ihi

“guts” or “source of vitality”

iwi

tribe

kapa haka

Māori cultural performance

karakia

prayer

kaumatua

Māori elder/s

Kaupapa Māori

Māori objectives; movement toward Māori cultural autonomy

kawanatanga

governorship

“kia kaha”

“be strong”

Kingitanga

the King Movement

Kotahitanga

unity; the Unity Movement

Kura Kaupapa Māori

Māori-controlled alternative elementary school

manuhiri

guests

marae

Māori meeting place

matua

father, uncle, male teacher

mihi

welcome speeches in Te Reo

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pōwhiri

Māori-style welcome

rangatira

chiefs

Taha Māori

Māori side, Māori dimension; efforts to incorporate Māori culture in school organizations and curriculum

taurekareka

slaves

Te Kōhanga Reo

Māori-controlled alternative preschool

Te Wānanga

Māori-controlled alternative tertiary ed. institutions

tangi

funerals

tangata whenua

host, people of the land, indigenous people

tino rangatiratanga

chieftainship; political and economic sovereignty

tūtūā

commoners

waiata

song

waka

canoes; federation of iwi

whaea

mother, aunt, female teacher

whaikōrero

oratory

Whare Kura

Māori-controlled alternative secondary school

whānau

extended family

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I NDEX

academic achievement, 3, 14, 16, 21–22, 27, 92, 94, 98, 101, 103, 108, 113–14, 126, 147–48, 151–54, 205 Althusser, Louis, 19, 23n1 Anderson, Benedict, xi, 41, 73 Asian alliance with Māori, 175–79, 181–82, 202 antagonism against Māori, 179, 182, 202–3 as a category in statistics, 26, 61–63, 69, 71 as a regional partner, 26, 35, 175, 199 dance performance, 23, 184–85, 190, 202 fee-paying students, 7, 23, 37–38, 174–75, 200–1, 205 immigrants, 8, 10–11, 30, 38, 62, 70, 172–75, 199, 203–4 place of Asians in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 7, 22, 28, 173–75, 177, 182, 190 authority in classroom, 6, 90, 156, 162,164–65, 195, 200 over Te Reo, 162, 164, 166, 167–169, 173, 178–79 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 166, 168 Balibar, Etienne, 13 Ballara, Angela, 30, 50, 56, 81–82, 134, 162, 201 Barthes, Roland, 195 Bedford, Richard, 173, 175 Belich, James, 11, 28, 41, 43–45, 48–52, 54, 56, 59, 62, 135, 188–89 Bell, Avril, 24, 81, 186, 189 Benton, Richard A.,10, 28, 32–33, 163, 203 Bergson, Henri, 162, 164 biculturalism, 9–21, 26–34, 45, 58–59, 63, 76–77, 82, 85, 127–137, 162, 174, 177, 180–89, 202–4, 207 bicultural distributivism, 28–29, 203 bicultural reformism, 27, 204 Bishop, Russell, 27, 29, 82, 133–35, 188

Borneman, John, xi, 134, 200 Bourdieu, Pierre, 14, 17–18, 40, 113, 119, 140, 163 Britain, 9–11, 19, 26, 34, 38, 43, 45, 48, 54, 56, 67n5 Business Immigration Policy, 26, 35, 38, 62, 173–74, 203 Butler, Judith, 18, 103, 197 cabbage class, notion of, 109–111 Cazden, Courtney B., 30, 34 census, 18–19, 41–67 Clifford, James, 10, 82, 93, 181 Codd, John, 34, 39n4, 119, 170 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 19, 153, 206 cultural bias in legitimized knowledge, 161, 164–165 in tracking, 140–146, 153–155 curriculum, 4, 31, 33, 37, 40, 95, 97, 104, 109,142, 151, 186, 195 Dale, Roger, 10, 26, 35, 37–38, 86, 173–74, 190, 199 dance performance Japanese dance performance, 183–85, 190–206 Māori dance performance. See kapa haka Thai dance performance, 7, 9, 20–23, 183–85, 190–94, 196–204, 206 de Certeau, Michel, 83, 119 Department of Education, 31, 36, 37 “disruptive” students, 11, 93–94, 98–99, 102, 108, 164–65, 176 Dominy, Michele, 10 English class, 3–4, 86, 88, 91n5, 93–94, 104–106, 140–41, 159 ESL education, 7, 11, 38, 86, 166, 174–176, 201, 205. See also fee-paying students exoticisms, 82, 184–85, 188–202

226 | I n de x

Fajans, Jane, xi, 153 fee-paying students, 7, 11, 23, 37–38, 86–87, 174–75, 183–85, 190–202, 206 host family, 87–88, 190, 192, 202 Iranian fee-paying students, 192 Japanese fee-paying students, 38, 86–87, 190, 192, 202 Korean fee-paying students, 38, 86, 179, 190, 192, 202 Thai fee-paying students, 7, 23, 183–85, 190–202, 206 Fiske, Edward B., 38, 190 Fleras, Augie, 8, 10, 26, 29, 39, 56, 62, 156, 174, 202–4 Foucault, Michel, 76, 119, 140 Frankenberg, Ruth, 16, 19, 118, 145, 154, 206 Freeman, Rebecca D., 14–17, 23, 164, 170 Fusco, Coco, 49, 80, 145, 198 Fuss, Diana, 196–97 geeks, notion of, 112–13 Giroux, Henry, 11, 13, 34, 36, 163, 170–71 global structures of common difference, 21, 181, 184, 207, 214 Goffman, Erving, 75–76, 91n4 Goldberg, David Theo, 13, 116, 203 Gordon, Liz, 11, 37–39, 119 haka, 185–86, 188–89 Hall, Stuart, 16, 19, 139 Heller, Monica, 13, 15, 17, 19, 170 Hill, Jane H., 13, 162, 166, 172 hooks, bell, 16, 19, 80, 118, 128, 145, 197–98, 206 host family. See fee-paying student Hughes, David, 11, 36–37 ignorance learning from, 20 power of, 163 interpellation, 1, 6–8, 16–20, 23n1, 175, 180–82, 201 Ip, Manying, 10, 30, 52–53, 55, 62–63, 66, 70, 173–75, 199, 203–4 Irwin, Kathie, 10, 33 Japanese language class, 4, 88, 183–85, 190–202 Johnson, Barbara, 20, 163 Johnston, Patricia Maringi G., 32, 34, 117, 134 Kaaretu, Timoti S., 30, 34, 157, 162–63, 166–67, 169, 177, 180, 185 kapa haka, 7, 9, 20–23, 79–80, 123–24, 143, 183–90, 201–4, 206

history of, 185, 188–90 Kelsey, Jane, 8, 11, 26, 35, 39, 135, 173, 182n1, 199 Kincheloe, Joe L., 13, 117, 133, 166, 169, 203 King, Michael, 29, 82, 134–35 Kura Kaupapa Māori, 10, 33, 69, 71, 78, 148 Kymlicka, Will, 28, 116–17 Land Wars, 44 Lauder, Hugh, 11, 36–37 laughter, 6, 8, 16, 18, 20–23, 156–82, 206–7 library, 69, 73, 112, 114n3 Loomis, Terry, 10, 30, 203 Māori king, 18–19, 44–46, 51, 64 Māori schools. See Native schools mathematics class, 3–4, 86, 88, 93–94, 108–11, 140–41, 149–51, 154, 157–59, 175–79 May, Stephen, 10, 13, 68, 87, 118, 134, 136, 140 McDermott, Ray, 13, 82, 134, 140, 147 Mead, Sidney Moko, 7, 27–28, 30–33, 81, 130, 135, 145, 148, 153, 157, 162–63, 169, 174, 190, 203 Middleton, Sue, 35–37 Mish’alani, James. K., 162 Multiculturalism, 10, 13, 28–30, 47, 58–59, 63, 66, 165, 174–77, 182, 202–4 Native Affairs Department, 31 Native Land Court, 44–45, 51 Native schools, 31–32 NCEA, 37 neoliberalism, 2, 11–12, 18, 22, 25–26, 32, 34–39, 59, 68, 75, 85–87, 92–94, 100, 105, 184, 205–8 New Right, 35, 39n4 New Zealand Official Yearbook, 41–42, 45–66 Official Handbook of New Zealand, 42 Olneck, Michael, 14, 40, 163, 166 Pākehā debate around, 29–30 notion of, 7, 24n5, 29–30 Palat, Ravi Arvind, 174, 203 Parekh, Bhikhu, 116 Pearson, David, xii, 26, 28, 30, 38, 52–53, 55–56, 62, 66, 133, 147, 174, 203 performance. See dance performance Phillips, Jock, xii, 9, 48–49, 166, 169–70, 180 Pollock, Mica, 13, 145 Potter, Jonathan, 117, 134, 201 Povinelli, Elizabeth A., 10, 181–82 preppy try-hards, notion of, 112–13

Inde x | 227

regime of difference of Asian vs. New Zealander, 20 of Asian vs. West, 20, 184, 192–94, 202 of bilingual vs. mainstream, 17, 20–22, 79–85, 115–55, 206–7 of Briton vs. New Zealanders, 48–54 conflation of, 20–22, 115–55, 206–7 of dominant language speakers vs. dominated language speakers, 21, 176, 179, 207 of European vs. Māori, 58 of European vs. Māori vs. Others, 58 of exotic cultural others vs. “regular” audience, 188, 198 of indigenous people vs. settlers, 181 intersection of, 17, 19–22, 48–50, 113–14, 138–39, 148–157, 166, 169, 172, 184, 202, 206–8 of male vs. female, 103, 111–14, 119 of Māori vs. all New Zealanders, 20, 184, 202, 206 of Māori vs. Pākehā, 5, 20–22, 28, 48, 50, 53, 63, 79, 80, 115–16, 120, 127–37, 138–55, 157, 168, 177, 205–7 of minority students vs. minority sympathizers, 176–77 of “native” English speaker vs. a willing ESL speaker and admirer of things English, 176 of New Zealand vs. Australia, 49 of New Zealanders as Aryan (including Māori) vs. “Others”, 48, 50, 52–53 of New Zealandres vs. Race Alien, 52–66 of patronized Māori vs. intrusive Māori enthusiast, 178, 180 of researcher vs. researched, 93, 201 of teacher vs. students, 157, 166, 169, 172–73 of Te Reo vs. English, 157, 163–66, 172–73, 206 of upper- vs. lower-track classes, 22, 113–14, 139–55, 206–7 of victim of domination vs. another victim of domination, 176–78 of Waikaraka insiders vs. outsiders, 179–80 respect for Japanese language, 176, 207 for Māori culture, 184, 187–90 for Te Reo, 16–22, 82, 161–71, 177–79, 206–7 for teacher, 160, 164, 170 Riddell, Kate, 45, 47, 50–51, 54 Roediger, David, 19, 82, 206 Sakai, Naoki, 13, 17 Salesa, Toeolesulusulu D., 50–51, 55

Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 14, 116, 202 Scott, Stuart C., 10, 34, 116, 133, 180, 201 separatism, the claim of, 85, 115–37, 180, 201, 207 Serna, Irene, 137n2, 140 Sharp, Andrew, 26–29, 35, 56,59, 117, 133, 147, 201, 203–4 Simon, Judith, 28, 145, 148, 153, 203 Sinclair, Keith, 46, 48–49, 54, 67n5 Sissons, Jeffrey, 9–11, 27–29, 78, 81, 131, 145, 148, 156, 162, 166, 189–90, 201 Smith, Graham Hingangaroa, 10, 14, 27, 29, 32–33, 35, 79, 82, 117–18, 135, 145, 148, 153, 188 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 29, 33, 35, 39, 79, 145, 148, 153 social studies class, 4, 88, 91n7, 94–97, 108, 141–43, 155n1, 194 Spoonley, Paul, xii, 8, 10–11, 24n5, 26, 28–30, 34, 39, 56, 59, 62, 117, 134, 156, 174, 201–4 Statistics New Zealand, 41–53, 67 Steinberg, Shirley R., 13, 117, 133, 166, 169, 203 Taha Māori, 27, 29, 162 Taylor, Charles, 10, 54, 116, 184 Te Kōhanga Reo, 10, 29, 32–34, 69, 77–78, 121, 169 Te Wānanga, 33, 69–70, 89 tracking, 3, 6, 20–22, 37, 85–90, 92–114, 138–55, 205 Treaty of Waitangi, 8, 9, 25, 28–29, 35, 43–46, 59–63, 128–29, 133, 174, 203 underachievement of Māori students, discourse of, 6, 9, 11, 13, 18, 22, 27, 125, 137, 138–55, 206–7 uniform, 37, 75, 112, 119–20, 129, 186, 193 and bilingual unit, 75, 119, 120, 129, 131 and sexuality, 112 Unit Standard, 37, 110, 143, 208 Valdes, Guadalupe, 14 Varenne, Hervé, xi, 13, 19, 82, 134, 140, 147–48, 152, 164, 167 Waikaraka, town of, 7–8, 33, 68–71 Waikaraka High School, 1–17, 20–21, 71–87 bilingual unit, description of, 77–83 Waitangi Tribunal, 28, 130 Walker, Ranginui, 3, 9, 25–28, 31–34, 42–46, 51, 54, 56–57, 59, 117, 134, 145, 147, 153, 156, 174, 188, 203–4

228 | I n de x

Warner, Sam L. No’eau, 118, 167, 178, 180 “West”, 7, 20, 184, 190–206 Wetherell, Margaret, 117, 134, 201 Whare Kura, 10, 33, 69–71, 91n5, 148

Whitty, Geoff, 34–36, 93 Wilk, Richard, 17, 21, 181, 184, 205, 207 “Yellow peril”, 174