Put the effing cat back in the effing bag!!

Oops. Who let that Pom into our country?!

The column by Fred Pearce on how 100% Pure NZ might just be a tad over-hyped has created something of a stir. Fred is dead right, of course, we have traded a lot on a pair of falsies ('clean' and 'green'), saved by our small population and the filthy crowdedness of the home towns of our tourist visitors. His article has run on all major newspaper websites, although not all make the most of publishing technology and provide links through to relevant reports. Go to Pearce's original article, the nicely titled 'New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth but is no friend of the earth', published on the Guardian online, and check out his links.

The response is somewhat predictable, most commentators noting Whale Watch Kaikoura picked up the gold gong for UK Responsible Tourism Awards (e.g., Esther Goh of the NZ Herald with her NZ takes prize for 'shameless two fingers' to world'.

Pearce is right of course, and NZers were the first to point out the disparities in the reality of our environmental performance and the hype. That we're locked into whoring our land to the rich and famous is just an extension of the failed policies of the 1980s. (remember when we were destined by the laws of neoliberalism to become the Switzerland of the South Pacific?! Maybe we misheard and Roger Douglas meant Swaziland...). More importantly for me, Pearce exposes the expanding PR industry around environmental greenwashing - check out the rather interesting UNEP Climate Neutral Network...

Māori Social Capital: An exploration through a history of farming awards

Abstract for a paper I'm going to give at the upcoming Agri-Food XVI conference, University of Auckland...

Abstract: Through the post-contact history of Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand, runs the history of some of modernity’s most radical technological revolutions. In a little over two centuries, Māori transitioned from a stone-age people through mercantile capitalism and its military accoutrements; fought intensive wars over land and commerce among themselves and with foreign invaders; and survived threats of cultural, even physical, extinction. Recovering through a politico-cultural renaissance in all its artistic and commercial socio-technologies, Māori now engage in corporate ventures that have a significant presence in the agri/aqua-food sectors. Throughout this history, a constant trope of Māori culture and development has been the importance of family and tribal networks of trust, support and guidance. This very traditional social capital has been complemented, challenged and perhaps supplanted by networks that originate with assimilationist and modernising ideologies of colonisation. These networks now comprise the sociability in which Māori individuals and collectives aid and abet their development.

Yet much debate seems to centre on the clear lack of Māori social capital. Standard social indicators continue to communicate the vulnerability of Māori after two centuries of contact. In the areas of employment, health and education, Māori ‘lag’ behind Pākeha and, more importantly, their own aspirations. While winning many legal, political and commercial battles, Māori collectively experience an uneasy relationship with State and corporate authority. Such dis-ease is now exacerbated by a recession that has seen a rapid increase in Māori unemployment and a corresponding dismantling of many social programmes. Once again, Māori sociability is under threat.

The antidote to this paralysis is evidently greater/better/more economic development. Strategic eyes turn to Māori agricultural development, the ‘sleeping giant’ of New Zealand’s economy which, through antecedent pathways of a Māori role in primary production, embed pathways to the future. The newly rekindled Te Ahuwhenua Trophy, awarded annually to the Māori ‘Farmer-of-the-Year’, has seen Māori incorporations of several thousand hectares with thousands of head of stock, extensive agro-forestry, large-scale dairying, and strategies for continued expansion and productivity gains. Their boards and management engage in debates over sustainability, carbon credits, and added-value exports that require international benchmarking for best practice in financial, legal and managerial operations. But the context in which businesses such as these exist is increasingly challenged by global and local discourses concerning ecological (Kates, 2001; Kawharu, 2002), social (Durie, 2005; UN Millennium Project, 2005) and cultural (Charters, 2007; Lambert, 2008a) resilience. Although often simplified along economic lines through concepts of tangible and intangible capitals, the debate around social and cultural capitals are so complex that their ‘solution’ will epitomise transdisciplinarity.

This paper investigates the concept of social capital through an examination of Māori farming. Historical data from entrants of Māori farming awards is coupled with that of contemporary entrants to provide a template for describing Māori social capital and its change over time. Innovation diffusion discourse, particularly its treatment of technological innovation and tradition and modernity, allows further insight into social capital in general, and enables a clearer understanding of the achievements and challenges of Māori society in particular. I attempt to outline a) the context of contact, development and socio-cultural boundary crossing by Maori farmers, and b) the movements and actions of social capital in Maori farming.


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Maori in Parliament

How things change.

Back in the Orwellian year (1984), just 6% of the Aotearoa/NZ parliament was Maori, Pasifika or Asian. Compare that to the latest parliament (elected in 2008) where 16% of MPs identify themselves as Maori. This means we're slightly overrepresented.

Wait for the bleating to start.


Paving stone in Jack Kerouac Alley, San Francisco.

NZ in top 10 countries for income disparity: What does this this mean for Maori poverty?

Top 10 countries with the biggest gaps between rich and poor

1 Hong Kong
2 Singapore
3 US
4 Israel
5 Portugal
6 New Zealand
7= Italy
7= Britain
9 Australia
10= Ireland
10= Greece

According to the OECD, New Zealand had the biggest rise in inequality among member nations in the two decades starting in the mid-1980s. Most of these countries are part of the tribe we like to fashion ourselves after (remember how we were advised to be more like Ireland, the Celtic Tiger, more like Singapore, how we have to catch-up with Australia blah blah blah...).

As for Aotearoa/NZ, well it's like the quirky results for South Africa which was one of the richest states in the world, if you counted the few million whites...
The Child Poverty Action Group have brought together some damming studies, e.g., this one from Professor Innes Asher and Dr Steve Poletti.

toi iho/Maori made

The trademark initiated to promote Maori arts and crafts - Toi Iho - has been scrapped by its State agent, Creative New Zealand. I wrote a paper on Geographical Indicators some time ago (June 2004 I'm surprised to see...). I think it is an area worth more attention.

Concerns over intellectual property issues expressed by Maori seem to be lie primarily within patent/copyright/trademark tradition, although Plant Variety Rights feature in the Wai 262 claim. In February 2002 a trademark was created by Creative New Zealand to ‘maintain the integrity’ of Maori art, and to assist in promoting this art and recognised artists nationally and internationally. The toi iho™ trademark marks a significant development in Maori IP. The mark is restricted to works by artists (individuals or groups) who are of Maori descent and whose work is of acknowledged quality (Creative NZ, 2004). The trademark is in many ways a response to Maori embarrassment and anger at blatant ‘rip offs’ in the tourism industry but should equally be interpreted as efforts by ‘Brand NZ Inc.’ to secure added value production for the New Zealand economy.

As in Europe, it is the wine and gourmet foods sectors that provide the most sophisticated examples. Tohu Wines has proven a successful brand for Wakatu Inc./Wi Pere Trust/Ngati Rarua Atiawa Iwi Trust to market $4 million of wine, principally to U.K. and U.S. consumers (Tohu Wines, 2004). In the words of James Wheeler, CEO, the main point of difference for their marketing is “being Maori…it makes their experience of our product superior” (Anon, 2003: 25). The attributes of ‘freshness’ and ‘naturalness’ have been attached to other Maori agri-food ventures, often embedded in organic practices; seafood is a significant example, especially in the South Island. Medicinal products stemming from traditional herbal remedies also feature; Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals have commercially developed a product based on manuka oil that is unique to the region (Cooper, 1995; Cooke and Cooke, n.d.; Tairawhiti Pharmaceuticals, 2004). It is becoming apparent that ‘Maoriness’ is a component of added value, not just for the country as an ‘eco-destination’, but for individual hapu and iwi land-based ventures.

My reasoning for explicitly connecting hapu and iwi land-based industries to what is now a global intellectual property regime via Geographical Indicators is based on sustainability theories that likewise link local communities – their biotic resources and knowledge thereof, as well as lifestyles and livelihoods – to global sustainability, i.e. the actual continuation of human civilisation (with the presumed added benefit of increasing social justice along the way; see Goodman and Redclift, 1991; Berkes et al., 2003). My position is also based on a pragmatic realisation that while it is easy to clench a fist against global capitalism, it’s very hard to turn down extra money when this thing called moni solves so many mundane problems.

The continued growth of cultural and agricultural industries will see ongoing contests for property rights, not just over physical resources but for the ephemeral concepts of intellectual property; the phenomenon has been termed yet another ‘enclosure’ of a global commons (May, 2000). These contests are played out along extended networks that incorporate both social and technical elements. For indigenous peoples, these ‘sociotechnical’ networks have always been difficult to negotiate from a position that is in many ways subversive to state and corporate organisations from the outset. Although concerns ranging from access to markets and trade disparities to food safety and social justice issues, affect and afflict people of all nations, the negative impacts fall disproportionately on the poor. This is a challenge to Maori development that is geared towards that great Brand Kiwi tradition, pampering the puku of the global rich (see Ingrid D. Rowland's review of Feast: A History of Grand Eating by Roy Strong for an insight into the global history of this bioculture...)

That both cultural and biological diversity present themselves as not only desirable but necessary for the long-term survival of the human race underpins important discourses on sustainability. The philosophical position on the appropriation of wealth from the sheer novelty of indigenous food and drink is worthy of more serious discussion. The opportunity for indigenous land owners anywhere to state their commitment to sustainable methods cannot be denied. If this commitment can then justify a premium price in a global market - given that a global aesthetic as well as simple survival is dependent on economically marginal peoples - that is to be applauded.