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Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand
Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand presents thought-provoking new research on New Zealand’s fastest-growing the geographically, nationally, and historically diverse Asian communities. This collection examines the unresolved tensions between a dynamic biculturalism and the recognition of other ethnic minorities by looking at such questions as What kind of multicultural framework best suits New Zealand’s rapidly expanding ethnic diversity? Can the Treaty of Waitangi, initially set up to accommodate British settlers and to recognize the tangata whenua, serve as the basis for New Zealand’s immigration policy in the new millennium? And Can all citizens embrace multiculturalism? Multiculturalism and Asian-ness are addressed together for the first time in this articulate addition to the ongoing debate about the population diversity of Aotearoa New Zealand.
316 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2015
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April 25, 2015
"Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand" is a collection of nine essays, plus a foreword and an afterword, edited by Gautam Ghosh and Jacqueline Leckie of the University of Otago. It is important to distinguish this as an anthology, not a narrative-based book, because the quality of the collection varies significantly from essay to essay.
The anthology is further subdivided into four sections: the first two essays are concerned with the history of biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand; the second section is preoccupied with public displays of multiculturalism, such as plays and festivals; the third set of essays investigates the relationship between immigration and religion; and the final and fourth section looks at the economic potential of immigrant workers and precincts.
It is difficult to assign a rating to this book because, as stated above, the quality of the collection varies greatly from essay to essay. The introduction, for example, despite containing a number of salient observations about the underlying issues that immigration research has to contend with - including urbanization, nationalism, and the idea of "social cohesion" - is densely written and nearly impenetrable compared to the other articles in the book. In contrast, the first two essays, by Paul Spoonley and Camille Nahkid & Heather Devere, respectively, are some of the strongest in the book. Spoonley's article, entitled "'I Made a Space for You': Renegotiating national identity and citizenship in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand," offers a concise and comprehensible history of immigration in New Zealand focusing on the racialization and marginalization of various immigrant groups over time, especially those from Asia and the Pacific Islands. He explains how New Zealand has transitioned from a bicultural nation, consisting primarily of the tangata whenua (Maori) and British (Pakeha), to an effectively multicultural one with a large percentage of Indian, Chinese, Korean, Pacific Island, and other ethnicities.
Camille Nahkid & Heather Devere's essay, "Negotiating Multiculturalism and the Treaty of Waitangi," is perhaps the strongest in the entire collection. They make an extremely persuasive case for utilizing New Zealand's founding document, and first de facto immigration policy, as the cornerstone of any new multicultural policy. Furthermore, they demonstrate that such a policy should be officially enacted, and soon. By 2026, they write, those of Asian descent are projected to surpass the Maori as New Zealand's majority minority, and what this means in reference to the Treaty of Waitangi - which is an explicit agreement between Maori and Pakeha - must be critically examined.
Hilary Chung's essay "Native Alienz" is a critical review of seven plays performed in Auckland organized and funded by the Oryza Foundation for Asian Performing Arts. Though she spend a rather large amount of time describing the difference between little 'm' multicultural theatre and big "M" multicultural theatre - a theoretical distinction developed by Lo and Gilbert - she also effectively demonstrates how each of the seven plays complicated commonly accepted stereotypes and worked to subvert stereotypes about those of Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Malaysian, and other Asian descent.
Henry Johnson's article "Under the Kiwi Gaze: Public Asian festivals and multicultural Aotearoa New Zealand" is a good starting point for examining so-called Asian festivals in New Zealand. Though he does not go into great analytic detail, he describes, in fairly basic terms, the history behind and public programming of the (Chinese) Lantern Festival in Auckland and Christchurch, the (Indian) Diwali Festival in Auckland and Wellington, and the Southeast Asian Night Market in Wellington.
Then comes Erich Kolig's extremely problematic essay on Muslims in New Zealand. Entitled "Whither Cultural Acceptance? Muslims and multiculturalism in New Zealand," Kolig's essay is a rather disturbing one from start to finish. He opposes an official policy of multiculturalism on the grounds that it will damage the "social fabric" of New Zealand, despite Gautam Ghosh's argument in the introduction that this very concept is untenable and euphemistic at best. Kolig claims that it is "utopian thinking" that all minorities can be accommodated, and that the pursuit of a multicultural policy is impractical. He offers several highly emotive stories by way of "evidence," and displays a surprisingly Islamaphobic tendency throughout (surprising because he is the author of a book called "Conservative Islam"; though that, also, has been the recipient of some negative press - see: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/show...). He dismisses Maori claims for special regard because of their position as indigenous citizens; never provides any sort of demographic breakdown of the Muslim population in New Zealand; and cites his own papers a disproportionate amount of the time - of the 43 endnotes containing academic citations, 25% contained references to his own work. Overall, Kolig demonstrates a completely ahistorical understanding of what "nation" means and is willfully ignorant of the fact that the construction of any and all "monocultures" by necessity required the subsuming of minority cultures. I have a hard time understanding why this essay was included in the collection; indeed, it greatly reduces its overall legitimacy.
Thankfully, the next two essays on religion and immigration in New Zealand do not containing concerning elements of colonialism. Andrew Butcher and George Wieland debunk the notion that Asian immigrants are "threatening" Kiwi Christianity, and instead demonstrate how a high percentage of Asian migrants are practicing Christians who are, in fact, bolstering attendance at many congregations across New Zealand. Aptly entitled "The New Asian Faces of Kiwi Christianity," the essay argues that the perceived decline in Christianity is more likely a result of European New Zealanders classifying themselves as "not religious." Stephanie Dobson's article "(Mis)Reporting Islam: New Zealand Muslim women viewing 'us' viewing 'them'" is another of the collection's strengths. Dobson interviewed 27 Muslim women in urban centers across New Zealand to gauge their understandings of and reactions to Muslim portrayals in the media. Overall, and unsurprisingly, the women felt that depictions of Muslims were overtly negative, and had direct impacts on the way they were treated in society - that is, with fear and resentment. Dobson argues that 9/11 has had a major negative effect on Muslims' lived experiences, and that Muslims are often uniformly presented as violent, despite the fact that only an extremely small minority of the religion's 1.5 billion adherents subscribe to any sort of violent philosophy.
The two final essays in the book are concerned with the impact that Asian immigrants have had on the New Zealand economy. Paul Spoonley, Carina Meares, and Trudie Cain's article "Immigrant Economies in Action: Chinese ethnic precincts in Auckland," contains a brief overview of two of Auckland's ethnic precincts: Northcote on the North Shore, which was transformed from "problem area" to ethnic precinct in less than a decade; and Somerville and Meadowlands in East Auckland, constructed by Hong Kong immigrant Kit Wong for the exclusive purpose of establishing commercial spaces for the Chinese community. Beyond these descriptions, however, the authors do not attempt to answer the many questions they raise, and the absence of ethnographic interview material is somewhat surprising. Still, this article is more descriptive than the final one by Tim Beal, Val Lindsay, and Kala Retna, entitled "Valuing Multiculturalism: Business engagement with the challenge of multiculturalism." Written like a short report for the executive of a mid-level corporation, the chapter is a short qualitative snapshot of how multicultural employees can enhance New Zealand firms' economic and growth prospects abroad. Importantly, they caution against simply paying "lip service" to the concept of multiculturalism, as some companies in the United States have done, in favor of actually utilizing employees' language and cultural knowledge of other countries.
Jacqueline Leckie's brief afterword is an appropriate conclusion for the anthology, and incorporates the history of Lalita Hari, born to an Indian immigrant father and a Maori mother. Lalita's story illustrates that relationships between Asians and Maori in New Zealand do, firstly, exist, and, secondly, are more common and complex than is often conveyed by many accounts of Asian history in New Zealand (which often seem to imply that there was little, if any, integration between the two groups).
In sum, I would argue that for most researchers, it will not be necessary to read the entire collection. Instead, people should select the articles that are germane to their personal interests or research - with the important exception of Erich Kolig's article, which I don't recommend to anyone, at all.
Overall rating: 3/5 stars
(Some of the essays are worth 5 stars; others, only 1 or 2).
The anthology is further subdivided into four sections: the first two essays are concerned with the history of biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand; the second section is preoccupied with public displays of multiculturalism, such as plays and festivals; the third set of essays investigates the relationship between immigration and religion; and the final and fourth section looks at the economic potential of immigrant workers and precincts.
It is difficult to assign a rating to this book because, as stated above, the quality of the collection varies greatly from essay to essay. The introduction, for example, despite containing a number of salient observations about the underlying issues that immigration research has to contend with - including urbanization, nationalism, and the idea of "social cohesion" - is densely written and nearly impenetrable compared to the other articles in the book. In contrast, the first two essays, by Paul Spoonley and Camille Nahkid & Heather Devere, respectively, are some of the strongest in the book. Spoonley's article, entitled "'I Made a Space for You': Renegotiating national identity and citizenship in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand," offers a concise and comprehensible history of immigration in New Zealand focusing on the racialization and marginalization of various immigrant groups over time, especially those from Asia and the Pacific Islands. He explains how New Zealand has transitioned from a bicultural nation, consisting primarily of the tangata whenua (Maori) and British (Pakeha), to an effectively multicultural one with a large percentage of Indian, Chinese, Korean, Pacific Island, and other ethnicities.
Camille Nahkid & Heather Devere's essay, "Negotiating Multiculturalism and the Treaty of Waitangi," is perhaps the strongest in the entire collection. They make an extremely persuasive case for utilizing New Zealand's founding document, and first de facto immigration policy, as the cornerstone of any new multicultural policy. Furthermore, they demonstrate that such a policy should be officially enacted, and soon. By 2026, they write, those of Asian descent are projected to surpass the Maori as New Zealand's majority minority, and what this means in reference to the Treaty of Waitangi - which is an explicit agreement between Maori and Pakeha - must be critically examined.
Hilary Chung's essay "Native Alienz" is a critical review of seven plays performed in Auckland organized and funded by the Oryza Foundation for Asian Performing Arts. Though she spend a rather large amount of time describing the difference between little 'm' multicultural theatre and big "M" multicultural theatre - a theoretical distinction developed by Lo and Gilbert - she also effectively demonstrates how each of the seven plays complicated commonly accepted stereotypes and worked to subvert stereotypes about those of Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Malaysian, and other Asian descent.
Henry Johnson's article "Under the Kiwi Gaze: Public Asian festivals and multicultural Aotearoa New Zealand" is a good starting point for examining so-called Asian festivals in New Zealand. Though he does not go into great analytic detail, he describes, in fairly basic terms, the history behind and public programming of the (Chinese) Lantern Festival in Auckland and Christchurch, the (Indian) Diwali Festival in Auckland and Wellington, and the Southeast Asian Night Market in Wellington.
Then comes Erich Kolig's extremely problematic essay on Muslims in New Zealand. Entitled "Whither Cultural Acceptance? Muslims and multiculturalism in New Zealand," Kolig's essay is a rather disturbing one from start to finish. He opposes an official policy of multiculturalism on the grounds that it will damage the "social fabric" of New Zealand, despite Gautam Ghosh's argument in the introduction that this very concept is untenable and euphemistic at best. Kolig claims that it is "utopian thinking" that all minorities can be accommodated, and that the pursuit of a multicultural policy is impractical. He offers several highly emotive stories by way of "evidence," and displays a surprisingly Islamaphobic tendency throughout (surprising because he is the author of a book called "Conservative Islam"; though that, also, has been the recipient of some negative press - see: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/show...). He dismisses Maori claims for special regard because of their position as indigenous citizens; never provides any sort of demographic breakdown of the Muslim population in New Zealand; and cites his own papers a disproportionate amount of the time - of the 43 endnotes containing academic citations, 25% contained references to his own work. Overall, Kolig demonstrates a completely ahistorical understanding of what "nation" means and is willfully ignorant of the fact that the construction of any and all "monocultures" by necessity required the subsuming of minority cultures. I have a hard time understanding why this essay was included in the collection; indeed, it greatly reduces its overall legitimacy.
Thankfully, the next two essays on religion and immigration in New Zealand do not containing concerning elements of colonialism. Andrew Butcher and George Wieland debunk the notion that Asian immigrants are "threatening" Kiwi Christianity, and instead demonstrate how a high percentage of Asian migrants are practicing Christians who are, in fact, bolstering attendance at many congregations across New Zealand. Aptly entitled "The New Asian Faces of Kiwi Christianity," the essay argues that the perceived decline in Christianity is more likely a result of European New Zealanders classifying themselves as "not religious." Stephanie Dobson's article "(Mis)Reporting Islam: New Zealand Muslim women viewing 'us' viewing 'them'" is another of the collection's strengths. Dobson interviewed 27 Muslim women in urban centers across New Zealand to gauge their understandings of and reactions to Muslim portrayals in the media. Overall, and unsurprisingly, the women felt that depictions of Muslims were overtly negative, and had direct impacts on the way they were treated in society - that is, with fear and resentment. Dobson argues that 9/11 has had a major negative effect on Muslims' lived experiences, and that Muslims are often uniformly presented as violent, despite the fact that only an extremely small minority of the religion's 1.5 billion adherents subscribe to any sort of violent philosophy.
The two final essays in the book are concerned with the impact that Asian immigrants have had on the New Zealand economy. Paul Spoonley, Carina Meares, and Trudie Cain's article "Immigrant Economies in Action: Chinese ethnic precincts in Auckland," contains a brief overview of two of Auckland's ethnic precincts: Northcote on the North Shore, which was transformed from "problem area" to ethnic precinct in less than a decade; and Somerville and Meadowlands in East Auckland, constructed by Hong Kong immigrant Kit Wong for the exclusive purpose of establishing commercial spaces for the Chinese community. Beyond these descriptions, however, the authors do not attempt to answer the many questions they raise, and the absence of ethnographic interview material is somewhat surprising. Still, this article is more descriptive than the final one by Tim Beal, Val Lindsay, and Kala Retna, entitled "Valuing Multiculturalism: Business engagement with the challenge of multiculturalism." Written like a short report for the executive of a mid-level corporation, the chapter is a short qualitative snapshot of how multicultural employees can enhance New Zealand firms' economic and growth prospects abroad. Importantly, they caution against simply paying "lip service" to the concept of multiculturalism, as some companies in the United States have done, in favor of actually utilizing employees' language and cultural knowledge of other countries.
Jacqueline Leckie's brief afterword is an appropriate conclusion for the anthology, and incorporates the history of Lalita Hari, born to an Indian immigrant father and a Maori mother. Lalita's story illustrates that relationships between Asians and Maori in New Zealand do, firstly, exist, and, secondly, are more common and complex than is often conveyed by many accounts of Asian history in New Zealand (which often seem to imply that there was little, if any, integration between the two groups).
In sum, I would argue that for most researchers, it will not be necessary to read the entire collection. Instead, people should select the articles that are germane to their personal interests or research - with the important exception of Erich Kolig's article, which I don't recommend to anyone, at all.
Overall rating: 3/5 stars
(Some of the essays are worth 5 stars; others, only 1 or 2).
August 17, 2015
The intention of this anthology of essays is to explore and elucidate the evolving phenomena of multiculturalism in New Zealand. The objective of the editors and authors has been to stimulate further academic and public discourse whilst focusing on Asian perspectives and experiences. Recent socio-economic and political changes within the growing Asian and Muslim minorities inside Western societies worldwide has contributed to a renewed interest and an expanding body of literature (of variable quality) studying the internal dynamics and hermeneutical paradigms of such groups. New Zealand is no exception to this scrutiny. However the illumination of contemporary history, especially when politically or ideologically sensitive, is notoriously challenging, stimulating and prone to excessive and uninformed criticism. Spanning the disparate dialogues can be both a cautious and periodically indecisive exercise. In this erudite and complex book editors Gautam Ghosh and Jacqueline Leckie provide a constructive and sympathetic set of essays based on presentations at a February 2011 Otago University symposium entitled “Interrogating Multi-culturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand: An Asian Studies Perspective.” The strength and weakness of this tack is that it dispenses with the customary structural features that usually characterise such collections such as an obsessive attention to chronological, disciplinary or thematic restraints. There is no lengthy rediscovery of Edward Said or extrapolation on Orientalism for instance. How much one appreciates this book will depend in large part on how one appreciated the symposium.
The book has eleven chapters divided into four main sections. After an introduction by editor Gautam Ghosh, Part I features two essays under the title of “Biculturalism and Multiculturalism”. Two further chapters constitute Part II “The Performance of Asian Multiculturalism” whilst Part III “Multiculturalism and Religion” contains three. Finally Part IV “Multicultural Economies” includes two chapters and an afterword by editor Jacqueline Leckie. Leckie's contribution here is very apposite as she starts with a brief biography of a lady born to an Indian immigrant father and a Maori mother. Such narratives remind the reader that relationships and marriages between Asians and Maori did occur and may well have been more widespread than is often projected by most standard New Zealand histories. The two strongest articles by far must be that of Paul Spoonley and Erich Kolig. Spoonley’s essay is entitled "'I Made a Space for You': Renegotiating national identity and citizenship in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand." He provides a lucid and succinct history of immigration here, analysing the marginalization of diverse ethnic minorities, and outlines how he believes New Zealand has changed from an allegedly bicultural nation (British or Pakeha and Maori) to a thoroughly multicultural society in one generation. Kolig's exceptionally well written essay on Muslims in New Zealand is entitled "Whither Cultural Acceptance? Muslims and multiculturalism in New Zealand." He examines and tackles the “pragmatic brand of multiculturalism” (159) in this country and the questions of principle that arise regarding Muslim immigration, integration and communal religious needs. He concludes that the excessively liberal political approach has served New Zealand well so far but queries where exactly this is leading and how far this toleration (and to some extent, indifference) will go as the existing Muslim minority grows and expands.
If one was to proffer some constructive criticism then one must mention that the introductory essay by Ghosh was simply far too long and almost opaque in language. Ironically perhaps the first chapter may have benefited from further editing. Secondly Stephanie Dobson's article "(Mis)Reporting Islam: New Zealand Muslim women viewing 'us' viewing 'them'" was far too sympathetic to her subject material and it wasn’t clear if she had really probed any of them with any particularly challenging questions. This is a strong essay, to be sure, and certainly worth repeated reading. Dobson interviewed several Muslim women all over the country to assess their comprehension and response to the portrayal of Muslims within New Zealand media. Slightly predictably they all felt the representations were negative and that this had impacted on their treatment within New Zealand society. Lastly I thought it curious that there were no essays in this tome that were particularly critical of multiculturalism. Criticisms of the phenomenon were mentioned in passing by more than one contributor but there were no overtly hostile voices and this strikes me as a serious omission in an academic corpus.
Looking to the future of this country one might well ask where Multiculturalism and this burgeoning ethno-religious diversity in New Zealand is leading to. In the final analysis Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand elevates the field of research on this topic (both domestically and abroad) and will serve as a very useful tool and resource for graduate students and committed academics. It certainly deserves a broader readership. The scholarship in this compendium is very impressive and whilst the specific subject matter and some of the essays will not be of interest to absolutely everyone, it does plug a void and provide a valuable survey of the issues. Ghosh and Leckie should be congratulated for bringing to a wider audience a reference source like this. This anthology is above all helpful and reasonably accessible. It is an important contribution to a complex debate.
The book has eleven chapters divided into four main sections. After an introduction by editor Gautam Ghosh, Part I features two essays under the title of “Biculturalism and Multiculturalism”. Two further chapters constitute Part II “The Performance of Asian Multiculturalism” whilst Part III “Multiculturalism and Religion” contains three. Finally Part IV “Multicultural Economies” includes two chapters and an afterword by editor Jacqueline Leckie. Leckie's contribution here is very apposite as she starts with a brief biography of a lady born to an Indian immigrant father and a Maori mother. Such narratives remind the reader that relationships and marriages between Asians and Maori did occur and may well have been more widespread than is often projected by most standard New Zealand histories. The two strongest articles by far must be that of Paul Spoonley and Erich Kolig. Spoonley’s essay is entitled "'I Made a Space for You': Renegotiating national identity and citizenship in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand." He provides a lucid and succinct history of immigration here, analysing the marginalization of diverse ethnic minorities, and outlines how he believes New Zealand has changed from an allegedly bicultural nation (British or Pakeha and Maori) to a thoroughly multicultural society in one generation. Kolig's exceptionally well written essay on Muslims in New Zealand is entitled "Whither Cultural Acceptance? Muslims and multiculturalism in New Zealand." He examines and tackles the “pragmatic brand of multiculturalism” (159) in this country and the questions of principle that arise regarding Muslim immigration, integration and communal religious needs. He concludes that the excessively liberal political approach has served New Zealand well so far but queries where exactly this is leading and how far this toleration (and to some extent, indifference) will go as the existing Muslim minority grows and expands.
If one was to proffer some constructive criticism then one must mention that the introductory essay by Ghosh was simply far too long and almost opaque in language. Ironically perhaps the first chapter may have benefited from further editing. Secondly Stephanie Dobson's article "(Mis)Reporting Islam: New Zealand Muslim women viewing 'us' viewing 'them'" was far too sympathetic to her subject material and it wasn’t clear if she had really probed any of them with any particularly challenging questions. This is a strong essay, to be sure, and certainly worth repeated reading. Dobson interviewed several Muslim women all over the country to assess their comprehension and response to the portrayal of Muslims within New Zealand media. Slightly predictably they all felt the representations were negative and that this had impacted on their treatment within New Zealand society. Lastly I thought it curious that there were no essays in this tome that were particularly critical of multiculturalism. Criticisms of the phenomenon were mentioned in passing by more than one contributor but there were no overtly hostile voices and this strikes me as a serious omission in an academic corpus.
Looking to the future of this country one might well ask where Multiculturalism and this burgeoning ethno-religious diversity in New Zealand is leading to. In the final analysis Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand elevates the field of research on this topic (both domestically and abroad) and will serve as a very useful tool and resource for graduate students and committed academics. It certainly deserves a broader readership. The scholarship in this compendium is very impressive and whilst the specific subject matter and some of the essays will not be of interest to absolutely everyone, it does plug a void and provide a valuable survey of the issues. Ghosh and Leckie should be congratulated for bringing to a wider audience a reference source like this. This anthology is above all helpful and reasonably accessible. It is an important contribution to a complex debate.
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