Knowledge and the politics of culture: An example from New Zealand’s higher education policy and practice

Abstract

This paper examines how, and with what effect, the policies and practices of the Maori Tertiary Education Framework enact the legislative requirement that New Zealand universities acknowledge the Treaty of Waitangi. The existence of these policies is explained in terms of elite emergence within the retribalizing context of New Zealand’s cultural politics. A culturalist discourse justifies the bounded nature of the two socio-political entities – the revived tribes and the government – and creates privileging brokerage mechanisms within which the elite emerges as a result of its representative function. Two of these mechanisms are the production of indigenous knowledge and controls over research. The claim that indigenous knowledge is an ideology in support of the tribal elite is justified by theorizing a fundamental difference between disciplinary knowledge and social knowledge (i.e. culture). Accordingly, the inclusion of indigenous epistemology and methodologies into the university compromises academic freedom by institutionalizing cultural politics in the university.