Thursday, September 24, 2015

Maori "Socialism"

Four out of five Maori believe the New Zealand Government is not doing enough to combat poverty in the community.

Around 17 percent of New Zealand's population, or 622,000 people, are assessed to be in poverty with Maori and Pacific Islanders considered to be some of the highest risk groups. 82 percent of Maori surveyed believe the government is not adequately addressing the issue. It compares with 51 percent of non-Maori.

Maori tend to have more "leftist" beliefs than Labour voting non-Maori with the majority of responses believing that many live in need because society is unfair. Auckland University's Professor Robert MacCulloch said other studies had found that people in poorer countries tended to share the same values as Maori people on issues such as believing that success came more from "luck and connections" than from "hard work". He said those beliefs were often understandable because of colonial histories that created very unfair societies in which power was held by a foreign elite.

 Maori are also 9 percent more likely to give the environment priority over economic growth compared with non-Maori New Zealanders.
SHARE THE WEALTH
SPARE THE PLANET
"This suggests that being indigenous has an effect on values around the environment," Dr. MacCulloch said.

Maori enterprises are built on a "stakeholder" model, where profits are shared with all members of an iwi rather than a few shareholders and are no longer become focused on the singular goal of raising shareholder returns."

The three authors Professor Robert MacCulloch, Dr Arthur Grimes and Fraser McKay have used the World Values Surveys of 1998, 2004 and 2011 to show that Maori have are much more collectivist and non-materialistic and have stronger kinship ties than other New Zealanders.

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3 comments:

Sid Knee said...

This is interesting how the spin of this piece makes it read totally different from the original piece in the New Zealand Herald, which gives the impression Maori need to become more capitalist thinking and work harder if they want to succeed

ajohnstone said...

Well noticed, Sid Knee, i'm glad people read this blog critically because the blog post did purposefully re-emphasise the authors free market-orientated conclusions. But who spun first...us or the authors?

Their views was based on interpretations about opinions and attitudes not research into an economic analysis of the benefits of being business-minded in contrast to community orientated. I suggest they imported their own bias into what the numbers meant, just as the blog did.

http://www.hauora.co.nz/resources/Maoripointofview.pdf
http://rangahau.co.nz/research-idea/27/

Maori businesses did not always follow the generally accepted economic models of best managerial or commercial practice. Collectively owned tribal-based structures sometimes impeded efficient decision-making, management and reporting. Cultural and social issues, such as the dependence of family groups on business for financial support or employment, often affected Māori businesses and their chances of succeeding. The ‘tātou tātou’ (we all look after each other) philosophy often makes it hard for Māori business owners to say no when asked to give away products or services. But there is more to a community than a financial reward and profit to a few individual members of it. The case that there would be collective benefit to all Maori from more individualistic private enterprise as argued but the researchers is not proven. There is an abundance of what is called "social capital" - voluntarism - within Maori culture

https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/journals-and-magazines/social-policy-journal/spj17/social-capital-and-voluntary-activity-giving-and-sharing-in-maori-and-non-maori-society.html


Sid Knee said...

Thanks for the further links, looking forward to reading through them