Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research Te Pae Rangahau Tauhōkai Ahurea

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NZ Identities bookNew Zealand Identities: Departures and Destinations

‘New Zealand Identities: Departures and Destinations’ is a book assembled by the Centre and comprises 15 different writers’ work examining issues of identity.

NZ Identities Book

The various peoples who have come to call New Zealand home have long histories of their own, but as a modern nation, New Zealand is young, and the identity-making here is dynamic. Such youth as a particular vibrance, and its own peculiar crises. New Zealanders have seen war, at home and abroad; they have sought peace, domestically and internationally. And whether New Zealanders will ever arrive at agreement on a singular definition of their national identity, what is clear is that the process of identity-making here is dynamic.

For this book, the Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research brought together 15 writers with diverse personal and scholarly backgrounds, to examine issues of identity as both a departing point and destination.

This book contains a common-wealth of reflections in the myriad ways New Zealanders recruit different conceptions of themselves and others to manage the complexities of daily life.

They all share a connection to this land, and they are all part of a conscious effort by partners in this nation to become self-aware, to make choices sentient to the many aspects of themselves that are reflected in the bodies, minds, communities and narratives of those around them, different in kind, but bound by a sense of belonging and longing to be.

Contributors

  • Introduction: Constructing New Zealand Identities (James H. Liu, Tim McCreanor, Tracey McIntosh,Teresia Teaiwa)
  • Citizenship, Identity and Belonging: Addressing the Mythologies of the Unitary Nation State in Aotearoa/New Zealand (David Pearson)
  • Maori Identities: Fixed, Fluid, Forced (Tracey McIntosh)
  • Sticks and stones may break my bones: Talking Pakeha Identities (Tim McCreanor)
  • History and Identity: A System of Checks and Balances for Aotearoa/New Zealand (James H. Liu)
  • Nation and Identity in the Waitangi Tribunal Reports (Giselle Byrnes)
  • Moving Beyond Cultural Essentialism (H.B. Levine)
  • Rethinking Inclusion and Biculturalism: Towards a More Relational Practice of Democratic Justice (Kelly Barclay)
  • The Changing Face of New Zealand’s Population and National Identity (Arvind Zodgekar)
  • Immigration, Acculturation and National Identity in New Zealand (Colleen Ward and En-Yi Lin)
  • New Zealand Chinese Identity: Sojourners, Model Minority and Multiple Identities (Manying Ip and David Pang)
  • Living in the City Ain’t So Bad: Cultural Identity for Young Maori in South Auckland (Belinda Borell)
  • Ambivalent Kinships? Pacific People in New Zealand (Teresia Teaiwa and Sean Mallon)
  • Representing New Zealand: Identity, Diplomacy and the Making of Foreign Policy (David Capie and Gerald McGhie)
  • 242 Who Are We? New Zealand Identity and Spirituality
  • Paul Morris
  • 100% Pure Conjecture: Accounts of Our Future State(s) (Bob Frame, Pala Molisa, Rhys Taylor, Hemi Toia and Wong Liu Shueng)
  • Afterword: The Evolution of an Inclusive National Identity (Joris de Bres, Race Relations Commissioner)

How to purchase a copy

Limited copies of New Zealand Identities: Departures and Destinations are available by contacting cacr@vuw.ac.nz. Price is NZ$39.95 plus postage and packaging.