Culture is a complex thing.

[drcuriosity]

This came up in the context of a conversation about NZ culture, and what it is to be a New Zealander or an "NZ European". As sometimes happens when I get to thinking about stuff, it got long. For anyone who's interested, here's what I wrote. Rough though it may be.

Oh, and do feel free to ask if there's any terms I use that you'd like to know and can't figure out from context.

---

Nationally, I identify as a New Zealander. It'll continue to be my identity when I emigrate, and not just because it's what's on the birth certificate and passport. It's the country where I was born and grew up.

In heritage, I'm European: English, Cornish, Welsh Romnichal. First ancestor got here in the 1830s: jumped ship up in Kororareka, and the local Maori tribe helped to hide him until the ship was out of port. I don't have a full whakapapa, but I've read enough that I know where my family's roots are in both land and values.

In social class, probably middle class/professional. I've mixed with the rich and the poor while I was growing up, so I can be pretty mobile when I want. I find it hard to look at society in terms of "us" and "them" because I'm so used to recognising some "us" in everyone I meet.

Subculturally, a mix of academic, geek, gamer, goth/rivethead, steampunk. Those are "my people" wherever I go in the world.

Culturally, largely "Pakeha" but really a mix of a things. I grew up in Christchurch, as did my dad and his. Mum was born in Fiji, grew up on a mine site and went to boarding school with a whole bunch of different kinds of people from all over. Her family's spread liberally around the South Pacific. Some things I don't feel comfortable doing because they're tabua(tapu), regardless of the fact that I'm not ethnically Kai Viti or Maori.

I went to a school with mostly Pakeha kids, but had Maori language and culture classes in primary, intermediate and high school - it was a hard decision to drop Maori after Third Form because I didn't have enough slots for everything I wanted to do. I'm not Kai Tahu, but I still feel like Aoraki's my mountain and Waimakariri's my river, and I feel a responsibility to treat the land right and see it protected for future generations.

I think it's damned hard to draw a line around a culture and say this is "us", even when it's your own. Maybe especially if it's your own. Things that someone else might see as essential might be something you don't embrace, or directly reject. Culture seems less of a clearly-defined territory, and more of a collection of landmarks that you can illustrate your position by.

What I express and how I feel about stuff isn't any kind of "political correctness" affectation, despite what some people may think. It's a product of who I am and where I come from. I can't un-see the blurry edges, and I can't paint it black and white.

Comments

[drcuriosity]

I'm a "New Zealander" to the degree that it's shorthand for the people and places and values I experienced where I grew up. National identity isn't a big part of my personal identity, compared to all the other signifiers that are there, but it's still there in the background. I guess it's almost more personal context than identity as such.

[ashbet]

I don't necessarily agree (says the American born in France) -- just some of the terms used, and the mindset behind them, seem to be fairly unique to the geographical and ethnic background *of* New Zealand.

For example -- my great-grandmother was African Creole and Native American (Blackfoot.) Due to miscegenation laws, she and my grandfather had to go so far north (to Minnesota) to marry that he could pass her off as being of "Spanish" ancestry -- because then they could legally get married. And that particular set of circumstances is unique to the United States.

Yes, some English colonies had similar laws, but the background of African slavery and Native American repression/extinction/assimilation is somewhat unique to the United States. England's African colonies had different sets of circumstances, as did Indian ones (for example, the ethnic Indian population has always outnumbered the British presence there, which changes some of the dynamics.)

Let's just say that, had morbid_curious been born in the US to the same parents, there would have been no *question* of him learning Maori (or a Native American language) in school, or feeling in any way connected to the country's original population's culture. Probably the same thing regarding South Pacific traditions.

This is a really neat post -- I enjoyed reading it! (And I'm curious about the tabua thing, if you're comfortable talking about it.)

-- A <3

[geeknz.livejournal.com]

This only reinforces my point that the condition of "New Zealandness" is first and foremost a legal concept, and that the way it affects people is through the coercive power the concept does and doesn't deploy.

I'd have to disagree on this.
Being a New Zealand Resident or Citizen are a legal concepts. However I know people who have emigrated overseas, and are now Citizens of other countries that have required them to give up their New Zealand Citizenship to become so, but are still considered a "New Zealander".
I also know people who are legally New Zealand Citizens here, but are not consider New Zealanders, by themselves or others around them. They're accepted, welcomed, even praised for becoming Citizens, but just not considered "New Zealanders".

There's something cultural that applies to be considered a "New Zealander", related to a sense of having grown up here.
I don't know the definition for it, or even if there is a precise definition. I can tell you I know that there's a sense that even some people who've grown up here aren't true "New Zealanders", notably people who've never been outside Auckland.

[drcuriosity]

That's something that I've potentially got coming up in my future, too. If I emigrate to the United States, should I be aiming for permanent residency or full U.S. Citizenship? The latter would no doubt make it easier for work purposes and all, but I'm somewhat loath to renounce this country. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[norectangulars.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm aware you're not required to give up your other citizenships to become a US citizen, you just aren't allowed to take on any more after that point.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

And really, those other countries don't care if the U.S. claims you've renounced them or whatever, that bit of silliness only exists on their soil, not elsewhere.

[hep.livejournal.com]

you dont have to give up your other citizenship unless you claim refugee status. i hold croat and bosnian cit still and i am an american cit as well. they WANT you to give it up, and will try and coerce you to do so, but you can still retain it.

[hep.livejournal.com]

agreed. my boyfriend immigrated from the ussr to the us as a teenager, and since they claimed refugee status he was required to renounce his russian citizenship. however he still considers himself culturally russian, and nationally american, as do other people he meets. you can give up your legal claim to citizenship without renouncing your culture, and vice versa in some cases.

[hep.livejournal.com]

depending on the person, it can be impossible. some native tribes were wiped out, some native tribes were fully "assimilated" by white cultures. this wikipedia article gives a semi-decent overview, but things like indian schools, the office of indian affairs, the dawas rolls, etc wiped out or replaced a lot of culture that previously existed and is now completely gone with no trace or records. some people with native blood are so far removed from their culture that the cultures are not willing or able to accept them back into the fold. it is a very complicated situation made so by hundreds of years of active genocide against the native population. and there is a huge protection of the culture from white people exploiting it for their own gains, so often anglos who would wish to immerse themselves in or learn about native culture are turned away. of course there still ARE places, etc where they can learn those things, but it is a very complicated issue because of the history of the people here.

[drcuriosity]

As far as tabu/tapu is concerned, it's mostly little things. Like being careful about touching someone's head, and not sitting on tables (especially those that could be used for preparing or eating food). I'd also rather sit on the floor than stand if other people are sitting, which has confused other people from "why are you sitting on the floor?" backgrounds.

I think the primary things people would notice about my family are food-related (curry is a staple meal, and some Pacific Island influences here and there) and clothing-related. While we don't usually wear them out and about in the city in New Zealand, my family tend to wear sulus pretty often in summer around the house. Once the temperature gets up above 25°C/77°F or so, my mum might even take off her cardigan! :-)

[drcuriosity]

I think it's a far more useful shorthand when I'm not in New Zealand. When I'm overseas, or talking to people overseas, I might be talking to someone who has a relatively similar upbringing and experiences to mine, but there are still enough points of difference that it's useful to recognise a different national context.

While it's true that a number of those differences can be illustrated by the country's legal frameworks (how we treat law and order, establish and deploy government services, and so forth), our laws don't exist independently of our society. Despite what some politicians might prefer, I don't feel it's a one-way imposition of laws that shape society. While not perfectly, our laws reflect society too.

[isaacfreeman.livejournal.com]

Is it a very useful shorthand, though? Were these people and places exemplified by their "New Zealand-ness" as opposed to other contexts? I'm pretty sure if you'd been raised in the same circumstances, by the same people, with the same experiences in some other country, you'd be basically the same person.

That seems to be a contradiction in terms. You can perhaps find similar or equivalent circumstances, people and experiences in other countries, but they can't be the same.

Morbid's metaphor of landmarks is interesting, I think, because it captures something of the non-hierarchical and non-discrete nature of culture. I don't think you can point to a particular aspect of culture and say "that's not a New Zealand thing, it's a Maori thing", or "that's not a New Zealand thing because Australians have it too". But you can compare your landmarks with those of other people and see the similarities and differences.

Someone who grew up in the same era as me, in a similar country, with similar socioeconomic background and education and such may share many landmarks, but will still differ in others.

People from Britain have, on average, a different sense of the natural environment, because they don't distinguish between farmland and wilderness the way New Zealanders do. But New Zealanders, I think, share that distinction with Americans. On the other hand, Americans dont inherit a set of assumptions about what different types of British accent signify in terms of class: most don't have a strong instinct for the difference between a posh accent and a Cockney one. Australians and New Zealanders share an egalitarian ethic that's different from the US or UK, but Australians don't have any equivalent of the powhiri as a public ritual.

I think there are few New Zealand landmarks that are completely distinct from those in every other country, and not identified with a particular New Zealand ethnic group. But I do think we have a set of landmarks that's different from the set of any other country. It's the combination of things that delineates a culture, not each individual thing.

To me that means identifying the New Zealand element of your background about as crucial as the brown-haired part of it.

I find it useful whenever I'm talking to someone from overseas. Just as I find the mathematics part of my background worth keeping in mind when I'm talking to someone who studied mainly literature, or the Pakeha when I'm talking to my Maori-Chinese New Zealander brother-in-law. I'm not sure the cultures have much meaning except in their distinctions from each other. But they're crucial to understanding why I think differently, in a way that hair colour isn't.

[gryphonwing.livejournal.com]

I appreciated this, not least because it's very very different from my own set of identities. I'm from the Northeast US. I really enjoy understanding how different people construct identity, how people experience culture... I'm in sociology, so I guess that's to be expected. Plus I'd love to visit NZ and every glimpse I get intrigues me more. I think it's possible that someone from my region of the US would be pretty comfortable there. :)

But I also felt very pleased with myself that I knew what "pakeha" and "whakapapa" meant (well, and "tapu"). I'm pretty sure I know fewer than ten words of Maori, but those are among them. Let's see: aroha, ae, tama, wahine, um... hongi, haere mai, taihoa. I think that's all that are hiding in the deep recesses of my mind. No clue where I got them! Oh, and the word for jade, it starts with P, right? Pou... something.

The primary reason this made me smile is that I've never set out to learn Maori and I have no idea at all where I got this small handful of words.

[nos911.livejournal.com]

Pounamu =)

[drcuriosity]

Yup, pounamu :-) More specifically, that tends to get used for New Zealand jade. My cousin is a professional carver and artist, but when he's doing non-traditional pieces he often uses a lot of imported jades that aren't considered pounamu.

:D

[angryangeltoo.livejournal.com]

I think I have just learned more about you in reading that post than in the 3 years you have been on my flist :D Awesome :D

[mal3ficent.livejournal.com]

This is a really cool post and I enjoyed reading it. I can find similarities and differences, which is a good thing.

And you can always go back to learning reo. I did. :)

[drcuriosity]

I've certainly continued picking up bits and pieces of the language since then, even if not in dedicated study. maoridictionary.co.nz seems to get visited on a semi-regular basis :-)

I'm glad that I come from a place where resources like that exist and get adequate support and availability. For some of my game-related work, I was looking into some Native American languages and culture recently - it seems a whole lot more difficult to find good online resources available for many of those.

[dissonantbeauty]

"Culture seems less of a clearly-defined territory, and more of a collection of landmarks that you can illustrate your position by."

I like this. ^_^

I wonder, though, if it's not perhaps a more accurate reflection of "Western" or even "contemporary" culture, or rather a recognition that in our multi-cultural society "culture" is much more personal than it might otherwise be, in part because of our exposure to many different cultures/sub-cultures, and also because of the value that we (as "Westerners") place on the individual.

Apologies if this is out of place, but identity and the construction of Self are topics that interest me to no end and I couldn't resist sharing my opinion.

[drcuriosity]

No, I don't think it is out of place at all :-) The quote you make is certainly how I approach culture, but if you were to look at more collectivist values like the Chinese tend to have, or a more closed/exclusive culture like the Rom, the answers would likely be quite different.

In Western, contemporary, especially internet-enabled circles I think we tend to be used to cultures, subcultures, values, traditions and everything being a lot more blended and blendable. Influences more eclectic, and less encapsulated and cohesive. It's important to recognise that that's not the only experience, community-concept and self-concept that people will have.

[dissonantbeauty]

I think I see what you're saying. I'm envisaging a sort of 3-D Venn diagram of cultures with "me" in the middle?

[drcuriosity]

I can remember someone in online chat once asking "Why do the Indians all run dairies, anyway?" Having talked to my local Indian dairy owner, I found that it was because he enjoyed working and making a profit for himself directly, rather than putting all his hard work into someone else's business, and it gave him the chance to both work and spend time with his family at the same time.

After building up his assets enough with the dairy, he went on start a clothing retail company, and sold the dairy to a Korean guy with a young family. For the new guy, it was a similar story: he got to work, spend more time with his family and study business so he can make something more for himself down the line.

I told the guy in chat about that, and got an "Oh, guess that makes sense. Hadn't thought about it that way." Just a different context for the balance of work and family, and suddenly a stereotype makes sense :-)

[dissonantbeauty]

That's a great example of how work is experienced differently over different cultures. It ties in nicely to something I was reading last night. :)

[hep.livejournal.com]

this is an amazing post and i love it.