Interdependent Kin in Māori Marine Environments

Bibliographic Data

ID18936638
AuthorsFiona Mccormack (0000-0001-7068-3538, University of Waikato)
Year2021
Volume91
Issue2
Pages197-215
Publication date2021-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOceania (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0029-8077 • E-ISSN: 1834-4461
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ocea.5308
OpenAlexW3185394249
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited44

This paper explores ascriptions of dependence and independence in Māori marine environments alongside the entrenchment of colonial constructions of hierarchical kinship organisation. The modelling of independence on liberal understandings of individualism is apparent in the development of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement of Māori commercial fisheries, wherein attributes of self‐reliance enabled through accumulation prevail. This articulates with a fisheries management regime whose logic is grounded in neoliberal market environmentalism, exacerbating tensions between iwi and hapū, two different levels of tribal organisation. The contemporary power ascribed to iwi, however, is more tempered than supposed, and the fluidity of hierarchical kin group positionings, noted in historical accounts, is still in existence today. Interdependence is historically continuous. It is expressed in the social relations embedded in cognatic kinship, marine tenures as well as kincentric ecologies and is inclusive of ancestors and fish species. The current claims of Māori to tribal seascapes are interpreted as an expression of interrelationships of stewardship, as a response to environmental demise and as a challenge to emergent social hierarchies

Environmental ethics · Environmentalism · Independence (probability theory) · Individualism · Interdependence · Kinship · Political science · Politics · Settlement (finance) · Social science · Sociology · Stewardship (theology) · Treaty · Treaty of Waitangi · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law

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