Neoliberalism and indigenous knowledge: Māori health research and the cultural politics of New Zealand's “National Science Challenges”

Abstract

In 2012–13 the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) in New Zealand rapidly implemented a major restructuring of national scientific research funding. The “National Science Challenges” (NSC) initiative aims to promote greater commercial applications of scientific knowledge, reflecting ongoing neoliberal reforms in New Zealand. Using the example of health research, we examine the NSC as a key moment in ongoing indigenous Māori advocacy against neoliberalization. NSC rhetoric and practice through 2013 moved to marginalize participation by Māori researchers, in part through constructing “Māori” and “science” as essentially separate arenas—yet at the same time appeared to recognize and value culturally distinctive forms of Māori knowledge. To contest this “neoliberal multiculturalism,” Māori health researchers reasserted the validity of culturally distinctive knowledge, strategically appropriated NSC rhetoric, and marshalled political resources to protect Māori research infrastructure. By foregrounding scientific knowledge production as an arena of contestation over neoliberal values and priorities, and attending closely to how neoliberalizing tactics can include moves to acknowledge cultural diversity, this analysis poses new questions for social scientific study of global trends toward reconfiguring the production of knowledge about health. Study findings are drawn from textual analysis of MBIE documents about the NSC from 2012 to 2014, materials circulated by Māori researchers in the blogosphere in 2014, and ethnographic interviews conducted in 2013 with 17 Māori health researchers working at 7 sites that included university-based research centers, government agencies, and independent consultancies.