Friday, July 02, 2021

Professor Elizabeth Rata asks, Ethno-Nationalism or Democratic-Nationalism?

 Highly recommended:

With the sudden emergence into our political life of the revolutionary report He Puapua, it is clear New Zealanders are at a crossroads. We will have to decide whether we want our future to be that of an ethno-nationalist state or a democratic-nationalist one.

Ethno-nationalism has political categories based on racial classification - the belief that our fundamental identity (personal, social and political) is fixed in our ancestry. Here the past determines the future. Identity, too, is fixed in that past. In contrast, democratic-nationalism has one political category - that of citizenship - justified by the shared belief in a universal human identity.

These two opposing approaches to how the nation is imagined, constituted and governed are currently in contention. We will have to choose which form of nationalism will characterise New Zealand by 2040.

More at Newshub 

3 comments:

david said...

The present government thinks it has already chosen for us and is rapidly implementing its decision ture parauri te ao

MPHW said...

Brilliant piece by the best academic thinker in New Zealand education - and a very courageous person as well.

Peter Salmon said...

I concur with MPHW.
Unfortunately, I think the regime is wedded to the ethno centric path, with all the issues and problems that implies, but which they seem to ignore.