The objective of this paper is to examine the question of postmodernity as it might apply to the New Zealand, one of the world’s developed, democratic, societies. Although, as shall be seen, this society possesses a number of features by which it might be designated a postmodern one, at the same time it has made tribalism an integral part of itself, both in law and in a range of governmental policy areas.

Tribes and tribalism have frequently been defined by social scientists as pre-modern phenomena. To what extent the importance placed on them in New Zealand might contradict claims that the nation is entering an era of postmodernity is one of the principal concerns of the paper. It should be noted that this paper expresses the viewpoint of a Pakeha (non-Maori) sociologist, with all the limitations that that might imply.

The Road to Modernity: In Brief

According to Ernest Gellner: "North American society was born modern and sprang from those elements in English society which contributed most to the emergence of the modern world" (Gellner, 1992, p.52). This is an acceptable formulation only if one recognises that the metaphorical ‘birth’ of North America was only possible on the basis of the, literal, death of the pre-existing tribal society of indigenous America.

And on that basis, we could say that settler New Zealand was similarly born modern, that it entered into the modern world via a white colonial gate that does not quite fit into Therborn’s model (Therborn, 1995) of four routes to modernity. That is, there was specificity about the route by which the originally Maori society that its inhabitants called Aotearoa (literally, ‘long white cloud’) became first the British colony and then the independent, modern, nation called New Zealand.

The defining point in New Zealand’s road to modernity was the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed in 1840 between the British Crown and leaders of the indigenous, Maori, tribes. The Treaty promised Maori the continued ownership of their lands, forests and fisheries in perpetuity, in return for which Maori (supposedly) accepted British sovereignty over the nation which was to become New Zealand. At that point in history, Maori were the majority of the population and the (mainly) British settlers a small minority.

The British colonial regime then sought to provide land for settlement by British migrants. At first, it sought to buy Maori land and attempted to individualise Maori customary tenure to facilitate this. But when land sales failed to meet the demands of settlers, the State embarked on a course of war and land confiscation. These activities were justified in the name of progress. The leaders of the regime sought the "’detribalisation of the Maori. Europeans commonly believed that the Maori had to be converted into a brown-skinned Britisher as the condition of his survival...History is progress...progress lay in becoming more like an Englishman"(Oliver, 1960, p.251).

The colony’s leaders could thus devote themselves to what Knights (1997, p.11) ironically refers as "such grand narratives as humanity, civilization" and "prosperity". These modernist dreams could only be pursued by means of eradicating the ‘pre-modern’ social formation of Aotearoa. Maori had been "civilised enough to grant permission for colonisation to occur in a Treaty-enshrined legal fashion...In all other respects they remained a primitive ‘other’ whom it was right to dispossess" (Jackson, 1995, p.7).

The Treaty’s ‘guarantees’ to Maori proved worthless, the road to modernity in New Zealand meant the dispossession of Maori land and resources and the marginalisation, economically, culturally and socially, of the Maori people. Colonisation and Maori dispossession thus facilitated modernisation: the construction of what was to become a prosperous, industrialised, democratic, capitalist, society.

New Zealand became part of the ‘modern’ world. The question that must then be raised is: to what extent can it be said that New Zealand is now becoming a postmodern society? To narrow that question down to manageable proportions, it is proposed to focus on a definition of postmodernity as being "an historical period that is believed by some to mark the end of modernity" (Lemert, 1997, pp.26-27). That is, postmodernity is defined as "a new stage of (or beyond) history" (Calhoun, 1994, p.171).

In this reading, postmodernity is a "purportedly new state of world affairs" which has been emerging since the 1960’s (Lemert, 1997, pp.26-27) and into which nations like New Zealand are entering. Thus postmodernity becomes something akin to a new stage in the scheme of development of industrialised nations outlined almost forty years ago by Walt Whitman Rostow (Rostow, 1963). Rostow traced a path of economic (and accompanying societal) changes from the traditional to the modern. What is being argued now is that modernity itself has now had its day and is being superseded (Note that Lyotard, (1991, p.25)however, rejects all attempts at making postmodernity the 'after' of modernity, arguing that "historical periodization belongs to an obsession that is characteristic of modernity.)

What might be the basis of this development? For some analysts, postmodernity is but the latest phase of capitalism. In Jameson’s view, it is the cultural manifestation of "late capitalism" (Jameson, 1995). Harvey (1989) takes a similar position, although he also associates postmodernity with a shift from Fordism to flexible accumulation. For Calhoun (1994) too, postmodernity is the latest stage of capitalism, although he is critical of both Harvey and Jameson for taking a reductionist approach to the issue. He sees the danger in reducing a complex set of phenomena to the status of being a cultural (superstructural) echo or reflexion of changes in the ‘economic base’.

Harvey’s concept of postmodernity does go beyond this in that his reference to a shift from Fordism to flexible accumulation identifies one of a number of economic, societal, organisation and cultural changes that have been seen as markers, or characteristics, of postmodernity. A growing number of authors have added an increasing range of what they see as it’s defining characteristics. For example, Bauman states that postmodernity is a "self-reproducing, pragmatically self-sustainable and logically self-contained social condition defined by distinctive features of its own" and adds that its those features are "institutionalised pluralism, variety, contingency and ambivalence"(1992, pp. 187-188. Italics in the original).

For Crooks et al (1992) an important part of the process of postmodernization is that the previously rigid boundaries between social groups become less unimportant or disappear. So class, gender and ethnicity decline in social significance and so also do some of their characteristic forms of expression, including class-based political action..." (p.35). This decline can be associated both with the rise of social movement politics and with postmodernity seen as a more diverse and pluralistic society which accepts, and occasionally celebrates, difference.

Other authors have linked postmodernity with the arrival of a postindustrial economy, ie one in which the service sector plays a dominant part (See Rose, 1991, on this). In this vision, the secondary sector industries that were the dynamo of economic modernisation become less significant – as a source of employment, of innovation- than the tertiary sector industries. Allied to this line of analysis is the theme that postmodern society is a consumer-society, in which the driving force of the economy is consumption, rather than production and in which individuals derive their identity more from consumption r than from their role in the production process (Lyon, 1994, Bauman, 1998).

To further the argument of this paper, in Table One below are presented a number of what can be said to be defining characteristics of postmodernity as a societal phenomenon that is emerging primarily in Western nations. These characteristics are derived from the writings of a number of authors, including the ones cited above. The list that follows is not meant to be exhaustive nor to be applicable equally in all Western societies. It is very much a rough guide to a complex set of phenomena.

If we can accept that the possession of such a set of conditions might define a nation as postmodern, how does New Zealand fit within such a framework? At a superficial examination, it would seem to possess each of the above characteristics to a greater or lesser degree, and thus be open to being identified as an emerging postmodern society. A brief analysis of some of the important political, economic social and cultural changes that have been occurring will help to clarify that point.

For instance, from 1945 to 1984 the country was governed by a conservative (National) Party or the Labour Party, but within a framework in which both parties accepted an essentially social democratic consensus based on Keynesian economics and the continuing expansion of a Fabian welfare state. (James, 1992) That consensus ended in 1984 when a Labour government supporting free market economics gained power, to be followed by almost a decade of National government supporting the same more market approach to economic governance.

The old social democracy is dead, just as it is in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, for comparison. The current Labour-led government no longer subscribes to a centralised, Statist, planned view of the economy, nor to any form of Keynesian interventionism. But it also repudiates many of the verities of the free market that were until so recently considered articles of faith. The electorate itself repudiated those verities when it voted to elect a government that promised to strike a more humane balance between the State and the market: a local variant of the ‘Third Way’.

The salience of class diminished partly as a result of the closures or downsizing that occurred within the manufacturing, mining and primary processing sectors, with the attendant negative impacts on the working class communities and company towns built around or dependent on them. Factories that provided jobs for workers who lived in State housing areas have closed down in an increasing number. In 1999 the last car assembly plant shut up shop. Rather than working class communities, those housing areas are now more likely to be the place of residence of beneficiaries: the unemployed, solo parents, the old. It seems appropriate to refer to a process of what Zolberg (1995) has called ‘working-class dissolution’ has having taken place.

If postmodernist theorists of organisation such as Boje and Dennehy (1994) and Clegg (1990) are to be believed, postmodernity is already an actuality in the workplace. For New Zealand has gone far in realising the achieved utopia of debureaucratisation, flexibilisation and decentralisation that apparently mark the postmodern organisation. Insofar as it is also marked by dedifferentiation and a breaking down of boundaries, then the erosion of traditional demarcations in the workplace and the adoption of Japanised methods of teamworking also imply a postmodernization of the workplace.

At the same time, a combination of privatisation and reorganisation in the State sector, plus relocations, downsizing and closures in the private sector have made employment more contingent and insecure. We have perhaps moved closer to the USA in this regard. Bauman’s words aptly summarise the changing reality for the workforce: "One cannot build long-term hopes around one’s job, profession, skills even; one can bet that, before long, the job will vanish, the profession will change beyond recognition, the skills will cease to be in demand" (1996, pp.51-52).

To the extent that unions are class institutions, the fact that they currently represent only 17% of all workers (Crawford, Harbridge and Walsh, 2000) is a further indication of the decline of class as a structuring principle in our society.

The growth of the service sector means that it now employs around 70% of the workforce, hence the overall shape of the labour market is more that of a post-industrial economy than anything else. The present Government has enacted legislation to encourage unions and collective bargaining, but it can be argued that this alone is insufficient to spark a major revival of collectivist institutions centred on class in a society in which class as a focus of identity has lost much of its relevance.

As the ideology and politics of class have lessened in importance, so too has there been a continuing growth in the relevance and the salience of social movement politics. This in itself is a reflexion of a more diverse and pluralised society. The women’s, peace, anti-nuclear, gay, Maori (see below), anti-free trade/WTO and environmentalist movements are examples of that form of politics. The presence of Green Party MPs in our Parliament is one indicant of the shift from class to issue politics. So too is the concern about GM foods that has led to the Government instituting a Royal Commission to investigate the issue.

All shades of the political spectrum must now position themselves in response to the social movements. The major coalition partner, Labour, is seen as more ‘politically’ correct than the main opposition party, National. It has a well-organised feminist wing, a Maori MPs caucus, and openly gay and transsexual MPs. But when she was the Prime Minister, National Party leader Jenny Shipley attended the ‘Heroes Parade’ (our equivalent to Australia’s Gay Mardi Gras parade), which is held in Auckland, in order to court the city’s important gay vote.

In the postmodern era of contingency, identity has become more fluid, more a matter of choice. Perhaps the simplest example of this can be found in our five yearly Censuses. Once they tried to nail an individual’s ethnicity down with mathematical precision: you could be identified as one half Pakeha, three-eighths Maori and one-eighth Chinese. Now you are free to choose, just as individuals can also choose whether they wish to be included on the Maori electoral roll or the general roll. Our country was recently involved, in Las Vegas, in an excellent example of the contemporary fluidity of identity. That was when the Samoan-born Kiwi with a recently manufactured US accent, David Tua, fought the West Indian/ Canadian/ Briton Lennox Lewis for the world heavyweight boxing title.

The economic changes that have occurred since 1984 in New Zealand were also intended to transform the nation into a consumer society. For the New Right it was a matter of faith that consumer sovereignty prevailed in a competitive, market, economy. A number of economic policies and institutional reforms, including the near elimination of all tariffs, the floating of the dollar, cuts in income tax rates, the wholesale privatisation of State enterprises, and the reduction in the barriers to overseas investment in the nation, were intended to facilitate this (Kelsey, 1997). And now we can truly be said to be a consumer society, with our "cathedrals of consumption" (Ritzer, 1999) - the malls, the fast-food outlets, etc. - our credit cards and our continuing current account deficit partly caused by a tendency to over-consume imports relative to our exports (Statistics, New Zealand, 1998, OECD, 1999, Fallow, 2000).

Superficially, then, New Zealand displays sufficient of the recognised symptoms for it to be diagnosed as a postmodern society. This reading of our society unfortunately suffers from one serious weakness: it does not take into account the resurgence of the tribe as a core element in our economy and society.

In the classical sociological tradition tribes and tribalism are part of humanity’s pre-modern past, to be superseded by a modernity based on reason and science (Ray, 1999). This is echoed in Rostow’s (1963) charting of an economic path of progress from ‘traditional to modern status’ and on to the age of high mass consumption (p.163). A more recent use of tribalism in a negative sense, that is, as an indicant of ‘backwardness’ can be found in a speech made in 2000 by M. Moore, the New Zealander who currently heads the World Trade Organisation. Speaking, ironically, to a Socialist Youth Festival, Moore refers to economic openness as "the surest way to overcome tribalism" (Cited in Henwood, 2000).

Australia, Canada and the United States share a common historical heritage with New Zealand in that each of these nations is a former British colony in which a white settler group (and their descendants) eventually became a demographic majority. Thus in contemporary New Zealand, of the total population of just under 4 million, 14.5% define themselves as Maori (Statistics New Zealand, 2000). The settler group, in each case too, attained, by one means or another, political and economic control over their respective nations. But now we come to a divergence, for whereas tribes are marginal (in several ways) in those three comparator nations, in New Zealand they have, in the last fifteen years or so, become central to our national development.

This centralisation of tribes and tribalism figures significantly in the discourse about whom we are, nationally, collectively and individually. It is a fundamental aspect of debates about what it means to be a New Zealander, and what it means to be defined as Maori. But on a much more concrete level, tribes and tribalism have very material and practical effects. They are a core element on debates about the distribution of economic resources and on income levels, they are matters written into legislation and given institutional effect in a number of areas such as education, social and trade policy.

The key to this is the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1985 the Waitangi Tribunal, a semi-State body, was empowered to hear Maori claims, dating from 1840, concerning the unjust and/or unlawful loss of land and other resources. The Tribunal is intended to function as a means of providing reparation and restitution and hopefully, of promoting reconciliation between Maori and Pakeha. The Tribunal takes its starting point as New Zealand in 1840, and the Treaty that was then signed between the Crown and the tribes. It is empowered to hear claims from tribes (or groups of tribes), and hence it has facilitated a retribalisation of Maori.

The Tribunal has before it a long waiting list of Maori tribal claimants. To date it has recommended to the Government, which must negotiate any final agreement with the parties concerned, two major settlements. Those were with the Tainui and Ngai Tahu tribes (iwi) and involved the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars and the return of land and resources previously owned by the Crown. In 1989 the State also established a Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission that gave Maori a set percentage of the national fishing quota as well as cash compensation and a share of the nation’s largest fishing company. The assets of the Commission were to be distributed on a tribal basis; originally worth (NZ) $170 million, they are now worth (NZ) $800 million (Bidois, 2000, Taylor, 2001)

What is of relevance to this paper is that the basis of settling Treaty claims and accessing fishing assets has been established as a tribal one. The Treaty was made with the tribes; the reparations are to be made with tribes or with sub-tribes (hapu) which can produce evidence of having land or resources unlawfully taken from them. Tribes that have been seeking reparations from the Crown have rejected the concept (and practice) of pan-Maori settlements with the Crown. As the Ngai Tahu tribe has put it: "The Treaty is between iwi and the Crown not Maori and the Crown. The duty of the Crown is to deal with individual iwi partners " (Cited in Rata, 2000a, p.175).

But how does one define a tribe? The Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission uses criteria that include having a common ancestor, a fixed geographical area, acknowledgment as a tribe by other tribes and the possession of a main marae (meeting house) and the existence of sub-tribes within the tribal structure. (McCarthy, A. and Shopland, A. 1997). It is within the framework of these criteria the tribal groups such as Ngati Kuri, that had been broken-up and had disappeared from the maps of tribal areas, have had to re-invent themselves in order to be part of the settlement and fisheries assets claims processes (Rata, 2000a).

For an individual Maori to benefit from any settlement reached by a tribe, she/he must establish her/his membership of it. The means by which that is done is by showing a genealogical linkage, by tracing one’s whakapapa (ancestry). According to Ngai Tahu leader Sir Tipene O’Reagan: "you attach to iwi by whakapapa and that is what in fact makes you Maori" (Cited in Gamble, 1997). Hence, you attach to a traditional tribe in a traditional way. The Treaty settlement process therefore provides a major impetus for a revival of tribes and of tribalism.

Tribes have also gained recognition in other important areas of everyday life. Under the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act of 1989, for instance, they were also recognised as social service providers with whom the government could contract to provide services (Ministry of Social Policy, 1999). The Treaty of Waitangi itself has become a reference point for, and a yardstick by which to judge, policies in a range of other areas. To cite only one example, tertiary institutions are required to adhere to Treaty principles (eg partnership) in their treatment of students, their academic programmes and their staffing policies.

Policies that contain references to the Treaty or to tribal recognition have become controversial. Proposals by the Government to have local tribal representation, by right, on new, otherwise elected, local health boards had to be modified because of the reaction against them. That representation would have been restricted to tribes with customary authority in the areas concerned. One element of the reaction against this, made by a prominent Maori Labour MP is that it would have discriminated against those Maori who were not members of the tribes concerned. In the nation’s largest city Auckland, for instance, 90% of Maori do not have a genealogical association with the two main tribal groupings. (Tamihere, 2000).

Similarly, a proposed free-trade agreement with Singapore had to be amended to pass through Parliament because of an opposition-led campaign against provisions it contained that referred to recognition of the Treaty and Treaty settlements. (Middlebrook, 2000). National, the main opposition party, did not think it inconsistent that it had included similar clauses in treaties when it was in power. National was playing on the populist opposition to the inclusion of the Treaty in a widening range of laws and policies. Just as there has been a backlash in the USA against affirmative action policies, there is resentment amongst a proportion of the Pakeha New Zealand population against what is seen as a fixation with the Treaty and a privileging of Maori.

Arguments that have been made for a new constitutional framework that would take the Treaty of Waitangi as its starting point and concede political autonomy (or sovereignty) to the tribes (Building the Constitution, 2000), have proved even more controversial. Maori nationalists seek to regain complete sovereignty over New Zealand which would again become Aotearoa, less radical groups would seek political and economic autonomy for the tribes in their own tribal areas. Opponents of such proposals include those from both the ‘left’ (Rata, 2000a, 2000b) and the ‘right’ (see Spoonley in Wilson and Yeatman, 1995) who see the tribes as undemocratic, authoritarian and hierarchical. Rata (2000a) goes so far as to see revived tribalism as a threat to democracy as a whole.

Tribes and tribalism thus occupy New Zealand in a manner that seems to have no parallel in other nations that share a common post-British colonial heritage. They have been made a core element of our society and in a way that does not seem to have a parallel in other former white-majority colonies. By making tribes and tribalism so much a central part of itself, it might be said that New Zealand is re-inscribing a (paradigmatically) pre-modern social formation within the heart of what is otherwise an emerging postmodern nation. The extent to which contemporary tribes are pre-modern formations is an issue that will next be explored.

Maori arrived in New Zealand several hundred years before the Europeans. Each Maori tribe can trace its origins to individuals who were in the seven canoes (waka) that first brought Maori here. These are what can be called the traditional tribes. However, to make a claim based on grievances arising since the Treaty of Waitangi, a tribe has to be officially recognised as such. In some cases this has meant that a tribe has had to reinvent itself. This is what occurred with Ngati Kuri, a small tribe from the far North of New Zealand that had been dispossessed of and scattered from its ancestral lands, and whose name did not appear on any official maps locating the nation’s tribes. Ngati Kuri had to reinvent itself to become a traditional tribe (See Rata, 2000a, on how it did this).

Although tradition can be reinvented and revived, the process of so doing can be problematic (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983). The existing iwi/tribal groupings have been active in promoting the revival of Maori language, and the development of Maori-language kindergartens (kohanga reo – language nests) and schools has been an integral part of this activity. The tribes have also sought to reassert Maori cultural and spiritual beliefs and practices. These practices can include ceremonials and rituals based on the tribe’s marae, whilst some individual Maori have also revived the tradition of wearing facial tattoos (moko).

Despite which, Maori society and culture has been irretrievably affected (or infected?) by British and European ideas, practices and technology for over 150 years. If it is traditional to say a prayer (karakia) before a meeting, then this demonstrates the incorporation of Christianity into Maori culture. Maori language has had to incorporate Western words such as aeroplane and computer. Maori use Western musical instruments, such as guitars, as part of their cultural repertoire. The Tanui tribe, in the 19^th Century, and for strategic reasons, adopted a system of hereditary monarchy so that the present, formal, head of the tribe is the Maori Queen. Some of the other tribes adopted a Europeanised version of chieftainship, so that this role became the prerogative of a hereditary elite.

There is not, and there cannot be, a revival of the ‘pre-modern’ tribalism that existed prior to 1840. Even the hardest-line cultural purists cannot eradicate that amount of shared history. Neither can the high level of intermarriage that has occurred between Maori and Pakeha be ignored. Nor would it be possible to construct, to put it in Marxist terms, an economic base on which to erect such a cultural and social superstructure. As Rata (1997, 2000a) has argued, the contemporary relationship of Maori to traditional resources such as land and waters is not the traditional one. It is about using these resources to produce commodities within the capitalist market place.

For example, Ngai Tahu has argued that the function of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission is to establish tribal property rights in fishing, which Rata interprets as meaning that the resources "can be used as capital for commodity production and further capital accumulation" (Rata, 2000a, p.212). Rata (2000b) has also gone on to criticise tribal leaders as comprising a new Maori comprador bourgeoisie and to argue that this bourgeoisie exploits its own proletariat whilst "promoting a neotraditionalist ideology of revived communality"(pp.58-59, 225-226). The assertion that they form a new class is a problematic one, but the tribal leaders in charge of settlement monies and resources have certainly become corporate executives. Like all corporate executives, they are responsible for managing investments, which they have done with a greater (Ngai Tahu) or a lesser (Tanui) degree of success.

A further problem with identifying tribes as solely pre-modern phenomena arises because of attempts by urban Maori leaders to have the definition of tribe widened to reflect the realities of everyday life for most Maori. The 1996 Census revealed that 83.1% of Maori are urban dwellers (Te Puni Kokiri, 2000a) and the majority of them live outside their 1840 ancestral area (Tamihere, 2000). It has been estimated that over 50% of Maori have no active links with their iwi (Durie, cited in Rata, 2000a, p.210). This urbanised population are predominantly wage and salary earners or beneficiaries – there is a disproportionately high rate of unemployment among Maori compared to Pakeha. (Te Puni Kokiri, 2000b). There is no return for them to the tribal world that existed prior to the appropriation of Maori land

Within urban communities, a number of social service organisations have been developed through which Maori provide for the needs of their local people. These are pan-tribal bodies in that they focus on all Maori within a given urban area, as opposed to the social service bodies that are operated by specific, traditional, tribes. One example of such an organisation is the Te Whanau O-Waipareira Trust, a training and employment organisation which by 1997 had 78 employees and an annual turnover of (NZ) $8 million (McCarthy and Shopland, 1997). Similar organisations exist in other areas of Auckland and in other cities and towns.

It has been the former head of the Waipareira Trust, John Tamihere (now a Labour MP) who has played a major role in the campaign to have such urban Maori organisations recognised as tribal bodies for a number of purposes. One is to enable them to participate in the distribution of fisheries’ assets by the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. Another is to allow them to gain recognition by the State as tribal service providers and thus compete for contracts with the State. The campaign has frequently brought the urban Maori leaders into conflict with the traditional tribal leaders and their supporters. Tamihere has been outspoken in his criticisms of what he has called "the new feudal tribal constructs" (Tamihere, 2000, n.p.). Those who oppose the urban Maori organisations’ attempts to gain access to fisheries’ assets stress that :"The fisheries are a taonga [treasure] of iwi" (McCarthy and Shopland, 1997.

The conflict between the urban bodies and the traditional tribes has been fought out on several fronts. Traditional tribes such as Tainui and Ngati Porou successfully appealed to the British Privy Council to overturn an Appeal Court decision that urban Maori bodies had a right to a share of fisheries’ assets. In February 2001, the Privy Council is expected to hear a new case by urban Maori for such a share out. (McCarthy and Shopland, 1997, Gregory, 2000). Previously, the Waitangi Tribunal had ruled that the Waipareira Trust exercised rangatiratanga (roughly, leadership which provides a group with identity and rights) over the associated Maori people it served and that the Treaty of Waitangi covered all Maori, not just tribes (Ferguson, 1997).

That decision led to the Government changing the law so that non-kinship based Maori groups qualified as service providers who could contract with the Crown (Ministry of Social Policy, 1999). Since then, the urban Maori have won a number of other victories. Two leaders of urban organisations have recently been appointed to the Fisheries Commission (Gregory, 2000). MPs. from urban authorities led the fight to have the proposed health reforms changed so that health boards would have to form partnership with all Maori in their areas, rather than just with traditional tribal bodies (Young, 2000).

Rata (2000a) refers to the detribalised Maori who "are disenfranchised in various ways; dispossessed of the traditional means of production and the new tribal wealth based upon these resources..."(p.210). To those, overwhelmingly urban, Maori, the victories of the urban Maori bodies could represent a major advance in two major ways. First by giving them a specific Maori identity (Ngati West Auckland is one jocular attempt at doing this) which is recognised as such by the State and by bodies like the Waitangi Tribunal. Secondly, by turning this recognition into material gain, for example by gaining access to the fisheries’ assets when they are finally distributed.

How to describe those bodies, the "new constructs" as Tamihere (2000) has called them? The most appropriate term for them seems to be "neotribes". They are tribe-like bodies according to the Waitangi Tribunal in that they exercise rangatiratanga (community leadership). Tamihere (cited in McCarthy, and Shopland, 1997) has also claimed that, in the case of the Waipareira Trust at least, they exhibit all the characteristics used by the Fisheries Commission to define an iwi (see above). But, in complete contradistinction to traditional tribes, affiliation to an urban neotribe is not dependent on genealogy but on proximity and choice. Neotribes are based in areas but they are also formed around functions, eg training, social service provision. An individual can affiliate to one for a set purpose as well as for a set period of time. A shift in location, say from Auckland to Wellington can mean a change in neotribal affiliation as a consequence, for the individuals concerned and for any children they have.

Tribalism in New Zealand cannot then be simply defined as a return to the premodern. The traditional tribes are traditional in the means by which they define themselves and recognise individuals as their tribal members. The majority of them also maintain a premodern power structure in that formal authority resides with an unelected, male, elite. They also encourage the promotion of traditional cultural practices. Yet their leaders are corporate executives operating within a postindustrial capitalist economy that is now fully integrated into the globalised world market. They also operate within a society that demonstrates many of the characteristics of postmodernity. The tribes cannot be ‘pure’ premodern formations, they are hybrids just as, in another sense, most of their members are, for intermarriage in the past means that the great majority of Maori people are of mixed ethnic descent.

Urban Maori bodies are constructing a new form of collective identity to which individuals can choose to affiliate. The neotribes offer detribalised urban Maori an alternative mode of identification and recognition, one that can be characterised as postmodern in that it makes identification a matter of individual choice and also something that can be changed by the exercise of that choice. Should the urban Maori authorities succeed in the neotribal project, then urban Maori would have open to them one more choice of identity, one more mode of presentation of the self, to add to the choices already available to them and to the non-Maori population. To the extent that they offer the possibilities of a fluid and temporary affiliation, they do resemble Maffesoli’s (1996) neotribes of postmodernity.

In this paper I have tried to deal with two contemporary controversies. The first is the postmodern controversy – can we classify some societies as being postmodern, or as being emergently postmodern? To which I would give a tentative and conditional answer of ‘yes’. That is, with all the qualifications and doubts, it can be argued that Western capitalist societies are moving into an era or stage of postmodernity, and New Zealand is part of that change.

The second controversy is a more local one, what is the meaning and relevance of tribalism in a nation that can be seen as becoming postmodern? The Treaty of Waitangi and the centrality of tribalism that it builds into present New Zealand’s political and economic structures, into its laws and institutions, have no parallel elsewhere in the Western nations. New Zealand is thus unique in that respect. The acceptance of tribalism, in both its revived traditional and neotribal forms, as a core element in our definition of ourselves as a nation, can also be read as an indication of a shift to a postmodernity that accepts and legitimates pluralism and difference.

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