2009/09/01 by Vanessa Andreotti · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Global Educational Policies and Reforms #Critical and Liberation Pedagogy #Political theory and Gramsci
paper · doi:10.1080/09620210903424535
openalex publication_date 2009/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Roger Openshaw and Elizabeth Rata conceptualise Kaupapa Māori as a dominant intellectual orthodoxy in New Zealand, which creates a ‘culturalist ideological conformity’ that limits the university’s ability to serve as the critical conscience of society’. They argue for the primacy of academic objectivity as the criteria for what counts as ‘weighty inquiry’ and against essentialism and cultural elitism. This paper offers a situated reading of Openshaw and Rata’s statements against the arguments of indigenous and postcolonial theorists who also challenge essentialism and cultural elitism, such as Marie Battiste, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak and Jacqui Alexander. This paper also outlines the framework for a dialogical contestatory ethos, which emerges from these theories as a way forward beyond absolute relativism and cultural supremacism in the academic debate.