ERIC Number: EJ1025953
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0159-6306
EISSN: N/A
Crafting the Normative Subject: Queerying the Politics of Race in the New Zealand Health Education Classroom
Quinlivan, Kathleen; Rasmussen, Mary Lou; Aspin, Clive; Allen, Louisa; Sanjakdar, Fida
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, v35 n3 p393-404 2014
This article explores the potential of queering as a mode of critique by problematising the ways in which liberal politics of race shape normative understandings of health in a high school classroom. Drawing on findings from an Australian and New Zealand (NZ) research project designed to respond to religious and cultural difference in school-based sexuality education programmes, we critically queer how the Maori concept of "hauora" is deployed in the intended and operational NZ Health curriculum to shape the raced subject. Despite the best intentions of curriculum developers and classroom teachers to utilise Maori ways of knowing to meet their obligations within a bicultural nation, we argue that the notion of "hauora" is domesticated by being aligned with normalising individualistic notions of well-being that reflect the Eurocentric neoliberal individual enterprise subject. Palatable notions of Maori epistemologies as cultural artefacts and iconography drive that "inclusion". The "cunning politic" of (bicultural) recognition legitimates Maori ways of knowing in ways which privilege whiteness--reproducing rather than disrupting networks of power and dumbing down Maori epistemologies.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Race, Politics, Health Education, High Schools, Indigenous Knowledge, Critical Theory, Biculturalism, Sex Education, Case Studies, Epistemology, Ethnic Groups, Pacific Islanders
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New Zealand
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A