The Politics of Conformity in New Zealand provides a critical examination of what happens to a society when a rigid conformity to cultural politics replaces progressive ideas. The book consists of 12 chapters on a range of topics written by academic experts, drawn from universities throughout New Zealand, and sharing a common concern over the limiting effects of cultural politics. Within this context, chapter authors critically examine historical revisionism, biculturalism, Maori mental health, literacy education, science and research, professional development programmes for teachers, and the debate over child discipline in terms of the overall impact upon policy and knowledge creation.

Aimed primarily at academics, graduate students and the critical general reader, this book provides a powerful and disturbing account of the consequences of cultural politics for New Zealand society.

Editor biographies

Roger Openshaw holds a Personal Chair in History of Education in the School of Educational Studies, Massey University College of Education. He has written/ co-written/edited/co-edited many national and international articles together with nineteen books and monographs including: Openshaw, R. & Soler, J. (eds) (2007). Reading Across International Boundaries. History, Policy and Politics. Charlotte, NC: Information Age; Rata, E. & Openshaw, R. (eds) (2006). Public Policy and Ethnicity. The Politics of Ethnic Boundary-Making. London: Palgrave MacMillan; Soler, J. & Openshaw, R. (2006). Literacy Crises and Reading Policies. Children still Can’t Read. London and New York: Routledge; Nozaki, Y., Openshaw, R. & Luke, A. (eds.) (2005). Struggles over Difference. Curriculum, Texts, and Pedagogy in the Asia-Pacific. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2005, the last being the recipient of an Outstanding Book Award in 2006. He has recently completed Reforming New Zealand Secondary Education: The Picot Report and the Road to Radical Reform, for Palgrave MacMillan (in press).

Elizabeth Rata is Associate Professor in the School of Critical Studies in Education at the Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland. She was a Senior Fulbright Scholar to Georgetown University, Washington, DC in 2003. Her research includes the political economy of new social movements, particularly the effects of global economic change on ethnicity, socio-economic class and higher education. She is the author of A Political Economy of Neotribal Capitalism and, in 2006, co-edited (with Roger Openshaw) Public Policy and Ethnicity: The Politics of Ethnic Boundary Making (Palgrave Macmillan) among other works. Her current writing is a book about local ethnic versions of global capitalism such as neotribal capitalism and the consequences for democratic politics.