Diverse Economies and Economic Possibilities for Kāinga Housing in Aotearoa New Zealand

This thesis explores the diverse ways that Māori create economies and economic possibilities for housing provision in kāinga (ancestral Māori settlements). It explores this process through an in-depth, ethnographic case study with Hikurangi Enterprises, a community-owned social enterprise in Te Tairāwhiti of Aotearoa, and their wider network. Drawing on housing political economy (Aalbers and Christophers, 2014), diverse economies (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008, Gibson-Graham and Dombroski, 2020) and Indigenous self-determination literatures (Corntassel, 2008, 2012; Coulthard, 2014; Simpson, 2014) it argues that within kāinga of Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori are mobilising to create new, diverse economies that challenge established modes of housing provision and the inequalities they produce. These kāinga housing economies are built from the ground up and involve Māori as central agents, who bring together diverse actors to enact place-based Indigenous aspirations. To materialise, these aspirations are mediated through market norms, state-power and capital, which shape the extent they can be achieved and their trajectories. Nonetheless, it argues that Māori exercise creative agency to achieve housing and other community aspirations within their wider political, economic and institutional contexts. These arguments are drawn through an elaboration of the diverse economies and ethical motivations that support, and are supported by, Hikurangi Enterprises’ unique approach to housing provision. It also focuses on Hikurangi Enterprises’ engagement with finance, exploring their efforts to address the structural barrier of accessing finance for housing on whenua Māori (Māori land), by developing a novel rent to buy programme in collaboration with philanthropic and state actors. This exemplifies Hikurangi Enterprises’ central role in creating community economy assemblages (Turker and Murphy, 2021) and economic openings for housing and beyond, a process further explored through their engagements with forestry economies and efforts to scale community-led kāinga housing provision. Overall, Hikurangi Enterprises’ development of housing opportunities and diverse economies that strengthen kāinga suggest that empowering housing economies can emerge within contemporary capitalist political economies and are not contingent on systemic change as housing scholars often argue (Aalbers and Christophers, 2014; Clapham, 2018; Jacobs, 2019; Madden and Marcuse, 2016; Pawson, 2020). Despite this narrative of an empowering, ground-up housing political economy, this thesis argues for a balance between attentiveness to the potentialities of ground-up initiatives such as Hikurangi Enterprises, and the larger political processes they contend with. It holds that such a balance is crucial to uncovering and supporting similar ground-up initiatives and the futures they possess.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geography

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Barrett, Jack

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Murphy, Laurence
• Baker, Tom

• Diverse Economies
• Housing
• Political Economy
• Indigenous Self-Determination
• Kāinga
• Māori Economies

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/73777

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/73777