Abstract
Little academic attention has been focused on the experiences of communities situated at the margins in receiving nonprofit services. In this essay, we draw on the culture-centered approach to critically interrogate the concept of engagement among a range of nonprofit organizations. We analyze ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a low income suburban area in Aotearoa New Zealand, in which narrative accounts of 60 residents formed the basis of our deliberations with an advisory board. Our findings indicate that many nonprofit organizations are constructed as spaces of othering that do not attend to the cultural norms or needs of those situated at the margins. Alternatively, the Head Hunters outlaw motorcycle gang and Destiny’s Church, both vilified in mainstream media outlets, were sites of significant community engagement. Our study illuminates the impact of dialogic group engagement and of initiatives being developed and driven by the community.
The communication discipline is widely viewed outside of the Global North as “still being anchored—culturally and epistemologically—as oriented toward North America and, to some extent, Western Europe” (Wasserman, 2020, p. 1). In 1996, Mumby and Stohl identified four central problematics of organizational communication scholarship: the voices being represented, the rationality centered on effectiveness, the conception of the organization, and the inextricable organization-society relationship (Mumby & Stohl, 1996). Since then, scholars have called for organizational and management communication to be decolonized (Broadfoot & Munshi, 2007), to be “rethought and reshaped” (Grimes & Parker, 2009, p. 505) to be less Americentric (i.e., Ganesh et al., 2005; Prichard, 2006), to include more voices from the margins (i.e., Cruz & Sodeke, 2020), and to engage in postcolonial and decolonizing scholarship (i.e., Grimes & Parker, 2009; Mumby & Stohl, 2007). To date, though, such theorizing remains scarce.
There are wide implications of overlooking the voices of communities situated at the margins. Members of such communities are frequent recipients of services from non-profit organizations, yet little is known about how they engage with these organizations and their voices are not usually centered or prioritized in these contexts. For instance, DeLind (1994) determined that in a state-coordinated emergency food campaign, “the hungry were ‘imaged out’ of the very issue to which they were central” (p. 62). Such standpoints would be essential for ensuring democratic legitimacy in community decision-making (Deetz & Brown, 2004), re-envisaging communicative interventions, and improving service delivery, which has been described as disempowering and dehumanizing (De Souza, 2019). Furthermore, retaining what Imas and Weston (2012) referred to as an “elitist position” (p. 205) in management and organizational communication by not attending to those on the margins can impose a justification for their exploitation and exclusion which could “lead to further colonization, subordination, and oppression of native/indigenous/other forms of understanding and organizing within our disciplinary field” (Broadfoot & Munshi, 2007, p. 205).
In this essay, we bring voices of the margins to the forefront, drawing from our ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2020—including 60 in-depth interviews with residents, a series of group meetings, and stakeholder interviews—to explore articulations of everyday experiences and broader cultural tensions in negotiating with a range of nonprofit organizations in a low income suburban area in Aotearoa New Zealand with a high proportion of Māori [Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand] and Pasifika peoples [Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands]. Noting the agentic capacities of communities at the margins to imagine and articulate meaningful futures, our work is grounded in Dutta’s (2008) culture-centered approach (CCA), an approach which critically interrogates the theoretical construct of engagement 1 by placing it within the everyday practices of participation at the margins. Attention to the communicative inequalities that constitute participation foregrounds the negotiations of power carried out by communities at the margins in their experiences with civil society (Dutta, 2008). Situating engagement and non-governmental organizing attends to the ways in which the principles of nonprofit organizing reproduce the agendas of colonial-capitalist structures. While we note that the emergence of the kaupapa Māori movement 2 in Aotearoa New Zealand has created significant anchors for Indigenous-driven social change, we also show how kaupapa Māori organizations can be constructed as sites of power and difference.
Local Context: Māori and Pasifika Peoples in Suburban Aotearoa New Zealand
Our ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in Glen Innes, a suburban area situated 10 km east of Auckland’s central business district. The area was selected because statistical research had determined that it has a high proportion of the population rates in the highest decile of deprivation in Aotearoa New Zealand (University of Otago, 2020) and is negatively represented in terms of income, education, and employment (Statistics New Zealand, 2020a, 2020b). Like other low-income suburban areas in Aotearoa New Zealand, there was significant growth in migration among Māori and people from the Pacific Islands in the 1950s (Gordon et al., 2017). Today, Māori and Pasifika peoples frequently reside in deteriorated housing (Kearns et al., 1991) and feature negatively in key poverty indicators, compared to other ethnic groups (Webb, 2017). However, this is not the only contemporary context to “being Māori” or “being Pasifika” as often portrayed, and in this section we provide a basic background of these two ethnic groupings, as well as the kaupapa Māori approach which underpins the engagement of Māori by some non-profit organizations in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Māori are the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand and make up about 16.5% of the national population (Statistics New Zealand, 2019). Traditionally, Māori had a collectivist way of living, organized into iwi [tribes] comprised smaller hapū [sub-tribes]. Marae [courtyard and meeting house] were the communal centers and the focus of hapū [sub-tribes] (Mikaere, 2011), which “not only represents customary authority over surrounding land but also provides the forum on which taonga (ancestral treasures) are ritually performed” (Tapsell, 2002, p. 141). The colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand resulted in Māori experiencing major losses in land (Moon, 2013), epidemics of infectious diseases (Lange, 1999), and a settlers’ policy of cultural assimilation (Hill, 2004). The significant land losses affected their capacity to support themselves economically, which compelled an urban drift by Māori after World War Two (Moon, 2013). By the 1970s, 70% of Māori were living in towns and cities (Walker, 1996). However, as scholars have highlighted more recently, Māori are heterogeneous, both in socioeconomic standing and cultural practices, (e.g., Durie, 1995; Poata-Smith, 2013).
The “Pasifika” peoples are the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands, including various countries and making up about 8.1% of the national population of Aotearoa New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand, 2019). Many Pasifika peoples have shared affinities with Māori through common cultural practices and ancestral ties (Hill, 2010), including traditional collective living (Craig, 2011) and a shared cultural connection to the wider family, village, and country (Seiuli, 2013). Immigration by Pasifika peoples to urban areas in Aotearoa New Zealand escalated in the 1950s (Friesen, 2009) at the peak of the urban Māori migration, and the Māori-Pasifika community in these settings was nourished (Hill, 2010). Pasifika peoples are significantly less researched, compared to Māori. Some studies, though, have highlighted challenges associated with migration to Aotearoa New Zealand including experiences of discrimination against Pasifika peoples (i.e., Pernice & Brook, 1996), issues with identity among Pasifika peoples who are born in Aotearoa New Zealand (i.e., Mila, 2013), and increased mental illness (i.e., Kokaua & Wells, 2009).
In the 1970s, there was a movement where Māori and Pasifika were challenging the dominant hegemony across multiple sites of disparity through a “de facto alliance—a joint protest by Māori and Pasifika peoples against their shared socioeconomic marginalization” (Hill, 2010, p. 296). During this time “kaupapa Māori” was discussed in the context of education as a philosophical framework that would underpin kura kaupapa Māori [schools centered on Māori philosophy and language] (Smith, 2012). Organizations governed by kaupapa Māori have visions and aspirations grounded and guided by Māori histories, and so the wisdom of kaumatua [respected Māori elders] “is essential in maintaining the Kaupapa Māori approach” (Penehira et al., 2003, p. 28). According to Pihama (2012), there has been a “growth in the development of Kaupapa Māori theory and research methodologies. As a part of that growth has come an engagement with Kaupapa Māori across all sectors within our community and also within the academy” (p. 5).
It is commonly assumed that conducting research with Māori should be guided by a kaupapa Māori approach (for a breakdown of this approach see Smith, 1999). Like most philosophical approaches, kaupapa Māori has received some criticism (e.g., Rata, 2000), but its widespread uptake has also had a significant impact in uplifting emerging Māori researchers, participants, communities, and recipients of nonprofit services delivered in a more holistic approach emphasizing traditional Māori ways of being. However, targeting Māori in isolation does not reflect the heterogeneous nature of contemporary suburban sites in Aotearoa New Zealand. In these sites, Māori or Pasifika peoples live alongside each other with other ethnic groups (Friesen, 2009) from which new experiences and cultures are constituted. Furthermore, Māori are not the largest ethnic group in Glen Innes and, with the ongoing processes of colonization and detribalization, many Māori in the area are not manawhenua [local tribe(s) with customary authority over the area]. Given this, consultation would not be from the participants’ iwi [tribe]. Our study was guided by the CCA, an approach focused on bringing voices of the margins to the forefront to share some synergies with kaupapa Māori.
Data Collection and Analysis
The CCA
Theoretically grounded in the Subaltern Studies collective, the CCA offers an alternative framework for emergent theory anchored in the hitherto erased voices from the subaltern margins and attending to the assumptions and principles underlying the logics of concentrations of power (Dutta, 2014). The CCA emphasizes the dynamic relationship between culture, structure, and agency (Dutta, 2018) whereby culture encompasses everyday creations of localized meanings, structure constrains and enables the capacity to seek out health choices and behaviors, and agency is the capacity to enact choices and participate actively in negotiating structures (Dutta, 2008). Thus, the framework considers the broader social, economic, and cultural contexts that shape the lived realities of those situated in the margins. Unlike some dominant methodologies that are accomplished through testing hypotheses or documenting observations, the CCA requires a long-term commitment to the community (Dutta, 2008). The process of problem identification involves dialogic communication with community members and ongoing discussions with a local advisory board, and the emergent data serve as the basis for the development of strategies and tactics of communicative infrastructures (Dutta, 2018).
Foundational to the CCA are the key concepts of participation, partnerships, communication infrastructures, and reflexivity (Dutta, 2018). Participation refers to the central role of the community in defining problems and corresponding solutions by shifting decision-making capacities into the hands of the community. At the same time, partnerships with external stakeholders with power are considered avenues to create entry points for change (Dutta, 2008). However, it is not until after the advisory board is established that discussions are undertaken with key stakeholders, such as local nonprofit organizations, with the purpose of identifying strategies to achieving change and establishing partnerships in the social change process (Dutta, 2018). The concept of communication infrastructures denotes critically seeking out voices at the margins by reflecting on the sites of production of silence and investing in communication infrastructures that are meaningful to the community (Dutta, 2018). Finally, while the centering of community voice in decision-making is a step toward communicative equality, to truly do so necessitates researcher reflexivity. Such reflexivity involves interrogating the research process, scrutinizing sites and relationships of power, and attending to the ways in which power is unevenly distributed in communities and between academics and community members (Dutta, 2008). Critical self-reflexivity requires constant negotiation which continues outside of the field, whereby CCA researchers engage in deep listening with humility with community members as well as dialogic engagement with one another as researchers to make sense and sometimes challenge interpretations. This engagement is situated within broader community and university structures, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Sites of reflexivity in the CCA.
The framework of the CCA allowed us to dialogically engage with residents to re-imagine organizing through their everyday praxis, foregrounding alternative imaginaries that disrupt and decolonize hegemonic interpretations of civil society. At the same time, the CCA offers a lens to scrutinize the intersections between localized cultures and organizational structures and how these constitute agentic capacities of individuals and communities (Dutta, 2016). This study builds on previous CCA research that shows how localized social and economic contexts influence access to health-enhancing resources (e.g., Dutta, 2014; Elers et al., 2020) and suggests that developing communication infrastructures that enable voice and listening can serve as an anchor for nonprofit organizations seeking to engage with people situated at the margins in suburban Aotearoa New Zealand. This study is intended to serve as an entry point to listening to the voices of marginalized residents in Glen Innes and to inform the delivery of local nonprofit services in ways consistent with local cultural frameworks and needs.
Data Collection and Analysis
We commenced the first phase of our engagement with residents in Glen Innes in November 2018. The first phase involved spending time in the area and conducting in-depth recorded interviews with residents, guided by indicative questions about their experiences accessing local resources and their challenges in living a healthy life. These interviews were supplemented by journal entries documenting contextual and observational data. In keeping with our approach, we recruited participants by directly approaching people in sites that people who are struggling financially are likely to visit, including near food banks and Government agencies which administer financial benefits. We then provided information about the study, asked about financial struggles as a screening question and, following the interview, used snowball sampling to identify other participants. The screening question, together with the site location for recruitment, provided contextual means to recruit people situated in the margins. This was important as there is no income threshold in Aotearoa New Zealand to define socioeconomic deprivation and an ongoing gentrification of the area (Gordon et al., 2017) has resulted in wealthier people moving into the area.
Between November 2018 and February 2019, 60 participants were interviewed, with interviews averaging 1 hour. Most participants were unemployed (27/60) or unable to work due to sickness (11/60) or caring for children (15/60). Most lived in state housing, although some participants lived in emergency accommodation (3/60), homeless on the street (3/60), or in a van (1/60). Almost half of participants (25/60) had resided in the area for more than 20 years, while others had moved to the area more recently for state housing (9/60) and from homelessness (4/60), incarceration (2/60), and to escape abusive relationships (2/60). Ethnically, 41 participants identified as Māori, 19 as Pasifika,7 as New Zealand European/Pākehā, 3 and 1 as “other” (some participants identified as more than 1 ethic group).
The analysis started at the commencement of data collection, and was carried out alongside the in-depth interviews, shaping revisions to the interview protocol based on the emergent theory. We went back and forth with the data while we conducted the interviews, maintained detailed reflexive notes and analytic memos, and engaged in conversations among the three of us to make sense of the emergent codes. The method of analysis was grounded theory, with the interviews carried out until we reached data saturation (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This involved an iterative process whereby line-by-line open coding identified the concepts explicit in the participants’ discussions, axial coding formed relationships between the concepts classified, and then selective coding provided theoretical integration (Strauss & Corbin, 1997). For instance, the excerpt “I told her she doesn’t realize the damage that she’s doing . . . that’s not the cultural way” was open coded as “lack of cultural understanding.” Similarly, the open code “classed difference” reflected the middle class backgrounds of the professional workers in civil society organizations serving Glen Innes. These open codes were organized together under the axial code, “spaces of othering,” reflecting the organizational structures of civil society in Glen Innes that produced low-income communities as “the other.” We used cross-checking between researchers during the analysis, as advocated by Glaser and Strauss (1967).
In keeping with the CCA, we formed an advisory group in May 2019 which thereafter became the site of decision-making for the project. We contacted all participants from the first phase who consented to be contacted and invited them to participate in the advisory group. We then initiated additional contacts to make sure the “margins of the margins” of the community were represented in the advisory group. Fifteen people attended the first meeting where we discussed the themes initially derived from the initial analysis of the ethnographic and interview data. These themes strongly resonated with the attendees’ experiences. We conducted our advisory board based on the principles of dialectical-dialogues (Dutta, 2018) which involves generating diverse ideas, placing ideas in conversation and debate, interrogating the ideas for potential erasures, inviting more contribution of ideas, working through potential erasures, and, finally, voting on the ideas. The advisory board discussions were recorded and also served as a form of data generation. Since the formation, we have undertaken seven advisory board meetings, lasting an average of 1 hour, with the purpose of identifying localized problems and corresponding solutions. While membership has shifted to fulfill the project and participants’ needs, many of the current members participated in the initial interviews. In total, there have been 24 members of the advisory group, all of which identify as Māori and/or Pasifika ethnicity.
In 2020, we undertook meetings with staff from three nonprofit organizations and one City Council organization to discuss the project. Like the interviews, these were supplemented with journal entries documenting observational information during all our visits. We also attempted to engage with staff from local Māori organizations, but a staff member at the local urban marae was reluctant to engage with us because she said they were bombarded with ongoing research requests by outsiders. Further, one of the iwi [tribal] nonprofit organizations representing the manawhenua felt that we should have already engaged with them before starting our research, which is consistent with a kaupapa Māori approach. Anchoring the process in the CCA meant that the advisory group, representing the “margins of the margins” shaped the design and development of the intervention. This consideration of power dynamics guided our decision to contact existing civil society organizations in the area after the advisory group identified the key problems and developed the solutions to work with. In 2020, we completed our final analysis of all the different forms of data collected, and identified two overarching themes: (1) spaces of othering and (2) spaces of connection.
Results
Spaces of Othering
From our observations and ongoing dialogic engagement with residents, it was clear that many residents utilized and expressed gratitude toward the assistance that nonprofit mainstream organizations provide in the area, particularly regarding the food banks and free dinners which, alongside community networks, acted as a safety net in the negotiation of issues relating to poverty. At the same time, both Māori and Pasifika residents were acutely aware of the cultural differences between themselves and many of the staff or volunteers offering services, and, at times, highlighted discomfort in the delivery of services in a way that was inconsistent with community norms and needs. In this sense, the non-profit organization was constructed as a “space of othering.”
From our observations and discussions, it was clear that the volunteers and staff at local charitable services are well-intentioned. However, given the dominance of Pākehā placed within the organizing logics of the colonial structure, this can result in services being delivered in a way that does not support community norms and needs. A preference for Māori or Pasifika staff was expressed directly by some residents, such as with the following statements: “They’re [Pasifika staff] cool, bro, they understand . . . Pālangis [Tongan word for Pākehā], aye, they just want to hurry up,” “I just feel comfortable going to the Māori [providers],” and “they come in from Saint Heliers [wealth area] from all up there. It’s like ‘oh’ [said with disappointing].” We spoke to two staff members who worked at a local charitable organization that provides support with literacy who were both Pākehā and appeared middle-class. One explained that her appearance can make the initial engagement with residents difficult.
Both Māori and Pasifika residents commented that staff and volunteers at a local charitable organization could be warmer or friendlier, consistent with the Māori principle of manaakitanga [hospitality as central value] (see Le Grice et al., 2017) and the Tongan principle of tauhi vā [principles that guide relationships] (see Mafile’o, 2016). Instead, residents reported that these staff and volunteers sometimes “look down” on them when retrieving food parcels. The delivery of charitable services in a way that does not support the local social, cultural, and community norms was also highlighted in a resident’s description of receiving support for victims of domestic violence: It was for breaking the cycle . . . we need these tools . . . to help support our husband, he might be getting mad . . . So she’s [a fellow attendee] going . . . and this Pākehā lady [the instructor] is telling her to get divorce . . . I told her she doesn’t realize the damage that she’s doing . . . that’s not the cultural way . . . you shouldn’t just be telling them to give up and get a divorce.
This excerpt highlights how the cultural misalignment between nonprofit staff/volunteers and the local community can manifest in services being delivered inappropriately without meeting residents’ cultural needs. Furthermore, this misalignment manifested in structural processes of service delivery within local organizations, aligning with the professionalization of non-profitable services (see: Ganesh & McAllum, 2012). For instance, some residents discussed how the interview questioning required to receive a food parcel is too intrusive. This was also discussed in frustration by a Tongan social worker who works at a local food bank and was once homeless herself: Now that I work at it [a charitable organization], there’s a long process that doesn’t really make sense to me . . . people are struggling . . . they really just need food and when you go in and just fill out a piece of paper and it’s like . . . one or two pages with all these questions . . . I found it a bit silly that fact that people had to prove that they’re struggling. It’s like what did they want them to do? Take them to their house to prove it? It’s . . . it wasn’t right.
This worker also highlighted how, culturally, “it’s not normal for us [Tongan people] to go ask for help” and seeking charitable services is viewed as a form of “weakness” for many Tongan people. As a result, these questions have the potential to create a process of humiliation for those who are already struggling, based on a “ticking a box” criteria. This is coupled with a system of food rationing whereby residents can be turned away if they have received too many parcels. For example, for a Māori resident who appeared highly agitated and was clearly struggling, the rationing for food parcels created a form of desperation, as indicated in the below exchange:
For a last resort I’ll go and steal it [food], but I try to avoid doing any of that. Like . . . coming to places like this. And like they say you get three chances [to receive a food parcel] . . . then you get no more for the rest of the year. I say “so I might have struggled for the whole month . . . and I still got eleven months to go so, what do you mean? I’ve gotta starve or what? I’ve gotta come here and rob you guys or come here and use someone else’s name?’
… ok . . . Is this place good? Like are they nice?
They’re not . . . nah they’re not . . . they’re quite mean . . . they’re not understanding . . . [they] look down on us.
Significantly, the construction of the non-profit organization as a “space of othering” was not solely in regard to race. This was observed in the disengagement by Māori of the local urban marae which provides social services by Māori for Māori based on the practice of whakawhanaungatanga [establishing relationships]. Urban marae were built to serve as traditional marae within the urban environment after World War Two (Te Ara, 2015). These urgan marae can provide an avenue for practicing Māori values in rejection to the Crown’s integration and assimilation policies, although they cannot entirely replicate traditional marae (Tapsell, 2002). However, residents said they would not use this organization because it is, “not my marae” and “it’s not my tribe,” highlighting the tension in creating an institution that accepts all Māori in the suburban community. At the same time, though, this does not align with traditional Māori structures (Mikaere, 2011). Barcham (1998) described this situation as evolutionary social change in Māori culture set against the perceived static boundaries of Māori culture. Unlike the experiences of “mainstream” charitable organizations, for many Māori residents, the decision not to engage with the local urban marae was an enactment of agency set amidst cultural conceptions of the interrelationship of space and marae.
Furthermore, some people felt an expectation that they would understand and behave in an ascribed way that is “Māori” within the urban marae. However, most Māori residents we spoke to rarely visit their tribal marae, none were fluent te reo [Māori language] speakers, and many did not know about their whakapapa [heritage], which was frequently expressed in a shameful tone, perhaps because these aspects are frequently ascribed to authentically being Māori in contemporary society (Poata-Smith, 2013). One resident who only recently found out his iwi [tribe], described feeling talked “down to” by staff at the urban marae, and so he chose not to engage with this organization. He stated: They [the urban marae staff] extend, or ugh, rrrrrrhhh . . . wanna stand over me. And I went ‘nah man, doesn’t work like that’. . . That’s how I felt. They’re up there (gesturing with hands up). Instead of being eye-to-eye . . . Talking down to me. Oh well. “Yeah. Fuck you,” and then I just walked out.
We also wondered whether the treatment this man received was also related to him being homeless and a gang affiliate. Another resident, who had served a number of incarceration sentences, described feeling that he would be judged if he tried to connect with his hapū [subtribe] stating: “I didn’t have nothing to do with them [his subtribe] . . . I’ve always felt um . . . out. Because of my drug problems and alcohol . . . I didn’t like to be judged so I’ve always been . . . alone all my life.”
Again, this quote indicates a feeling of alienation and intimidation felt within Māori spaces and articulates a feeling of judgment. This is not to say that Māori organizations do not assist members of the Glen Innes community, and there were some residents interviewed who gained assistance from Māori organizations, particularly among those who appeared more socially mobile. Rather, this points to the complex layering of identity and class within low-income areas or what Spivak (1995) refers to as the “radical textual practice of differences” (p. 27). From our observations and ongoing discussions, culture was constructed as a barrier for marginalized residents in enacting agency in accessing services from nonprofit Māori organizations. In this case, culture has become intertwined with organizational structures, and appears to replicate a neoliberal 4 structure of organizing.
Spaces of Connection
In contrast to the service providers discussed in the previous section are the Head Hunters outlaw motorcycle gang and Destiny’s Church, which were formed by and are predominantly made up of Māori or Pasifika peoples (see Grimshaw, 2006; Taonui & Newbold, 2016) and were viewed by many residents as being part of the community. The “mainstream” services, particularly the charitable organizations offering food, were utilized in Glen Innes, but it was clear that they did not facilitate the same level of engagement among the residents we spoke with compared to Head Hunters and the Destiny’s Church services Man Up Tu Tangata (“Man Up”) for men and Legacy for women. Thus, these mainstream services did not provide long-term avenues to improve residents’ health and wellbeing. This is not to say that these organizations did not attempt to do so. For example, a service provider explained that the interview questioning undertaken before giving food parcels allows the organization to refer residents to appropriate services for support. But unless residents feel comfortable and culturally safe in these settings, it is unlikely that they will enact agency in engaging with these services.
Destiny’s Church has frequently attracted negative media coverage for the vocal positions taken by its found and leader, Brian Tamaki, against homosexuality and the reform of prostitution laws, among other matters (Lineham, 2013). Despite significant efforts, the church continues to be denied government funding to deliver the Man Up program in prisons, with the Corrections Minister recently responding, “I don’t trust any contract that they had—if they were to work in prisons—wouldn’t go into funding an extravagant lifestyle” (as cited by Walters, 2020, para. 35). Brian Tamaki has a long history of advocating for Māori and Pasifika, and the Destiny’s Church website maintains that the church has now “firmly established itself into the psyche and landscape of New Zealand and is now the largest Māori and Polynesian church in the world” (Destiny Church, 2019, para. 13). Lineham (2013), an academic who is transparent about his disfavor of the church, wrote about its use of masculine language and emphasis on male authority with haka [traditional Māori ceremonial war dance] and boxing to encourage manliness among members.
Clearly, there is masculine language and imagery on the Man Up (2017) website, but residents described the program as providing a non-judgmental space where men can talk about their problems. One resident who used Man Up explained, “they just give you a place to vent to be honest, just a place to be honest and vent. Not look down at you cos they’ve all been through the same shit we have.” Similarly a grandmother who was enrolled in Legacy explained the benefit of recipients being able to contribute knowledge within a group setting, stating: “oh we just talk about how our society’s changing and how we can recommend better things for our, our children and what makes the difference and us as parents.” This highlights the impact of dialogic group engagement, which involves recognition of culture and cultural difference (Dutta & Elers, 2020). For instance, one resident explained: [Legacy] helped me out of a dark time, get off the shit [methamphetamine] . . . it was all a blur back then . . . the advice and the guidance they gave me, made me make better decisions, positive decisions, walk away from it you know. Instead of smashing and being angry . . . just hearing a lot of other people’s testimonies . . . made my face a bit stronger . . . you know, that there is change and . . . light at the end of the tunnel.
This quote highlights the impact of dialogic group engagement and contribution that is anchored in building connections. The resident also stated how it is “mainly um our brown people” in the group, highlighting a collective cultural background. She and other residents discussed how sessions are delivered in a way consistent with manaakitanga [hospitality as central value] and whanaungatanga [establishing relationships], where there is sharing of food and collective norms of caring. She also discussed how the service providers are generous and giving, describing how when she first joined, “they turned up to me . . . with 200-dollars worth of food, clothes . . . and this is out of their own pocket, not from the church.”
The only other service provider (albeit not a registered nonprofit organization) that had a high level of engagement with residents is the local gang, particularly the Head Hunters outlaw motorcycle gang. The Head Hunters are notorious for violent crime (Taonui & Newbold, 2016), methamphetamine distribution (Newbold, 2016), and reportedly being “one of the most feared criminal organizations in the country” (New Zealand Herald, 2000, para. 1). Some residents expressed concern about the local gangs, and a young man who was wearing the Head Hunters’ colors warned a female interviewer to, “Stay away from those fellas [gang members], even though that’s our lifestyle.” However, the local gangs were widespread, normalized, and even accepted by some residents, as indicated in the following comments: “there’s a lot of support for it [Head Hunters] which is nice,” “you know this place is just packed with them . . . youth gangs . . . it goes from 10 [years of age] and upwards,” “I think there’s worse—worse out there,” and “there’s always been . . . a mean gang, like every other community . . . and it’s the same as here. But, um, yeah, the Heads [Head Hunters] here, they [are] pretty, they [are] good, aye.” Another resident described how the Head Hunters provide protection for the local community: We feel like they’re protecting everyone else . . . if anything, they’re like friendly. Like when we talk with them it’s like “oh hey”. . . there’s a lot of drugs and, umm, alcohol problems going on, but if anything, I know there’s a lot of people who, they know what they’re doing. Gangs would never hurt the community. [I] don’t feel afraid living in GI [Glen Innes], and they would never do anything to hurt the community . . . If anything I think the gangs around here . . . I reckon they’re respectable.
Much of the literature situates gangs amidst “inter-generational poverty that accompanied the loss of lands, combined with the loss of culture, language, and mana under English colonization . . . and the continuing structural inequalities and racism that perpetuate the cycle” (Taonui & Newbold, 2016, p. 175). In this backdrop, it is worth noting that gangs served as a support structure for those negotiating issues associated with poverty. For example, a resident explained that teenagers join youth gangs because “their parents just really don’t care about them . . . when my son started interacting with that, they would sleep in parks and they wouldn’t go home. . . all these kids, they [are] scared to go home.” One of the only residents who, at the time of the interview, attended university was wearing Head Hunters clothing as her partner is a patched member, and she shared similar views, stating: [My partner is] working full-time . . . struggling, like doing everything proper . . . what they [Head Hunters] stand for, like family and like brotherhood . . . I would never ask my partner to leave it . . . my partner joined when he was twenty-one . . . he went looking for it. He knew where to find it.
Again, in this quote, affiliating with the Head Hunters is a form of agentic expression situated in relation to structures. This resident also described the immense value the gang provided her family as an alternative support structure. Another resident similarly explained “you look for, um, go where the love is, aye. They come from broken homes, I suppose, or yeah, you just go, when you’re growing up, where you feel the love, aye. Tempting for me too, aye.” Furthermore, the Head Hunters offer free services for the Glen Innes community including a fitness gym and free family events such as whānau [extended family] days [see a promotional video at Appleby, 2020]. These “services” offer alternative imaginaries of what community looks like and provide resources to residents situated at the margins that can be difficult to obtain from mainstream nonprofit organizations. For example, a resident became disillusioned by the public health service, stating, “They don’t come see you, they call you. They call you and they say, ‘Oh, have you been eating this and that’ . . . It’s like they just wanna hurry up and hang up,” but now has a positive experience using the Head Hunters gym for free to manage his diabetes. At the time of the interview, he was not a patched member of the Head Hunters, but was considering joining, and stated that, “All the fellas I grew up with” are already members.
Discussion
There has been a move toward the professionalization of non-profit organizing. In this shift, non-profit organizations utilize market-based criteria to measure costs and benefits, are increasingly disconnected from community concerns, and encourages the marketization, routinization, formalization, and rationalization of volunteer practice drawn from the for-profit world (Ganesh & McAllum, 2012). Nonprofit organizations operate within hegemonic spaces anchored in the neoliberal ideology, turning the margins into service recipients and perpetuating further alienation of those at the margins (De Souza, 2019). This production of the recipient margins upholds the colonial logic of underlying civil society organizing (De Souza, 2019). The non-profit organizations in Glen Innes need the bodies of those living at the margins to legitimize their organizing structures and funding models. It is in this very relationship with their recipients, then, that these nonprofit organizations embody the colonial logic, holding up the neoliberal ideology of the market. What is critically evident in our ethnographic work is the gap between the hegemonic framework of engagement and everyday experiences of the margins. Engagement is turned into a “check box” in the service of the capitalist structure, incorporating the margins into the market logics that constitute non-profit organizations. The application of the kaupapa Māori approach is widespread for engaging with Māori (Pihama, 2012) based on Māori philosophy (Penehira et al., 2003) However, for the Māori participants situated at the margins, the everyday negotiations of resources, services, and struggles are constituted amidst a sense of alienation perpetuated by nonprofit organizations designed to serve the margins.
It has been argued that forms of professionalization of Indigenous engagement support a managerial class while perpetuating the disenfranchisement of Māori who are situated at the margins and negotiating poverty produced by a colonial system (Dutta & Elers, 2020). For instance, Rata (2000) discussed the privileging of (post)colonial elitism in her critique of kaupapa Māori in education, suggesting that “identity politics” have created an oppressive oligarchic capitalistic structure in a new form of class oppression, termed “neo-tribal capitalism.” In contrast to Rata’s (2000) argument, at the heart of this approach is providing valuable outcomes for Māori by Māori, based on a Māori worldview (Smith, 1999), focused on the collective care of knowledge, culture, and values (Walker et al., 2006). However, when applied to professionalized organizations within the structures of the neoliberal state, the articulation of and organizing around kaupapa Māori take the form of culturally sensitive organizing (i.e., Dutta, 2007, 2008) that can keep the colonial infrastructure intact, further legitimizing it with the language of cultural sensitivity. Our decolonizing reading in the context of nonprofit Māori organizing structures asks the question: To what extent do identity-based culturally sensitive structures built within a colonial-capitalist framework reflect a decolonizing commitment?
Evident in the everyday experiences reflected in this essay are the communicative gaps between civil society and the margins of civil society marked as its recipients. Analysts have argued that there has been a movement toward “participation” for decision-making within organizations (Deetz & Brown, 2004) and cited various advantages of doing so, such as potentially empowering individuals, organizations, and the wider society (Stohl & Cheney, 2001). There is an ethical obligation for organizations to represent stakeholder concerns in decision-making (De Souza, 2019; Deetz & Brown, 2004), and yet this is at odds with a structure of professionalization, which can be perceived as threatening organizational goals (Cheney, 1995). Moreover, culture-centered critiques of hegemonic organizations suggest that even in instances when participation is deployed, the voices of the margins are systematically erased (Dutta, 2016, 2018; Dutta & de Souza, 2008).
Against this backdrop, consider the ways in which uncivil organizing forms emerge as sources of support in community life. The role of Destiny’s Church in Man Up for men and Legacy for women emerges as a key anchor in the everyday discourses among individuals and households negotiating poverty. In contrast to the discourse of civility in hegemonic multiculturalism that constructs the church as deviant (Grimshaw, 2006), participants note the role of the church as a resource in negotiating identity. Key to this role of the church is the connection with identity it builds by being anchored in the everyday struggles of brown people. The connections participants articulate to the church as a space for community and relationships disrupt the articulations of civility as the underlying basis of nonprofit organizing. In the organizing of the work of the church then, the relationships of service delivery are transformed by relationships of connection among people of color at the margins. Forms of relating to each other then are built through connections, articulated as connections among shared marginalized identities.
This notion of shared marginalized identities forming the basis of constituting communities is further evident in the role that the Head Hunters gang plays in community life. Decolonizing the hegemonic narrative of the gang as a fundamental threat to the civil structures as an anti-social organization, participant narratives articulate the role of the gang as a positive resource for community members. Participants vocalize the ways in which the gang emerges as a source of support and resource for community members at the margins, disrupting the neoliberal ideology that constructs gangs as deviant (see Taonui & Newbold, 2016). The connections into the community brought by the gang offer alternative resources for survival, in contrast to the distant and disconnected services provided by the nonprofit organizations. As opposed to the formal organizing structures of the nonprofits, the everyday connections created by the gang in the community create resources for health and wellbeing even as gangs are also the sites where drugs are distributed into the community. The complex relationships with the gangs voiced by community members note, for instance, the ways in which the spaces for exercising and activities offered by the gang are accessible to community members.
Anchoring the narratives in community voices at the margins, the CCA (Dutta, 2008, 2018) offers us entry points for reimagining health and wellbeing through relationships of solidarity with communities at the margins. These relationships of solidarity invert the theoretical constructs through which hegemonic structures constitute relationships amidst inequalities. We note again that the kaupapa Māori approach offers a register for co-creating practices and organizing frameworks by Māori, with Māori, for the benefit of Māori (Smith, 1999). As a practice for enacting indigenous sovereignty, it is aligned with the meta-theoretical commitments of the CCA in placing culture as the basis for organizing human life, livelihood and wellbeing, anchored in the experiences of cultural participants. Building on the work of postcolonial scholarship in organizational contexts (Broadfoot & Munshi, 2007; Cruz & Sodeke, 2020; Dutta & Dutta, 2013; Pal & Dutta, 2008), we suggest the vitality of the literature on postcolonial organizing to both decenter the hegemonic notions of organizing as well as to open up imaginary resources for alternative organizing structures from within the everyday practices of decolonial work. Our analysis foregrounds the classed nature of professional-managerial non-profit organizing that reproduces the marginalization and precarity of low-income households and communities by turning them into recipients at a distance. Our culture-centered analysis offered here suggests that the active work of marking class-based interpretations as against/outside the grain of cultural/Indigenous logics keeps the power differentials and capitalist-colonial structures intact, paradoxically through the deployment of the trope of cultural sensitivity that reproduces the capitalist structure (Dutta, 2007).
In this sense, consistent with emergent culture-centered scholarship (Pal & Dutta, 2008), we suggest the vitality of centering the interplays of class and culture in postcolonial and decolonizing studies of organizations. Culturally centering non-profit organizing foregrounds the concept of communicative equality, anchored in community-driven participatory democracy, where the opportunities for democratic organizing are equally distributed in community structures and are owned by community members at the margins. Through the lens of the CCA, alternative forms of organizing such as gangs emerge as decolonizing registers of support and circulating resources, depicting the ways in which community solidarity and community support are organized at the raced, classed, gendered margins of settler colonial Aotearoa New Zealand. The possibilities of alternative decolonizing organizing then open up new registers for imagining the distribution of resources to address the needs of communities experiencing poverty.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
