Symbolic Violence and Victimization in Planning Processes: A Reconnoitre of the New Zealand Resource Management Act

This article conceptualizes two interrelated constellations of effects produced by practices of power in New Zealand planning. These are symbolic violence and institutional victimization. This article contends that acts of submission and obedience become symbols of violence when the state’s planning regimes allow no elements of choice, or freedom to resist, for those acted upon. This is compounded further into institutional victimization when the oppressors are also the final practicable, or actual, arbiters of appeal. We provide evidence that suggests this is a regular occurrence in New Zealand and, further, is indicative of a wider ranging consequence of modern governance that Foucault called governmentality. In New Zealand, the provision of a theoretically consultative statutory planning process obscures the actual rationality of exclusion underlining many of its planning practices.