Page 110 - Constructing Craft

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incorporate it into the Pākehā art world. The latter development was associated
with increased urbanisation after the Second World War. Ranginui Walker has
proposed that: ‘One of the consequences of urbanisation is increased knowledge of

the alienating culture of metropolitan society and its techniques for the maintenance
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of the structural relationship of Pakeha dominance and Māori subjection.’ Walker
was suggesting that Māori were aware that their culture had been marginalised
through the application of symbolic violence in the way Bourdieu described, but they

had consciously resisted it. For young urban Māori artists and craftspeople this

required an adjustment to the conventions of the Pākehā art world while retaining
their cultural heritage. Whether this view can be substantiated is doubtful as

symbolic violence, as suggested by Bourdieu, negates the recognition of it by its

victims.

Frank Davis, the Head of the Art Department at Palmerston North Teachers’
College, appeared to be perpetuating the symbolic violence by suggesting that

Māori artists were better off removed from mainstream New Zealand culture. He
claimed in 1976 that:

[M]ost Maori artists are little known amongst the gallery
cognoscenti, and their work, regarded as rather amateur and
self-conscious, is rarely shown. By and large, this is probably a
good thing, as the bulk of Maori artists have not become caught
up in the competitive, commercialised, ingrown, and largely
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sterile world of art gallery-boutiques.

It is possible that Davis’ assessment of Māori involvement reflected Walker’s
contention that Māori were dynamic and adaptive and that for many Māori artists

craftspeople the art/craft debate was not only confusing but, because of their

cultural background, also meaningless. However, Māori dynamism and adaptability
opened Māori art and craft to the same aesthetic, technical, cultural and social

analyses as Pākehā art and craft. Certainly under Collingwood’s rules traditional

Māori craft was craft, not art, but like the wider craft movement the new Māori art
and craft became increasingly difficult to classify in the 1980s and 1990s. Similarly,

as educational opportunities improved for Māori and, through education, middle-
class Pākehā understanding of Māori culture improved, their social, cultural and

symbolic capital increased.

Constructing Craft