This essay sticks in my mind as the first one I submitted at university. Late nights spent researching, highlighting and making connections all became a blur against the backdrop of the first Covid lockdown. Regardless, I had a lot of fun coming up with the hypothesis and trying to prove it, and I learned a lot about Paraguay in the process.

Introduction

Is there such a thing as New Zealand culture? Is there one ideal, one image, that attempts to describe us all as New Zealanders, or are we divided? If you were to turn to our national anthem and our coat of arms, two of the most important symbols of any nation, you would notice that each of these is split into two parts: Māori lyrics and a tribal chief to denote the native inhabitants of our land, alongside English lyrics and a European woman to represent the influence of British colonisation. Therefore, instead of there being a perfect, singular New Zealand culture, it is apparent that there are two faces to our national identity. This has been accepted and reinforced through the government’s labelling of our country as a “bicultural New Zealand” – a label which was surely intended as inclusive, but which I will argue can be seen as divisive. I hypothesise that cultural homogeneity aids the growth of official nationalism – that New Zealand’s insistence on biculturalism has condemned it to a cycle of tension and competition between cultures, meanwhile culturally homogenous nations such as Paraguay have found it much easier to follow a government-proposed concept of nationalism thanks to being united under the one cultural umbrella.

Definitions

Cultural homogeneity can be seen as a scale, with complete cultural homogeneity equal to being monocultural (Mar-Molinero 2000: 4).

By official nationalism, I refer to the efforts of a government to shape and dictate the national identity of their state, forming what has been coined as an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983, cited in Sibley and Liu 2007: 1). I argue that the growth of official nationalism can be assessed by the level of pride and attachment that a nation’s people are seen to show towards their “imagined community”.

Methodology

To investigate my hypothesis that cultural homogeneity aids the growth of official nationalism I will be carrying out a qualitative study, as both my variables are rather abstract and not able to be portrayed numerically. Instead it will be beneficial to study a smaller number of cases to get the best chance of proving or disproving the relationship. I will do a comparison study of two cases, one state with high cultural homogeneity (Paraguay) and another state with low cultural homogeneity (New Zealand), so that I can then analyse and contrast the growth of official nationalism within those states. Paraguay is a valid and interesting choice because of the way in which the Spanish colonisers adapted to the native Guaraní culture from the start and actively prioritised it over their own, intent on forging a distinctly “Paraguayan” race and culture. On the other hand New Zealand will provide a familiar example, one where the British colonisers have historically struggled for dominance over Māori and have since turned to the goal of co-existence. I aim to find that this lack of cultural homogeneity is one of the reasons why the state-sponsored idea of a “bicultural New Zealand” has not taken off as much as Paraguay’s official nationalism did.

Literature review

To aid my comparison between Paraguay and New Zealand I will view them through the lens of Sidanius and Pratto’s (1999) theory that there are two ideologies which a group can exhibit, social dominance orientation (SDO) or right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). SDO, as the name suggests, involves a desire to dominate over other groups, along with a sense of tension and competition between groups (Duckitt 2001, cited in Sibley and Liu 2007: 11). If SDO can be seen as a response to perceived internal threats, RWA would be a response to perceived external threats – a “desire for collective security and cohesion” (Duckitt 2001, cited in Sibley and Liu 2007: 11). These two ideologies lead to the creating of legitimising myths, which are justifications for any beliefs and behaviour which affect the equality of the group(s) concerned (Sibley, et al 2005: 173). While this theory has already been used by scholars such as Sibley to explain the respective relationships that Māori and Pākehā have with official nationalism in New Zealand, I hope to show that it can also apply to Paraguay’s version of official nationalism.

The lasting impact of colonisation

The way that the Spanish and British treated native language and culture was crucial to the future of nationalism in the respective colonies. While Spanish colonisation is generally painted as having blazed a trail of domination and destruction across Latin America at the cost of the indigenous peoples, Paraguay stands out as one case where the native language and culture survived and thrive to this day. In fact, Paraguay is touted as “the sole example in Latin America, and one of the few examples in the world, of stable bilingualism” (Nickson 2009: 4), with the two languages in question being Spanish and Guaraní (the language of the native Guaraní people). According to Mar-Molinero (2000: 57-59), the preservation of Guaraní was largely due to the values held by the Spanish Jesuits who made Paraguay their base in the Americas. In an effort to make conversion more appealing to native peoples, the Jesuits endeavoured to learn their culture and language and to empower them through religion (Mar-Molinero 2000: 57-59). Aside from religious motivations, Spanish settlers were also inspired to learn Guaraní and integrate with the Guaraní people as a way of coping with the geographical isolation of Paraguay, since it was much more difficult to retain communication with the motherland or other Spanish colonies (Mar-Molinero 2000: 57-59). This cultivated a shared respect between the two races, who came to see themselves as equals, rather than being divided by the typical “coloniser/colonised” labels.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, those labels hold true. While many of the first British settlers tried to learn Māori, they were more likely to be motivated by the allure of trading more easily with the native people, not to mention using their own language to impart “Western ideas and values” upon them (Spolsky 2003: 556). The mission schools set up by the British aimed to “pacify” and “domesticate” Māori; eventually the use of Māori as a teaching medium gave way completely to English as a result of the 1867 Native Schools Act, further disempowering them (Spolsky 2003: 556). So it would seem that the cases of Paraguay and New Zealand have diverged right from the beginning, with one coloniser choosing integration and the other choosing domination. I acknowledge that it would be wrong to describe the colonisation of these countries by those words alone, as that would not be providing a balanced account of the colonisation process, but at face value this would be where their differences lie, and this provides a key insight into Paraguay and New Zealand’s respective tendencies towards cultural homogeneity and official nationalism.

Ideologies

As explained earlier, Sidanius and Pratto (1999) identify two ideologies which can provoke nationalistic sentiment: social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). I argue that Paraguayan nationalism stems from RWA, while the New Zealand version of nationalism is fuelled by SDO. RWA is caused by a group perceiving the outside world as a threat (Duckitt 2001, cited in Sibley and Liu 2007: 11); this perception has been justified in the case of Paraguay, who, through wars such as the Triple Alliance War (1864 to 1870) and the Chaco War (1932 to 1935), has been pitted against neighbouring countries (Brown 2010: 27). These wars had a positive effect on Paraguayan nationalism, uniting Paraguayans through shared enemies and struggles.

While the threats faced by Paraguay were external, those faced by New Zealand would appear to be internal; indeed, instead of international wars, we had the New Zealand Wars. This suggests the presence of SDO, which is caused by feelings of intergroup competition and prejudice (Duckitt 2001, cited in Sibley and Liu 2007: 11). Instead of developing pride and unity, New Zealanders were burying themselves in a toxic relationship that remained defined as “coloniser versus colonised”.

Legitimising myths

With the ideologies identified, we now turn to legitimising myths, which are mechanisms used to justify any beliefs and behaviour which could be seen as particularly beneficial or discriminatory towards one group or another (Sibley, et al 2005: 173). This is where official nationalism can flourish, given the right conditions. Following the Triple Alliance War, the Paraguayan government utilised the RWA ideology to reinvent Paraguayan identity – the War was painted as an “heroic defence and inevitable but glorious defeat against a powerful international conspiracy”; and the colonial history of the nation was romanticised, inventing the concept of a “Guaraní race” to conceal the true extent of Spanish influence and highlight Paraguay’s cultural homogeneity (Lambert and Medina 2007: 343). These legitimising myths were used to bolster Paraguay’s pride and to elevate them above other Latin American nations. Through Paraguay’s eyes, it was them against the world, and official nationalism provided a source of comfort.

As for New Zealand, legitimising myths took the form of a slow and reluctant commitment to biculturalism. Whereas Paraguay could continue to characterise perceived external threats as enemies without damaging their internal harmony, New Zealand’s perceived threats were internal and therefore had to be worked out through avenues such as the Treaty of Waitangi. Biculturalism provides a clear, compartmental way of dividing the nation; instead of assimilating in one direction (as Paraguay did with Guaraní culture), biculturalism is a “compromise” which acts as justification for preserving the two-sided, us-versus-them nature of New Zealand’s colonial beginnings.

Conclusion

Having applied Sidanius and Pratto’s (1999) theory to Paraguay and New Zealand, I believe I have proven that cultural homogeneity aids the growth of official nationalism. It provides a stronger sense of unity and belonging within a nation; whereas anything else, due to being more than one-sided, is bound to invoke competition. Paraguay and New Zealand have shown that colonisation may set the tone for future official nationalism (integration versus domination), and that the threats perceived by a nation (external versus internal) can dictate their style of official nationalism (inclusive versus divisive).

Knowing this, what could the New Zealand government do to increase the uptake of official nationalism? Is it too late to follow Paraguay and invent the legitimising myth of a single “New Zealand race”? This is inevitably too extreme, however perhaps some benefits could still be found in reducing the scope of our national identity to simply “New Zealanders”. By removing the divisive mindset of biculturalism we would not only be removing a relic of the “coloniser/colonised” relationship; we would also be opening up our “imagined community” to those who do not fit the Māori/Pākehā binary. In an increasingly diverse nation, cultural unison could still be the answer.

References