Economies of Mana and Mahi Beyond the Crisis

Abstract

In this short article, we explore the implications of Covid-19 and its response for employment in Aotearoa | New Zealand, focusing on the potential effect in Māori communities. To prevent the foreclosure of possible alternative futures, we emphasise the need to envisage economies in different ways, and the potential for alternative understandings of work within these visions. We argue that, rather than creating conditions for economic transformation in Aotearoa | New Zealand, Covid-19 has merely revealed pre-existing conditions with strong transformative potential. The pre-existing conditions that we will focus on in this paper are the enduring understandings of economy and work within Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) and at the meeting place of worlds represented by Te Tiriti | The Treaty of Waitangi. We write as an exploratory partnership between a Ngāi Tahu/Pākehā scholar living and working in the Ngāi Tahu takiwā (territory) and a Pākehā scholar living and working on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.