The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis is offered as a response to and contribution towards addressing what is identified as an inadequacy of much of the social and cultural accounts of financialisation produced in recent decades to provide an account of colonisation. I propose to take seriously metaphorical connections between financialisation and colonisation both implicit and explicit in this literature. Beyond performing an analogous function as cultural processes, I argue that the relationship between finance and colonisation is an historical and material one. I demonstrate this claim by rereading the historical record of the colonisation of Aotearoa/New Zealand in terms of finance. The centrality of financial instruments, institutions and logics at every stage of this country’s colonisation illustrates that financialisation is not simply akin to colonisation; rather, finance colonises.