{"id":473,"date":"2007-01-22T23:56:10","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T23:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=473"},"modified":"2007-01-22T23:56:10","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T23:56:10","slug":"8-tribes-in-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"8 Tribes In New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

8 Tribes: The Hidden Classes of New Zealand<\/b>
8 Tribes calls an end to the myth of the \u201ctypical New Zealander\u201d and gives us a new vocabulary to talk about New Zealand in the twenty first century. This snapshot of contemporary New Zealand explores our unspoken class system and the hidden social boundaries that separate us from each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the same day I stumbled across this attractively-designed book in Unity, hottieperm stepped in<\/a> to point out that it was, perhaps, unwise for the authors make quite so prominent use of the word ‘tribe’ to denote a lifestyle\/values category. Quite apart from the fact that (as hottie p points out) NZ already has an important set of tribes, the word isn’t even well-deployed on its own terms. Clearly intended to echo the Wired-crowd’s adoption of the word ‘tribe’ to mean a community formed around a shared cultural interest set, the word is here used in a way neo-tribalists wouldn’t understand. (A throwaway comment on the 8 Tribes site<\/a> that suggests you can change your tribal allegiance for 3 weeks at Christmas is really quite mind-boggling.)
\nIn fact, there’s another word that fits this whole system rather better: stereotypes<\/i>. The book presents eight stereotypes and calls them ‘tribes’. Like all stereotypes, the eight “tribes” have a superficial, prima facie<\/i> legitimacy that gets them just far enough to start causing trouble. And like all stereotypes, when you look at them with a critical mindset, they collapse entirely. Luckily, the grandiose marketing language is just marketing. This isn’t going to be the new language for understanding New Zealand, and these aren’t the social boundaries that matter.
\nThis isn’t meant to be a big hate-on for 8 Tribes. I don’t hold any malice for the book. I just think it’s really very silly, as if it was all just a livejournal meme that somehow found itself in a respectable bookshop despite being created by a Mountain-Dew-fuelled teenage girl between bouts of Hermione\/Draco slashfic. And I think that New Zealanders, by and large, think the same, or will soon enouigh. So I anticipate the swift disappearance of the 8 Tribes idea from the great New Zealand conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Tribes: The Hidden Classes of New Zealand8 Tribes calls an end to the myth of the \u201ctypical New Zealander\u201d and gives us a new vocabulary to talk about New Zealand in the twenty first century. This snapshot of contemporary New Zealand explores our unspoken class system and the hidden social boundaries that separate us … Continue reading 8 Tribes In New Zealand<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-7D","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}