Maori Families: an Exploratory Study in Wellington City

Abstract

At the time at which this research was started the ethno-psychological study of New Zealand's Maori population had been undertaken only in rural communities. The work of both Beaglehole and Ritchie discussed processes which might be important in urbanisation but the communities that they studied were predominantly composed of families native to the rural areas. It was, therefore, thought of interest to study directly a migrant population to determine whether the same kinds of social and psychological processes apply. Such a study is also a prerequisite to direct study of the migration process itself. The extremely rapid acceleration of Maori migration southwards throughout the country and from rural to urban areas makes imperative well conducted research of the migration process. The use of models derived from similar study overseas is not without considerable dangers. Indeed, as will be seen later in this study, one cannot regard past research on urbanisation as particularly prognostic for the Maori migration at present going on. Quite apart from the fact that much of this research, indeed most of it, displays a distressing vagueness and subjectivity at the expense of quantative data (can social scientists not count?) the Maori situation in its historical determinants, in the advanced degree of acculturation, and in the openness of the New Zealand environment for further Maori acculturation creates a unique circumstance.