Conscience

Gender studies

Inclusion (mineral)

Neoliberalism (international relations)

Physics

Decolonization

Political economy

Sociology

Power (physics)

Political science

Ecology

Scholarship

Social science

Capitalism

Colonialism

Indigenous

Quantum mechanics

Biology

Politics

Journal of sociology

What is the role of the indigenous critic and conscience of society in the neoliberal university? Much has been written about neoliberalism in higher education but less attention is given to how it is enacted in settler-colonial societies where intellectual labour is shaped by histories of imperialism, invasion and violence. These historical forces are reflected in a political economy of knowledge forged in the interplay of power relations between coloniality and free-market capitalism. Indigenous academics who mobilise a form of public/tribal scholarship alongside native publics and counter-publics often have an uneasy relationship with the neoliberal academy which celebrates their inclusion as diversity ‘partners’ at the same time as consigning them to the institutional margins. This article traces a cohort of Māori senior academics in New Zealand whose intellectual labour is structured around public/tribal scholarship and examines how this unsettles and challenges the problem of neoliberal inclusivity in settler-colonial institutions.

Whither decolonisation? Indigenous scholars and the problem of inclusion in the neoliberal university