Alienation, Control, And Domestic Violence In Aotearoa

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2 days ago

Domestic violence, particularly coercive control, is often about the exercise of dominance in environments where individuals feel powerless. Coercive control is not just about isolated incidents of violence but about the systematic subjugation of …
Domestic violence in Aotearoa New Zealand is not an isolated or private phenomenon. It is a deeply political expression of alienation and systemic violence, shaped by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. This article argues that the roots of domestic violence lie not merely in individual pathology but in structural conditions of powerlessness, disconnection, and enforced control. By examining the connections between alienation, lack of control over one's life, and interpersonal harm, particularly through the lens of gender and state power, we can begin to imagine pathways beyond punishment, toward collective liberation.
Alienation: The Dislocation of Self and Whānau
The Marxist concept of alienation refers to the estrangement of individuals from their labour, from others, and from their own human potential under capitalist conditions. In Aotearoa, this alienation has uniquely developed within a colonial capitalist economy that forcibly displaced Māori from their land and reorganised society around wage labour, private property, and the nuclear family. For both tangata whenua and tauiwi working-class communities, this has produced widespread experiences of isolation, disconnection, and despair.
Capitalist alienation is not simply economic, it is also emotional, cultural, and spiritual. The loss of communal structures, extended whānau support, and collective responsibility leaves individuals adrift in a world governed by competition and scarcity. Capitalism even commodifies emotional labour, reducing care and affection to transactions in service of the market. In such a society, people are often unable to meet their own emotional needs or to form meaningful, non-hierarchical relationships.
Men, in particular, are taught to derive their self-worth from productivity, control, and external validation. When jobs disappear, or when the role of provider becomes unattainable, they are left without any socially acceptable means of expressing vulnerability or failure. Unemployment, poverty, and housing precarity all exacerbate this disconnection. In Aotearoa, working-class men and particularly Māori men are overrepresented in mental health statistics, suicide data, and criminal offending, all symptoms of a deeper social alienation.
For Māori, this alienation is compounded by colonisation. The dislocation from whenua, language, tikanga, and traditional modes of collective living is a form of structural violence that has eroded whakapapa-based support systems. According to Durie, Māori wellbeing is rooted in a holistic balance across taha wairua, hinengaro, tinana, and whānau. Alienation disrupts all of these dimensions, creating spiritual and relational wounds that are often reproduced in the home.
Alienation, then, is not an abstract or metaphorical concept. It is experienced in the loneliness of a man cut off from his tamariki due to a Family Court order. It is felt in the shame of a father unable to feed his whānau because the supermarket is too expensive and the benefit too small. It manifests in the numbness of someone who drinks until they blackout, just to feel some sense of peace. These are not isolated tragedies; they are the daily outcomes of an economic and political system that fragments human connection.
Control: The Illusion of Power in a Powerless World
Closely linked to alienation is the issue of control. In a society where most people have little say over their work, housing, or political representation, the need for control often becomes displaced into the personal sphere. The home, and more specifically the intimate relationship, can become a site where individuals attempt to reclaim a sense of mastery they lack elsewhere.
Domestic violence, particularly coercive control, is often about the exercise of dominance in environments where individuals feel powerless. Coercive control is not just about isolated incidents of violence but about the systematic subjugation of another person's autonomy. It includes surveillance, manipulation, isolation, and emotional abuse, strategies that mirror the broader structures of control found in workplaces, prisons, and welfare agencies.
Men who perpetrate violence often describe feeling out of control in their lives – whether due to unemployment, trauma, or systemic racism – and respond by trying to assert control where they can. This dynamic is not excusable, but it is intelligible within a system that denies people agency and then punishes them for responding to that denial in harmful ways.
Neoliberal ideology exacerbates this by promoting the myth of personal responsibility. Individuals are told that success or failure is entirely their own doing. When they inevitably fail due to structural barriers like colonisation, capitalism, and discrimination, they are blamed and shamed. This fosters resentment, entitlement, and toxic forms of self-worth built on dominating others. It is no coincidence that domestic violence often increases during economic crises, when people's sense of control over their lives is most threatened.
In the New Zealand context, the link between social control and domestic violence is evident in the way institutions discipline the poor. Work and Income imposes rigid behavioural conditions for access to basic needs. Oranga Tamariki polices the parenting of Māori mothers. The criminal justice system punishes symptoms of trauma while refusing to address its causes. These mechanisms not only fail to reduce harm – they replicate it.
Masculinity: Manufactured Strength, Manufactured Violence
Masculinity in settler-colonial capitalist Aotearoa is not a neutral construct. It is engineered through institutions and ideology to uphold systems of dominance and accumulation. Hegemonic masculinity refers to the dominant cultural ideal of manhood that legitimises male power over women and marginalised men. In Aotearoa, this has historically taken the form of the 'rugged individual,' the stoic provider, the emotionally repressed worker – figures perfectly suited to a colonial and capitalist economy.
As economic security has deteriorated under neoliberalism, these masculine ideals have become both more impossible and more dangerous. Men are still expected to perform dominance and self-sufficiency, but the conditions to do so are vanishing. This leads to a crisis of masculine identity that is often resolved through violence against women, against children, and against other men. Domestic violence is not a breakdown of masculinity; it is masculinity functioning exactly as designed within systems that prize control and repress vulnerability.
Māori men have been particularly targeted by colonial constructions of masculinity. The colonial state has produced an image of the Māori man as 'primitive' or 'hyper-masculine,' using this stereotype to justify both their exclusion and their punishment. This has contributed to Māori men being over-policed, over-incarcerated, and over-vilified in public discourse. It also distances them from traditional forms of mana tāne rooted in protection, emotional balance, and collective responsibility.
Pre-colonial Māori gender relations were often based on complementary roles rather than rigid binaries. Concepts like mana wahine and whanaungatanga offered frameworks for relational balance. Colonisation disrupted these through the imposition of patriarchal Christianity, private property relations, and legal systems that marginalised wāhine and redefined tāne in Western terms. The result is a toxic hybrid masculinity, both colonised and colonising, that expresses itself in controlling and violent behaviours.
Resisting violent masculinity requires more than behaviour change programmes. It demands a fundamental rethinking of what it means to be a man, and indeed whether we need rigid gendered categories at all. Anarchist and decolonial feminisms propose abolishing masculinity as a system of dominance and cultivating new identities based on aroha, accountability, interdependence, and healing. Some community-based programmes like She Is Not Your Rehab and Māori men's wānanga offer glimpses of this future, though they remain on the margins of state policy.
State Responses: Punishment Without Healing
Despite decades of public concern, the state's response to domestic violence remains overwhelmingly punitive. While legislation has expanded the scope of what counts as family violence, the core response remains centred on police, courts, and prisons. This carceral approach treats violence as an individual failing rather than a structural issue, and in doing so, it often exacerbates the very harms it claims to address.
Police are the frontline of family violence interventions, yet policing is itself a form of colonial violence. The New Zealand Police have a long history of disproportionately targeting Māori, using excessive force, and failing to protect victims, particularly when those victims are Māori women. Rather than offering safety, police involvement often increases the danger for women and whānau, especially in communities already over-policed.
Corrections-based programmes for violent men are similarly flawed. They are often short-term, one-size-fits-all, and compliance-driven. They rarely engage with the cultural, historical, and social contexts of men's violence. Worse still, imprisonment itself is a violent and traumatising experience that removes people from their support networks and embeds them further in cycles of shame and disconnection.
Even non-custodial interventions like protection orders and mandated group programmes function within a surveillance framework. Men are monitored and punished for non-compliance, but rarely offered the deep, relational work needed for genuine transformation. This reflects a broader trend in neoliberal governance: managing risk rather than fostering change.
Meanwhile, Oranga Tamariki removes Māori children from their whānau at rates reminiscent of the stolen generations. In 2020, Māori made up 70% of children in state care despite being only 16% of the population. These removals sever whānau connections, reinforce distrust of institutions, and perpetuate trauma. They are state violence masquerading as child protection.
Anarcho-communist and abolitionist approaches reject the notion that the state can solve violence through coercion. State institutions like prisons and police exist to manage the consequences of inequality, not to eliminate them. Real safety comes not from more surveillance, but from deeper community ties, access to resources, and collective accountability.
There are promising alternatives. Kaupapa Māori justice initiatives like Te Pae Oranga (iwi-led restorative panels), whānau hui, and mana-enhancing programmes grounded in tikanga offer holistic approaches to harm that restore relationships rather than sever them. Feminist transformative justice practices focus on survivor empowerment, community healing, and perpetrator accountability without relying on the carceral state.
These alternatives are not perfect, but they point toward a different horizon. One where safety is not imposed from above, but built from below. One where harm is addressed not through punishment, but through solidarity and transformation.
Conclusion: Toward Liberation and Accountability
Domestic violence in Aotearoa cannot be understood apart from the systems that produce alienation, inequality, and control. It is not an aberration, but a feature of a colonial capitalist society that isolates people, denies them agency, and teaches them that domination is love.
Ending violence requires more than reform. It requires dismantling the structures that make violence logical and rewarding – patriarchy, colonisation, capitalism, and the carceral state. It requires building new systems rooted in manaakitanga, whanaungatanga, mutual aid, and collective care.
As anarcho-communists, we support and amplify the work already being done in our communities to build alternatives. We must continue to challenge violent masculinities, support survivors, decolonise our relationships, and hold each other accountable, not through shame, but through commitment to transformation.
In the words of abolitionist Mariame Kaba: 'Hope is a discipline.' The struggle against domestic violence is the struggle for a world where everyone has power over their own lives, connection to their communities, and freedom from fear. That world is not only possible – it is necessary.