Playing in the Team of Five Million: Conformity and Nonconformity to the New Zealand Covid-19 Pandemic Response

Abstract

The New Zealand Covid-19 strategy received praise at home and abroad. However, despite the epidemiological success of the strategy, it amplified social inequalities and exclusion, highlighted existing frustration and mistrust of the government, and in turn produced reactionary forms of conformity and noncompliance as well as prosocial forms of resistance. This article focuses on three types of social responses to the pandemic in New Zealand between 2020 and 2022. It looks at hostile conformity exemplified in antipathy against Pacific Island communities dealing with Covid-19 outbreaks, reactionary noncompliance seen in the anti-mandate protests and parliament occupation, and prosocial resistance to the state’s neglect of Indigenous public health seen in the Māori organized effort to protect communities left out of the pandemic preparedness plans. The article presents a critical understanding of the limits of New Zealand’s Covid-19 strategy and the resulting social responses of conformity and nonconformity.