Abstract
In 2008 the New Zealand government introduced the first significant demand-side subsidy into the early education (ECE) sector: the ‘20 hours ECE. As a market device, the subsidy was intended to encourage parents as consumers to exercise their purchasing power in order to stimulate and regulate the emerging ECE market. In this chapter I will examine attempts to pacify ECE as a particular kind of good, as a key aspect of the success of the subsidy and of the marketisation of ECE in general. Inherent in this pacification process are assumptions about value and standardisation of practice, which have ultimately reframed the diverse ECE landscape with the intention of creating a more uniform service for parents to purchase across the country. However, attempts to pacify ECE have been fundamentally challenged by the bicultural environment through which it is practiced in Aotearoa New Zealand, leading to unanticipated overflows in the ECE market which have called into question the marketisation process itself. Drawing on the Waitangi Tribunal Report documenting the legal case taken by the Māori ECE provider Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust against the Crown in 2012, this chapter will consider how the politics of place and the particular social relations therein matter to the marketisation of ECE and the success (or failure) of attempts to pacify the ‘social’.