Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
In 2008 millions of New Zealand residents calmly watched television in their homes as a new "call to arms" was broadcast. The urgent call to defend New Zealand's shores from invasion was announced between advertisements for cell phones that would transmit and receive messages from all over the world and for discount travel packages to Fiji and Los Angeles. As images of men in uniform invading New Zealand shores for the first time in modern history flashed on the screen, kiwis were called upon to join the "kiwibank resistance movement."[2] The uniform was a banker's suit and the weapons were briefcases. The act of defence required by the recipients of this emergency message was to move one's money from foreign-owned banks to a kiwi-owned bank in order to protect New Zealand from invasion. One could still purchase the global cell phone and a travel package, as long as one withdrew the money to pay for these goods from a kiwibank account rather than from an Australian bank account in a supposed act of resistance to the globalization of banking.
Repository Citation
Grey, Sandra, and Patricia M. Nickel. "kiwibrand Globalisation: Banking on Pre-Packaged Artificial Resistance." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 9, no. 3, 2009, pp. 1–21. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol9/iss3/4