Contested "Paradise": Ethnographic Stories of Tourism and Customary Land in New Caledonia

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“Paradise Awaits", promises New Caledonia's tourism office. But the beaches and lagoons featured in tourism brochures are also customary land, governed by the custom of the Kanak, the Indigenous people of the archipelago, and shaped by long histories of colonization and resistance. What happens when a global tourism brand wants to build there? This lecture explores the challenges of tourism development in Indigenous territories through the case of New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the South Pacific with a unique legal and political status. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Kanak communities since 2014, Dr. Karolina Kania – a Polish anthropologist, Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at the Faculty of Business Administration, Prague University of Economics and Business – shows how customary land tenure shapes the conditions for doing business, and how traditional systems of land ownership collide with the logic of external investment and administrative regulation. The starting point is the contested case of the Club Med resort, which opens a broader discussion about tourism, mining, and infrastructure projects, as well as the legal and economic challenges common across the Asia-Pacific region. The lecture combines stories from the field with practical examples of tourism development. It also reflects on what fieldwork in Indigenous communities requires: building trust, researcher reflexivity, and research ethics. As an introduction to the lecture, we invite you to visit the photography exhibition New Caledonia: An Archipelago at a Crossroads in the courtyard of the Náprstek Museum. The lecture is held in English and open to the public, with time for discussion. Free admission Related exhibitions