Negotiating Development: Customary Law, Colonial Legacies, and Tourism on Indigenous Land in New Caledonia

Karolina Kania, PhDFaculty of Business Administration, Prague University of Economics and Business & Centre for the Study of Social Movements (CEMS-EHESS)

What happens when a global travel and tourism company aims to create a luxury resort on a small Pacific island where Indigenous authority over land challenges capitalist investment logics and private ownership regimes? Drawing on ethnographic and archival research this talk examines tourism development on Kanak customary land in New Caledonia as a site where colonial legacies, Indigenous claims to sovereignty, and global tourism imaginaries intersect.

Recommended reading:

Kania, K. (2025). NOvation and Indigenous struggle for land: Club Med’s failure in New Caledonia. Tourism Geographies, 27(2), 213–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2446356

‍