Cruise Tourism and Social Change in Aneityum, Southern Vanuatu

People and Culture in Oceania, 35: 85-108, 2019 From Kastom to Developing Livelihood: Cruise Tourism and Social Change in Aneityum, Southern Vanuatu Eijiro Fukui* The purpose of this paper is to consider the social impact of tourism using data from fieldwork in Aneityum Island, southern Vanuatu. Previous research has discussed tourism in Oceania from the perspective of “sustainable development.” This series of discussions was very relevant to those on “glocalization,” in which expanding Westernization or globalization is reinterpreted by local people. However, we must bear in mind that the impacts of tourism on small societies cannot easily be localized and reinterpreted. The social impact of tourism is changing people’s notion of tradition (kastom in Melanesian pidgin). In anthropology in Japan, unlike in Europe and America, it has been argued that kastom and skul (the Western element) cannot be syncretized, but coexist. In light of this, Melanesian societies have been referred to as “bicultural,” and “immutability” has been viewed as the characteristic of kastom. However, with the influx of cash to islanders working in tourism, life on Aneityum is changing dramatically. The islanders themselves understand that their livelihood (numu) is not as it was before, but do not know whose lives they are currently living. Therefore, it is dangerous to unilaterally judge these situations as good examples of glocalization or “developing tradition.” Instead, we must accurately assess the social impact of tourism. Keywords: tourism, kastom, Vanuatu, Aneityum, livelihood, social change, cruise ship, anonymity 1. Introduction For almost 20 years, I have been researching Aneityum, the southernmost island of Vanuatu, and each time I visit the island, I am asked how much the airfare from Japan costs. Reluctant to discuss money, I respond vaguely that a round trip costs somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 vatu.1 When I began conducting fieldwork in 2000, the response of the islanders was * Faculty of Law and Literature, Shimane University, Japan. [e-mail: [email protected]] 1 Vatu is Vanuatu’s currency. 1 vatu is approximately 1 yen. 86 E. Fukui generally the same: “Wow, that’s expensive. There’s no way we could go to Japan.” In recent years, however, their response has changed to “Huh, 200,000 to 300,000 vatu. In that case we might be able to go.” While living lives of self-sufficiency on an outer island, they have been able to procure this much cash through tourism. The aim of this paper is to describe in detail developing tourism on Aneityum and the practices of its residents, as well as to consider the great social changes that the island is currently facing. 2. Tourism and Kastom As is true with many developing countries, tourism is important to Pacific Island countries, which lack the means to acquire foreign currency. In tourism and development studies, tourism is typically seen as a way to address “poverty” that grips developing countries (Erbes, 1973; Diamond, 1977; Sinclair, 1998; Pratt and Harrison, 2015). For example, using statistical data, Cheer and Peel described Vanuatu’s “poverty” as follows: Approximately 40% of the population have an income of less than $1 a day, with 16% living under the poverty line. While the rural sector contributes only 8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 80% of the population are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Increasing urbanisation in the two main centres of Port Vila and Luganville, where employment opportunities are scant, is a growing concern because of escalating crime and tensions between the newly urbanised and their urban compatriots. Only 25% of the economically active are reported to be in paid employment, 67% are engaged in subsistence farming, and the remaining 8% are unemployed. (Cheer and Peel, 2011: 257) The authors insist that the development of tourism will eliminate this purported problem of “poverty”: the necessity of tourism to the economy of Vanuatu is often a topic of discussion (Milne, 1990; de Burlo, 1996; Cheer et al., 2018). However, can well-being be measured by GDP? Regenvanu, a member of Vanuatu’s Parliament, has emphasized the advantages of a traditional (subsistence) economy: A principal reason why the traditional economy does not feature in our current economic policies is that we are not measuring or quantifying the contribution of the traditional economy to national well-being. Unfortunately, the only measure of national well-being that seems to matter to many policy-makers these days is that of Gross From Kastom to Developing Livelihood 87 Domestic Product (GDP) per capita—a crude measure of only the cash value of activities or production. GDP per capita is a misleading measure of economic activity and well-being not only because it masks inequalities, but also because it often counts environmentally and socially destructive practices that undermine people’s well-being. (Regenvanu, 2010: 32) According to this view, the people of Vanuatu are by no means “poor.” Metrics like GDP or number of people in paid employment only show certain aspects of a nation’s status; they cannot comprehensively describe national well-being. A series of development studies have adopted the premise that tourism stabilizes the country’s economy, generates jobs, and benefits local communities that have no notable commodities to sell. However, in Hosts and Guests, the classic text in the anthropology of tourism, Smith (1977) has warned us repeatedly about the danger of underestimating the negative impact of tourism upon local communities. Such warnings do not only come from the anthropology of tourism; tourism studies, too, often warn of the negative impacts of tourism. Analyzing the cases of Tanna and South Pentecost, Tabani has discussed the process through which rural communities come into conflict regarding the distribution of tourism income and emerging inequalities (Tabani, 2010, 2017). In the case of Vanuatu, traditional songs and dances, which have been inherited from their ancestors, are often sold as commodities to tourists (Lindstrom, 2015). These traditions are called kastom (from the English word “custom”) in Bislama (a Melanesian pidgin that is the national language of Vanuatu). In other words, community splits arise from the problem of who owns kastom (Trask, 1991; Sofield, 1991; Jolly and Thomas, 1992; Friedman, 1992; Tonkinson, 1993; Shirakawa, 2005). The actors involved in tourism are diverse—traditional chiefs who want to preserve kastom, local elites hoping for development (in Bislama, developmen), local residents who want cash, and overseas agents who want to broadly develop tourism—and this problem is not easily solved. Lindstrom, who has conducted fieldwork in Tanna for many years, states that the island’s kastom is changing as locals adjust it to suit the tourists’ exotic gaze: “Tourism’s currencies now powerfully define and confine Tanna as other. Island lifeways and product are rewritten and transformed by these demands as particular themes come to identify the island within the global market” (Lindstrom, 2015: 185). A study by Movono et al. (2018) revealed the damage that tourism development has inflicted upon Fiji. Vatuolalai village, which is located in the southwest of Fiji, lost its ecosystem as the result of the 40-year-long development of a large-scale resort. The damage significantly affected not only the ecosystem, but also villagers’ totemic associations, livelihood approaches, and traditional knowledge structure. Thus, tourism can have a negative effect on local communities 88 E. Fukui as well as environment. The more tourism penetrates a community, the more people fear that their traditional culture and way of life will perish. If so, then anthropological studies should consider not how tourism becomes established as part of a community but rather a more fundamental question: Do the people want tourism in the first place? We can find the answer by looking at how tourism has changed the people’s lives. In Bislama, the people of Vanuatu call objects (cash, concrete buildings), institutions (elections, school education, churches), and values (diligently working from morning until evening, individualism) introduced since contact with the West skul (from the English “school”), and often speak of such phenomena in contrast to kastom.2 For example, Port Vila life is categorized as skul, while life on the outer islands and in villages is categorized as kastom. In this paper, by analyzing the impact of tourism on local culture, I will explore changes in perceptions regarding kastom and skul. From the 1980s onwards, in the anthropology of Oceania, discussions surrounding kastom flourished (Jolly, 1982; Tonkinson, 1982; Keesing, 1982; Philibert, 1986). This was prompted by the traditional cultural discourse produced by national elites and nationalists. Around the time that Vanuatu gained independence in 1980, young nationalists attempted to unite a strong nation-state under the banner of kastom. Father Walter Lini,3 the first prime minister, asserted that kastom, Christian values, and development were not contradictory, but that all were necessary for Vanuatu to become a modern nation-state (Lini, 1980). With the appearance of this elite discourse, in the 1990s, scholars discussed tradition and modernity as historically entangled (Thomas, 1991, 1994) or syncretized (White, 1992; White and Lindstrom, 1997) rather than opposing concepts. For example, Lindstrom and White stated: “Melanesians have a tradition of developing tradition. Change is normal, expected, and valued in island societies” (Lindstrom and White, 1994: 17). By emphasizing the idea of developing tradition, they were attempting to “break up persistent and simplifying dichotomies of tradition/ modernity or indigenous/Western that may be found in much of today’s political rhetoric” (Lindstrom and White, 1997: 3). In the 2000s, some started criticizing the very idea of “developing tradition” as a solution to the dichotomy of tradition/modernity, questioning whether the notion actually exists in the minds of ordinary people as opposed to the minds of elites.

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