Description
- Abstract:
- This dissertation investigates the conditions under which communities influence land development. To do so, I examined surprising apparent triumphs of local "community power" over controversial tourism urbanization in the state of Hawai'i. I examined four development projects in three counties. All were attempts at tourism urbanization, the creation of urban forms for consumption by visitors. The first three sites showed unexpected instances of community success, whereas the fourth did not. Using interviews, public records, news sources, and documentary film, I reconstructed land development processes. I explored the implications for development processes of two regime shifts in Hawai'i's modern history. Political institutions (laws and state agencies) as well as cultural institutions (prevailing cultural scripts or narratives) constitute a given land development regime, along with basic political-economic conditions. This first regime shift I studied occurred in the 1950s, when the Democratic Party, organized labor, and working-class ethnic groups overcame almost 100 years of domination by oligarchic sugar plantation elites. Democrats and their allies promoted tourism and real-estate development to provide wider economic opportunities. I call this a shift from the Plantation-Territorial Regime to a Tourism-Growth Regime. I identified a second shift--which has not yet been widely recognized--to a consolidating Post-Colonial Regime, occurring particularly since the early 1990s. Leftist democrats, environmentalists, and, most importantly, the Native Hawaiian Movement (for political self-determination and cultural recognition) have changed formal political institutions and land regulations through institutional "layering." They have also forwarded cultural narratives, which now effectively compete with developmentalist scripts. Case studies of this thesis provided evidence of democratization of urban development in the state, defined as firmer anchoring of land in social rather than commercial meanings, since the emergence of the Post-Colonial Regime. Institutions have created opportunities for relatively diverse actors to influence development. Under-resourced groups use political institutions, compelling place narratives, and cultural capital (valued in the current regime) to influence land development. However, the tools and opportunities created by the new regime can be appropriated in contingent ways.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2010)
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Citation
Darrah, Jennifer R.,
"Contested Land Development in Hawai'i: Regime Change in a Tourism Economy"
(2010).
Sociology Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z00K26SG
