Politics of imaging New Caledonia

Abstract

Advertisements for the international tourism market are examined using postcolonial discourse analysis to determine how tourism promoters represent New Caledonia. This article illustrates how the images used to promote New Caledonia on international markets continue to be a political statement that constructs the territory as a French enclave in the Pacific not shared with Kanak people and several minorities. The article demonstrates that these representations continue to translate unequal power relations that most of the French in New Caledonia (supported by tourism and its operators) wish to maintain with the Indigenous people. These representations also run counter to government decisions to restore the identity of Kanak people and to improve their economic well-being on the basis of tourism development.