Paper short abstract:

The Bouma National Heritage Park, Fiji is presented as an example of Tim Ingold's taskscape as it reflects the fundamental indissolubility of humans, non-humans and landscape. The paper reflects on the politics of dwelling occurring within Bouma's taskscape between 2004 and 2006.

Paper long abstract:

In 1990, the Boumā people of Taveuni, Fiji established the Boumā National Heritage Park. A growing dependence on the market economy and a desire to find an economic alternative to commercial logging on their communally-tenured land, led to their decision to approach the New Zealand government for assistance to establish the Park. In 2004-2006, despite receiving first place in an international protected area award in 2002, internal conflict was worsening. According to the Boumā people, this was partly due to the community-based ecotourism development process which had paid little attention to the vanua as a set of core cultural values and a human-environment relationship. Since the establishment of the Park, the people of Boumā have become increasingly conscious of references to Drawing on Tim Ingold's (2000) 'taskscapes' and 'politics of dwelling' (2010), the vanua is presented as relationally linking humans with other elements of the environment within a landscape. This contrasts with a common Western epistemological approach of treating humans as independent of other cosmological and physical elements and as positioned against the landscape. It has been argued that the vanua is incompatible with values associated with capitalist ecotourism models. However, despite numerous obstacles, the Boumā National Heritage Park is one example of a group's endeavours to culturally hybridise the vanua with entrepreneurship to create a locally meaningful protected area management model. The Boumā people call this hybrid 'business va'avanua'.