Lance D. Collins – författare

West Maui has been the site of rapid, drastic changes to landscape, communities, governance, and economy. This collection addresses the ways tourism both changed West Maui and how changes brought to West Maui made a tourist economy viable. Each chapter tells a story of the ways different communities experienced the transformation of West Maui from an agrarian area into one dominated by industrial tourism. While focused on site-specific histories of West Maui, this volume is of significant interest to tourism studies, regional and urban planning, and Hawai‘i and Hawaiian historians.

The essays in this book engage with events, projects, and developments in ways that describe a host of social relationships and, often, the problems that themselves maintain those social relations as inherently conflicted ones. By attending to particular events and structures these chapters unravel some of the dynamics that animate social changes in West Maui.Each chapter inventories the concerns, lands, and people who were key to conflicts that drive ongoing social transformations in West Maui. Social change is not only the documentation of historical happenings, but the singular, material confluence of historical factors that drives futurity. These chapters look at these factors, historically and now, to create meaningful comments for people in West Maui and for scholars of cultural studies, history, and sociology. The hope for this collection is to offer discussion of several concrete changes that have contributed to the shape of West Maui’s social institutions and communities.The North Beach–West Maui Benefit Fund has supported a number of book projects focused on West Maui’s communities and histories. This volume was preceded by, among other publication projects, Tourism Impacts West Maui (2016), Michelle Anderson’s The Storied Places of West Maui: History, Legends, and Place Names of the Sunset Side of Maui (2015), Sydney Iaukea’s Keka‘a: The Making and Saving of North Beach West Maui (2014), Jon Van Dyke and Maile Osika’s Public Access to the Roads and Trails of West Maui (2012), and a published compilation of Proceedings of the Charter Commissions of the County of Maui, 1966-2012 (edited by Lance D. Collins).

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Civil Society in West Maui pieces together key political controversies that have animated the social and political life of West Maui. The book is a recounting of struggles.Working within the long shadow cast by the plantation system, and against those who now dominate life in West Maui, the book is concerned with acts of resistance, recovery, and inspiration. There have been amazing people and social movements whose stories must be told. Diverted streams have been restored. Attempts to destroy the landscape have been stopped. Sometimes the successes are grand, while sometimes they are on a smaller scale but have had a lasting impact on our society.Sometimes the struggles fail in the face of overwhelming political and economic power. The playing field is not level and the less powerful, often local, people are at a disadvantage. But the struggles continue, and West Maui is better for it.Taken together, the collection of essays offers a mosaic of perspectives on civil society in West Maui. Civil society is complicated and fragmented. There are tactics and resources that can be shared between people and groups: a social value can support several movements; a legal precedent can be used by others who are threatened; a technical access-to-information rule can improve how much people understand what is happening in their community.Sometimes social movements succeed; sometimes they do not. The editor and writers hope the contribution of Civil Society in West Maui encourages people to recognize that such political activities have taken place-and that the struggles for a just society continue.

How should a history of West Maui be approached? A typical large-scale narrative of West Maui moves from Native Hawaiians to missionaries to sugar to tourism. Whales and tourists come and go. But this type of history may be neither helpful nor insightful. Historical Investigations in West Maui seeks to extend known histories of West Maui in multiple directions.Messy, local histories help to open up the range of possibilities for action by giving us additional insight into the circumstances and conditions that previous generations faced. Historical knowledge helps to frame perceptions that organize space. Local histories therefore help to render visible aspects of historical space and time that have been obscured by overarching dominant narratives and timelines. Local history can disrupt social reproduction, leading to new ways of confronting the past and imagining people, the community, and the world. Making history complicated and messy is a way to question the existing structures of understanding and existence.Historical Investigations seeks to look at a wide range of topics: from Micronesian plantation labor in the nineteenth century to the history of Kaomi, Kauikeaouli’s co-ruler, to the South Asian Muslim awardee at the Māhele. It looks at historical processes, such as the evolution of the Kingdom educational system, the 1860s Lahaina famines, and the imposition of the Land Court system on land titles.By offering more local histories of West Maui, we are reminded that what exists is far from expressing all possibilities and that those neglected areas of political space can be reclaimed for different stories leading to alternative, preferred futures.