Accumulation by recreation: Celebrity billionaire conservation in Hawai'i’s tourism landscape

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the number of celebrity billionaires and other high-net-worth individuals buying land in Hawai'i. While scholars have addressed a range of dispossession practices in settler states, much less attention has been paid to how celebrity billionaire land acquisitions are accelerating the recreationalization of conservation, culture, and agrarianization. In this commentary response to Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart's (2024) article, “Indigenous Placemaking Amidst Settler Colonial Leisure: A Tale of Hawaiʻi's Living Parks,” I engage with her concept of 'compromise' to address the ongoing process of ‘accumulation by recreation.’ Accumulation by recreation accounts for the ongoing privatization of recreational landscapes. In Hawai'i, celebrity billionaires play an outsized role in shaping conservation frontiers by developing private partnerships with the state and other non-state entities. These practices echo Hobart's description of the mechanics of settler colonial dispossession, including the “compromises” communities were compelled to make in the context of mid-century park development in Hawai'i.