I Kanak nella corrente del capitalismo

Forme di riappropriazione culturale del nichel in Nuova Caledonia

Abstract

In New Caledonia, the nickel, as well as being one of the deepest scar left by French colonisation, since Seventies it has become a fundamental element of kanak march towards independence and today it has a central place in the global economy. In 2013 was inaugurated the industry of Koniambo, an independentist project, that belongs at 51% to a mining society in the hands of Kanak. Against an approach based on mining as a synonym of destruction, in this paper I want to underline the way in which it produces spaces of relations. The specific process of resource-making gives a particular direction to capitalism,that appears as redeemer from a marginal condition. This ethnographic case is a good starting point to de-construct the dichotomy between economy and holiness, and the instrumental conception of money.