Contested collaborations and the reconfiguration of local power in tourism governance: Evidence from a UNESCO Global Geopark

This article examines tourism governance as a contested arena of power in the Ciletuh–Palabuhanratu UNESCO Global Geopark (CPUGG), Indonesia. As a UNESCO Global Geopark, CPUGG operates under a conservation-oriented mandate that prioritizes geological protection and environmental sustainability, thereby shaping the institutional boundaries of tourism development and community participation. Drawing on focused ethnography, the study analyzes how collaborative governance—widely promoted as a mechanism for community empowerment and sustainable development—operates through symbolic participation rather than substantive power-sharing. Integrating Lukes’ multidimensional theory of power with Foucauldian perspectives on discourse and governmentality, the study shows how power circulates through formal institutions, informal networks, and everyday practices shaping inclusion and exclusion. Empirically, community-based organizations act as ambivalent mediators, enabling solidarity while reproducing internal hierarchies and informal exclusion. Relations among communities, government agencies, and private actors involve contested collaborations in which participation remains largely procedural, masking asymmetries in decision-making authority and benefit distribution. Local actors also engage in everyday resistance through informal economic practices, kin-based networks, and selective compliance. Beyond the Indonesian context, this study contributes to debates on tourism and conservation governance by showing how collaborative frameworks within global heritage regimes reproduce inequality when underlying power relations remain unaddressed.