Envisioning the Archipelago (original) (raw)
Related papers
Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago, Island Studies Journal
Whether in Homer or Plato, Shakespeare or Huxley, throughout history, thinking about islands has shaped how we think about human nature and our place in the world. However, to date archipelagos have received far less attention. This is problematic because we live, increasingly, in a world of island-island movements and not static forms. Not only in the more obvious cases of the Caribbean, Hawaii or the Philippines but, as Stratford et al say, many 'continental forms' like Canada and Australia are in fact archipelagos composed of thousands of island movements. To this list we can add more manufactured archipelagos: wind turbine arrays, industrial oil and military constellations. The key question therefore arises: what does it mean to think with the archipelago? This paper argues firstly that archipelagic thinking denaturalizes the conceptual basis of space and place, and therefore engages 'the spatial turn' presently sweeping the social sciences and humanities. Secondly, such thinking highlights the trope of what I call 'metamorphosis', of the adaptation and transformation of material, cultural and political practices through island movements. In both cases, I argue that thinking with the archipelago requires an important shift in how we frame analysis and engagement.
Island studies is a growing field of research. A relational turn has recently taken place in island studies alongside relational turns in associated fields of research, including oceanic and ship geographies (although not always in conversation with them). While all three now challenge the land-locked nature of geography and related disciplines, this paper suggests that islands, oceans and ships should not always be reductively conceptualised in isolation, because they are often bound together through complex and shifting relations and assemblages. After reviewing debates and conceptual gaps in the critical island, sea and ship literatures, the paper makes this argument by reference to an island dance performance and social institution that is not wholly of the island, the ship or sea, called the Barbados’ Landship. KEYWORDS:- Island Studies, Islands, Relational Turn, Ships, Ocean, Sea
A World of Islands: An Island Studies Reader
2007
Book Close to 10% of the world's population-that is, some 600 million people-live on islands today, covering some 7% of the earth's land surface. One-fourth of the world's sovereign states consist of island or archipelagic territories. The combined land area and exclusive economic zone of the world's islands covers more than one sixth of the Earth's total area. Islands have paved the way to the emergence of such disciplines as biogeography and anthropology; they are typical 'hot spots' for biological diversity, ecological conservation and international political tension. Islands may offer distinct identities and spaces in an increasingly homogenous and placeless world. This book provides a thoroughly referenced, comprehensive and pluridisciplinary overview of the study of islands. It should prove useful to a variety of aficionados, specialists and generalists, especially those living or working on islands. In particular, A World of Islands seeks to serve as a reference text and primer to those educators, scholars, researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, public policy officials and analysts who are keen to adopt an 'island imagination' to their work, study or specific inquiry. Over 40 contributors, from all over the world and from numerous disciplinary backgrounds, deploy their expertise and ideas to highlight insights from, and for, the study of islands and island life. Material is as jargon-free as possible to facilitate understanding across specializations. This book thus extends an invitation to place islands right in the centre of things. While some will certainly question the inclusion or omission of particular themes, this here is the closest thing to an island studies textbook.
1 Doing research on, with and about the island: Reflections on islandscape
Island Studies Journal
Even though the relational turn within Island Studies has long revoked the equation of islands with insularity, disconnectedness and backwardness, these ascriptions are still often deterministically attributed to islands, mainly by non-island scholars. Thereby these designations are not only reproduced, but connections, dynamics, different forms of embeddedness and entanglements remain overlooked. This paper has two main goals: (1) Adding to the relational turn in Island Studies by not only arguing for more inductive approaches to seriously engage with these situated and changing manifestations and meaningmakings of islands, and (2) by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Malta, we introduce the concept of 'islandscape' (Broodbank 2000) to the Island Studies literature. Through the lens of islandscape, islands can be researched as nodal points of the local, national and global without reproducing 'islandism' while still acknowledging the importance of the island. The combination of-scape and assemblage-thinking which is already present within Island Studies makes it possible to address the tension between global and local and, rather, to look at which concrete, situated assemblages emerge within islandscape. In this sense, we propose to think of the island as islandscape from the very beginning of research, then to show how this islandscape is actually constituted and then to describe partial moments of stabilisation in terms of assemblages.
Guest editorial introduction: islanding cultural geographies
2013
Islands allure imagination, thought and affect. Imagination, thought and affect conjure islands. Literary imaginations create islands more than any other geographical form. 1 Metaphorically, we use concepts of bounded and contained islands to think with, to an extent not commonly recognized. 2 Emotions and desires are moved by and commonly move us towards or away from islands. Relatedly, in a deeper time scale, islands have played a central role in the evolution of life forms, spawning biocultural diversity. 3 Torsten Hägerstrand recognized this in identifying the 'dilemma which arises from expanding over given boundaries while remaining sheltered [as] the eternal theme of first biological evolution and then cultural'. 4 Islands bind and shelter, for better or worse, by design or imposition. Commonly associated today with escape-from tedious, stressful and mundane everyday lives; from financial regulation and taxation; from the chaos, destruction and chemical cocktails of modern society-islands serve a host of other purposes on the maps of higher authorities: for locating military outposts, incarcerating political foes, dumping waste, expanding markets or engineering sites of social experimentation. If islandness is a particular state or condition of being, there is a corresponding action in islanding. 5 We propose island as a verb, islanding as an action. Pacific poet and scholar Teresia Teaiwa asks, and argues: Shall we make island a verb? As a noun, it's so vulnerable to impinging forces. .. let us also make island a verb. It is a way of living that could save our lives. 6 We need this verb to critique hackneyed notions and flashy brandings of islands: as isolates, cut off from the mainstream; as innocent, protected from the ravages of modernity; as terra nullius, pregnant with opportunities of 'under-utilized' resources; as pristine and particularly environmentally conscious societies; as ecosystemic quirks, extremely unstable and vulnerable. We need this verb to mediate and attenuate dizzying oscillations between paradise and prison, openness and closure, roots and routes, materiality and metaphor. For grasping the rich weave of relational space and place, such lurid dichotomies oblige constant vigilance.
Doing research on, with and about the island: Reflections on islandscape
2020
Even though the relational turn within Island Studies has long revoked the equation of islands with insularity, disconnectedness and backwardness, these ascriptions are still often deterministically attributed to islands, mainly by non-island scholars. Thereby these designations are not only reproduced, but connections, dynamics, different forms of embeddedness and entanglements remain overlooked. This paper has two main goals: (1) Adding to the relational turn in Island Studies by not only arguing for more inductive approaches to seriously engage with these situated and changing manifestations and meaning-makings of islands, and (2) by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Malta, we introduce the concept of 'islandscape' (Broodbank 2000) to the Island Studies literature. Through the lens of islandscape, islands can be researched as nodal points of the local, national and global without reproducing 'islandism' while still acknowledging the importance of the island. The combination of-scape and assemblage-thinking which is already present within Island Studies makes it possible to address the tension between global and local and, rather, to look at which concrete, situated assemblages emerge within islandscape. In this sense, we propose to think of the island as islandscape from the very beginning of research, then to show how this islandscape is actually constituted and then to describe partial moments of stabilisation in terms of assemblages.
Islands in History and Representation: Editors' Introduction
2003
This innovative collection of essays explores the ways in which islands have been used, imagined and theorised, both by island dwellers and continentals. This study considers how island dwellers conceived of themselves and their relation to proximate mainlands, and examines the fascination that islands have long held in the European imagination. The collection addresses the significance of islands in the Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century, the exploration of the Pacific, the important role played by islands in the process of decolonisation, and island-oriented developments in postcolonial writing. Islands were often seen as natural colonies or settings for ideal communities but they were also used as dumping grounds for the unwanted, a practice which has continued into the twentieth century. The collection argues the need for an island-based theory within postcolonial studies and suggests how this might be constructed. Covering a historical span from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the contributors include literary and postcolonial critics, historians and geographers.
The Lure of Island Studies: A Cross-disciplinary Conversation1
Dawson, H. and Pugh, J. (2021) The Lure of Islands: A cross-disciplinary conversation In Schön, F., Dierksmeier L., Kouremenos, A., Condit, A. and Palmowski, V. (eds) European Islands Between Isolated and Interconnected Life Worlds, RessourcenKulturen 16, Tübingen: University of Tübingen Press. , 2021
This chapter takes the form of a cross-disciplinary conversation between an island archaeologist and an island geographer. We explore the contemporary state of island studies across and between our respective disciplines, as well as engaging key contemporary island debates surrounding conceptualisations of islands, island relations, deep time, the Anthropocene, resilience and indigeneity. We conclude with important suggestions for a more interdisciplinary approach to island studies, given how the figure of the island itself has moved from the periphery to the centre of so many high-profile contemporary debates, especially those concerning transforming planetary conditions and the Anthropocene.
Critical approaches to island geography
Area, 2020
This special section seeks to identify what it is that makes islands special as well as to critique the limitations of generalised conceptions of islandness. In recent years, the field of island studies has drawn on critical trends in geography, being particularly influenced by the “relational turn,” the “decolonial turn,” and theories of the Anthropocene. The papers in this special section focus on the themes of vulnerability and resilience, indigeneity, spatial transformation, democracy and governance, urbanisation and transport, enclavisation and eco‐cultural tourism, mobility and connective infrastructures, and Anthropocene relationality to explore new horizons in island geography research.