Critical reflexivity and decolonial methodology in island studies: Interrogating the scholar within (original) (raw)
Related papers
Island studies has developed into an established, interdisciplinary research field. It is important that island studies not only continue deepening its internal theoretical understandings but also reach out to other fields and regions that have received limited attention within island studies. It is also necessary for island studies to grapple with a number of problematic tendencies within the field and the wider scholarship, including by challenging the misuse of island spatiality to produce idealised visions of islands (for example in island sustainability research). Similarly, it is important to pursue a decolonial island studies that rethinks the ways in which island development research can end up marginalising Indigenous voices at the same time as it seeks to understand islands 'on their own terms'. Island studies, many say, is an emerging field. We live in an age that valorises dynamism and change, so it flatters our sensibilities to participate in a scholarly project that is not fixed, fusty, or static. If island studies is emerging, then we who contribute to it are at the vanguard, engaging in a new way of doing research. But this mantra of 'emergence', 'burgeoning', 'growth', 'institutionalisation' is also an apology―repeated across a range of important literature reviews and theoretical texts (e.g.,
Island studies as a decolonial project (Guest Editorial Introduction)
Island Studies Journal, 2016
The phenomenon of colonialism influenced the cultures, economies, and politics of the majority of the world’s population. The subsequent decolonization process has likewise had profound affects on colonized societies. Island societies undergoing decolonization face many of the same pressures and challenges as do mainland societies, yet island spatiality and the history of island colonization itself has left former and present-day island colonies with distinctive colonial legacies. From the Caribbean to the Arctic to the Pacific to the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, colonial and decolonial processes are creating tensions between maintenance of the culture of indigenous peoples, economic development, cultivation of cultural heritage, political modernization, status on the global stage, democratic governance, and educational achievement. We call for an island studies perspective on decolonization, emphasizing the importance of appropriately positioning expert knowledge relative to ...
Book Review: The Challenges of Island Studies
Okinawan Journal of Island Studies, 2022
The Challenges of Island Studies includes six individual research articles and one panel discussion emerging from the international symposium titled "Prospects and Challenges for Envisioning Regional Science for Small Islands" organized by the Research Institute for Islands and Sustainability (RIIS). In the fi rst part, the individual research chapters, 1 through 6, offer visionary contributions from different perspectives in the current island study fi eld, covering society, politics, colonialism, culture, tourism, and sustainable development. The second part, the panel discussion, contributes to more transdisciplinary and trans-regional multi-directional dialogues. This book refl ects a growing recognition of the use of interdisciplinary and feminist lenses in the study of current issues in island studies. This book provides Asia-Pacifi c-centered case studies with multi-and interdisciplinary-based research perspectives and theoretical frameworks as well as theoretical discussions on island studies. A range of island issues is introduced from both contextualized and political perspectives, such as the establishment of the academic institution RIIS for island research, the perception of island safety in Guam, and US Militarism in the Pacifi c. The book shows current interdisciplinary development within and outside of the academic fi eld, the diversifi ed view of the cultural landscape, and island local language developed through human and cultural interactions. The fi nal part of the book also highlights current research challenges, such as the diversifi cation of different understandings and defi nitions of islandness and perceptions of the size of islands, their borders, and ownership, as evident in case studies including Guam, Okinawa, and Taiwan. Aiming to foster diversifi ed island study theories and trans-disciplinary methods development points of view, The Challenges of Island Studies covers a considerable range of island research-related questions, for example: How can we rethink island studies through an interdisciplinary research perspective through the emerging hub of RIIS? From whose perspective should island security and safety be considered? How can critical ocean studies connect perspectives arising from feminist, indigenous, and multispecies literatures? How, where, and who directs the evolution and future trajectory through the institutional framework of islands studies? What stands in between relics and the heritage landscape? How do historical Ryukyu migration and interaction shape language [Book Review]
No future of island studies: Embracing island studies in plural
Island Studies Journal, 2023
This editorial conclusion looks back on how Island Studies Journal has developed from its start in 2006, up through the beginning of the current editorship in 2017, and through to the start of a new editorship in mid-2023. Island studies has transformed from being a close-knit community centred on a few key scholars to being a field composed of numerous loosely connected movements. There is no longer a clearly identifiable 'mainstream' island studies and no longer a canon of crucial island studies researchers. Island studies journals and scholars are now coming from and writing from a great diversity of locations and positions. The plurality of island studies means there is room in the field for everyone.
Island Studies as a Decolonial Project
The phenomenon of colonialism influenced the cultures, economies, and politics of the majority of the world's population. The subsequent decolonization process has likewise had profound affects on colonized societies. Island societies undergoing decolonization face many of the same pressures and challenges as do mainland societies, yet island spatiality and the history of island colonization itself has left former and present-day island colonies with distinctive colonial legacies. From the Caribbean to the Arctic to the Pacific to the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, colonial and decolonial processes are creating tensions between maintenance of the culture of indigenous peoples, economic development, cultivation of cultural heritage, political modernization, status on the global stage, democratic governance, and educational achievement. We call for an island studies perspective on decolonization, emphasizing the importance of appropriately positioning expert knowledge relative to the needs of colonized and indigenous peoples and highlighting the pitfalls of neocolonialsim. We thus lay the groundwork for island studies as a decolonial project.
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.
Coloniality and Islands. Introduction for SHIMA issue on Coloniailty and Islands.
SHIMA.13.2.03, 2019
This is the introduction to the SHIMA issue on Coloniality and Islands. In this Introduction, Macarena Gómez-Barris and May Joseph lay out the specific theoretical significance and historical importance of decolonial approaches to island studies. Using a decolonial and praxis oriented framework, we propose a cross current, Indigenous centered, and trans-oceanic study as the center of a comparative archipelago studies that operates within a decolonial and postcolonial framework. Considering that archipelagos challenge continental thinking, this issue of SHIMA attempts to merge multiple sea frameworks and spatialities to present a series of interwoven, striated and interdependent series of island knowledges and the methodologies.
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.