Glorianne Borg Axisa, R. Borg, Mohamed Ibrahim, Fathimath Nistharan
The relation between vulnerability and environmental threats in islands depends on the geographical conditions of specific islands rather than general assumptions. It is assumed that different island communities may develop different socio-environmental dynamics depending on the ordinary everyday context, which would determine their resilience to real and perceived risks. This research provides data on communities’ perception of their vulnerability to environmental issues, with the objective of understanding the sense of vulnerability of two neighbouring island communities in the Maldives: Maamigili and Fenfushi. The research is based on qualitative and quantitative methods which include semi-structured interviews with national and local entities, and questionnaires distributed among island inhabitants. The study shows that although the islands are located in very similar geographical settings, the socio-environment dynamics within each of the islands determines the communities’ sense of vulnerability. The communities of Maamigili and Fenfushi face different situations and, as such, general assumptions would not address the gaps and needs of communities of specific islands. Even if two islands are relatively close and similar to each other, they still require separate Disaster Risk Reduction strategies so as to address the real and perceived short- and long-term vulnerabilities of the locals as a means to build more resilient communities.
{"title":"Vulnerability to disaster in the Maldives: The Maamigili and Fenfushi Island communities","authors":"Glorianne Borg Axisa, R. Borg, Mohamed Ibrahim, Fathimath Nistharan","doi":"10.24043/isj.408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.408","url":null,"abstract":"The relation between vulnerability and environmental threats in islands depends on the geographical conditions of specific islands rather than general assumptions. It is assumed that different island communities may develop different socio-environmental dynamics depending on the ordinary everyday context, which would determine their resilience to real and perceived risks. This research provides data on communities’ perception of their vulnerability to environmental issues, with the objective of understanding the sense of vulnerability of two neighbouring island communities in the Maldives: Maamigili and Fenfushi. The research is based on qualitative and quantitative methods which include semi-structured interviews with national and local entities, and questionnaires distributed among island inhabitants. The study shows that although the islands are located in very similar geographical settings, the socio-environment dynamics within each of the islands determines the communities’ sense of vulnerability. The communities of Maamigili and Fenfushi face different situations and, as such, general assumptions would not address the gaps and needs of communities of specific islands. Even if two islands are relatively close and similar to each other, they still require separate Disaster Risk Reduction strategies so as to address the real and perceived short- and long-term vulnerabilities of the locals as a means to build more resilient communities.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jaume Binimelis Sebastián, Antoni Ordinas Garau, Maurici Ruiz Pérez
Geographic literacy is a field of research with a great tradition. This area was first developed in the British and North American academic circles in the 1980s and 1990s, and research has continued until the present day. The analysis of perception and knowledge of geography has focused on the enclaves (toponyms) mentioned in the mental maps (place location knowledge) prepared by university undergraduate students of the primary education teaching major. However, this focus is also on an approach where few studies have been made, yet it has been facilitated by the incorporation of modern geographic information technologies. The authors test a methodology for surface area and perimeter size analysis on the mental maps of the Balearic Islands made by future teachers, comparing their distortions in relation to the real model. After analyzing the results, the most notable common pattern describing the insular students’ perception of the isles is ethnocentrism, which undoubtedly has important implications in the field of geographic education.
{"title":"Views of the islands: The geographical perception of the Balearic Islands among graduate students in primary education","authors":"Jaume Binimelis Sebastián, Antoni Ordinas Garau, Maurici Ruiz Pérez","doi":"10.24043/isj.400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.400","url":null,"abstract":"Geographic literacy is a field of research with a great tradition. This area was first developed in the British and North American academic circles in the 1980s and 1990s, and research has continued until the present day. The analysis of perception and knowledge of geography has focused on the enclaves (toponyms) mentioned in the mental maps (place location knowledge) prepared by university undergraduate students of the primary education teaching major. However, this focus is also on an approach where few studies have been made, yet it has been facilitated by the incorporation of modern geographic information technologies. The authors test a methodology for surface area and perimeter size analysis on the mental maps of the Balearic Islands made by future teachers, comparing their distortions in relation to the real model. After analyzing the results, the most notable common pattern describing the insular students’ perception of the isles is ethnocentrism, which undoubtedly has important implications in the field of geographic education.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jean Rhys’s best-known novel Wide Sargasso Sea, writing back to Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre, is set in the exuberant natural world of the post-emancipation Caribbean. Despite its harsh depiction of cruelty, self-deception, and hypocrisy in the human world, the novel conveys a sympathetic impression of Caribbean society. The novel’s utopian/dystopian tension is centered on its imagining of the Caribbean as a paradoxical site of coexisting dystopia and creolotopia. This article focuses on spaces lived in by individual characters, aiming to show that Wide Sargasso Sea’s Caribbean islands can be read as both dystopian spaces of resistance and creolotopian spaces of transformation. Counter to colonial utopian imaginary, the tropical islands in the novel are presented as an evil, ugly, and diseased world for both white colonizers and the colonized, yet they are simultaneously portrayed as a special Caribbean creolotopia formed through archipelagic thinking and the process of creolization, as embodied in the lived experiences of the black woman Christophine. By resisting the binarism of victim/victimizer and envisioning utopia and creolotopia in the same space, the novel subverts the binary thinking that dominates Western epistemology.
{"title":"Spaces of resistance and transformation: Caribbean islands between dystopia and creolotopia in Wide Sargasso Sea","authors":"Ping Su, Shoujuan Huang","doi":"10.24043/isj.389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.389","url":null,"abstract":"Jean Rhys’s best-known novel Wide Sargasso Sea, writing back to Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre, is set in the exuberant natural world of the post-emancipation Caribbean. Despite its harsh depiction of cruelty, self-deception, and hypocrisy in the human world, the novel conveys a sympathetic impression of Caribbean society. The novel’s utopian/dystopian tension is centered on its imagining of the Caribbean as a paradoxical site of coexisting dystopia and creolotopia. This article focuses on spaces lived in by individual characters, aiming to show that Wide Sargasso Sea’s Caribbean islands can be read as both dystopian spaces of resistance and creolotopian spaces of transformation. Counter to colonial utopian imaginary, the tropical islands in the novel are presented as an evil, ugly, and diseased world for both white colonizers and the colonized, yet they are simultaneously portrayed as a special Caribbean creolotopia formed through archipelagic thinking and the process of creolization, as embodied in the lived experiences of the black woman Christophine. By resisting the binarism of victim/victimizer and envisioning utopia and creolotopia in the same space, the novel subverts the binary thinking that dominates Western epistemology.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Y. Nadarajah, Elena Burgos Martinez, Ping Su, Adam Grydehøj
Although the field of island studies has from the start regarded itself as a defender of islands and islander interests, it is entangled in coloniality. This editorial focuses on issues of power, knowledge, and position. Who wields power in island studies? Who knows about islands? Where is island studies located, and how does it position itself? The paper discusses problems such as tokenism and forced inclusions, denial and circumscription of expertise, and onto-epistemological discrimination and hegemony within island studies. Ultimately, the paper advances the need for critical reflexivity and decolonial methodology within island studies, for pluralistic approaches to inclusivity and recognition of epistemic differences.
{"title":"Critical reflexivity and decolonial methodology in island studies: Interrogating the scholar within","authors":"Y. Nadarajah, Elena Burgos Martinez, Ping Su, Adam Grydehøj","doi":"10.24043/isj.380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.380","url":null,"abstract":"Although the field of island studies has from the start regarded itself as a defender of islands and islander interests, it is entangled in coloniality. This editorial focuses on issues of power, knowledge, and position. Who wields power in island studies? Who knows about islands? Where is island studies located, and how does it position itself? The paper discusses problems such as tokenism and forced inclusions, denial and circumscription of expertise, and onto-epistemological discrimination and hegemony within island studies. Ultimately, the paper advances the need for critical reflexivity and decolonial methodology within island studies, for pluralistic approaches to inclusivity and recognition of epistemic differences.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Given the confrontational nature of citizen-police interactions, conflict between both groups is inevitable. On one hand, it is argued that citizen-police conflict and complaints against the police must be properly ventilated; however, on the other hand, it is argued that existing dispute resolution mechanisms are biased in favor of the police. With this in mind, police departments and community residents are increasingly seeking alternative mechanisms to resolve citizen-police conflicts as well as citizen complaints against police officers and mediation has emerged as a forerunner. Using a quantitative approach, this exploratory study concurrently evaluated citizen and police officer perspectives regarding the role of mediation as an alternative to judicial and other legal based mechanisms to resolve citizen-police conflicts in Trinidad and Tobago. The study is premised on ‘islandness’ and the findings indicate that generally, both citizens and police officers are willing to utilize mediation to resolve citizen-police disputes, however, there are some disparities over the issue by gender. The paper concludes by advocating for a complaints management system that includes mediation within a consultative framework focused of behavioral improvements to be implemented within the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.
{"title":"Mediate or litigate: An evaluation of citizen and police officer perspectives on the use of mediation to resolve citizen-police conflict in Trinidad and Tobago","authors":"W. C. Wallace, Karen Lancaster-Ellis","doi":"10.24043/isj.409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.409","url":null,"abstract":"Given the confrontational nature of citizen-police interactions, conflict between both groups is inevitable. On one hand, it is argued that citizen-police conflict and complaints against the police must be properly ventilated; however, on the other hand, it is argued that existing dispute resolution mechanisms are biased in favor of the police. With this in mind, police departments and community residents are increasingly seeking alternative mechanisms to resolve citizen-police conflicts as well as citizen complaints against police officers and mediation has emerged as a forerunner. Using a quantitative approach, this exploratory study concurrently evaluated citizen and police officer perspectives regarding the role of mediation as an alternative to judicial and other legal based mechanisms to resolve citizen-police conflicts in Trinidad and Tobago. The study is premised on ‘islandness’ and the findings indicate that generally, both citizens and police officers are willing to utilize mediation to resolve citizen-police disputes, however, there are some disparities over the issue by gender. The paper concludes by advocating for a complaints management system that includes mediation within a consultative framework focused of behavioral improvements to be implemented within the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hawaiian island land snails once represented one of the most diverse archipelagic evolutionary radiations. Historically, indigenous Hawaiians (Kānaka maoli) and Westerners also heard some snails (kāhuli) sing. Today, most of these species are extinct or endangered. One major cause has been the intentional mid-20th century introduction of a land snail, Euglandina rosea, for the biological control of another mollusk, Lissachatina fulica. In this article, I join efforts of noticing and engaging landscapes of the situated Anthropocene with the goal of demonstrating the potential for mollusks to be dynamic alliance-forming companions. In articulating methods of becoming with snails, I pass kāhuli through Western and Kānaka maoli knowledge-making projects. First considering the evolutionary biological work of John Gulick and his counterparts to genealogize contemporary snail-love, I then elaborate on what care and hope might mean with Pacific Island land snails living through ongoing environmental dispossession and alteration. I then reconsider Euglandina on parallel conceptual terms, engaging natural historical and laboratory accounts to think with the introduced mollusk beyond its categorization as ‘alien invader’. Loving Euglandina as well as kāhuli may help realize livable futures for indigenous and introduced Hawaiian island mollusks alike, in a world hopefully full of snail-song.
{"title":"Mollusk loves: Becoming with native and introduced land snails in the Hawaiian Islands","authors":"J. Galka","doi":"10.24043/isj.383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.383","url":null,"abstract":"Hawaiian island land snails once represented one of the most diverse archipelagic evolutionary radiations. Historically, indigenous Hawaiians (Kānaka maoli) and Westerners also heard some snails (kāhuli) sing. Today, most of these species are extinct or endangered. One major cause has been the intentional mid-20th century introduction of a land snail, Euglandina rosea, for the biological control of another mollusk, Lissachatina fulica. In this article, I join efforts of noticing and engaging landscapes of the situated Anthropocene with the goal of demonstrating the potential for mollusks to be dynamic alliance-forming companions. In articulating methods of becoming with snails, I pass kāhuli through Western and Kānaka maoli knowledge-making projects. First considering the evolutionary biological work of John Gulick and his counterparts to genealogize contemporary snail-love, I then elaborate on what care and hope might mean with Pacific Island land snails living through ongoing environmental dispossession and alteration. I then reconsider Euglandina on parallel conceptual terms, engaging natural historical and laboratory accounts to think with the introduced mollusk beyond its categorization as ‘alien invader’. Loving Euglandina as well as kāhuli may help realize livable futures for indigenous and introduced Hawaiian island mollusks alike, in a world hopefully full of snail-song.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68953877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The global tourism industry has shifted due to COVID-19, with tourism-dependent islands facing a dire need to realign and reconstruct their tourism offerings to remain competitive. The traditional mass tourism model that has dominated island development has to be re-examined in this new tourism environment with new mindsets regarding the current conditions for destination success. This paper aims to promote an understanding of destination success in an island context and to identify which determinants are critical during this period to achieve optimal destination success. The findings from this study suggest that island destinations are at a critical turning point, and key strategic shifts are necessary to enable future destination success as defined by the Destination Management Organisations. There is a need to shift from management to stewardship, from product to experience, from quantity to quality, and from stakeholder presence to engagement. Core to these strategic shifts is an incorporation of locals as central to the quality of the overall experience, with less reliance on the natural resources (sun, sea, and sand) to which these island destinations have been beholden to for decades.
{"title":"Rethinking destination success: An island perspective","authors":"Acolla Lewis-Cameron, Tenisha Brown-Williams","doi":"10.24043/isj.388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.388","url":null,"abstract":"The global tourism industry has shifted due to COVID-19, with tourism-dependent islands facing a dire need to realign and reconstruct their tourism offerings to remain competitive. The traditional mass tourism model that has dominated island development has to be re-examined in this new tourism environment with new mindsets regarding the current conditions for destination success. This paper aims to promote an understanding of destination success in an island context and to identify which determinants are critical during this period to achieve optimal destination success. The findings from this study suggest that island destinations are at a critical turning point, and key strategic shifts are necessary to enable future destination success as defined by the Destination Management Organisations. There is a need to shift from management to stewardship, from product to experience, from quantity to quality, and from stakeholder presence to engagement. Core to these strategic shifts is an incorporation of locals as central to the quality of the overall experience, with less reliance on the natural resources (sun, sea, and sand) to which these island destinations have been beholden to for decades.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the second half of the 19th century, Shamian was established and developed as a colonial island enclave in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. Simultaneously, literary and cultural imaginations, depictions, and narrations of the place produced a discourse of Shamian as a utopian island: geographically insular and bounded, environmentally beautiful and peaceful, socially exclusive and harmonious, and technologically progressive and advantageous. This paper examines contemporaneous (predominantly English) literary and cultural representations of Shamian as a colonial utopia and their interrelations with the island’s spatial formation and evolution. These texts (primarily written and pictorial descriptive, non-fictional accounts) reflected the spatial reality but also promoted spatial practices that reinforced the physical utopian island. This process exemplifies the theories of performative geographies in island studies and intertextuality in geocriticism, showing how a place’s spatial representations and reality are mutually constructed. Adopting a conceptual model of intertextual performative geographies, this paper investigates the dynamic interplay of these literary and cultural texts with the spatial reality, arguing that literary and cultural representations of Shamian (re)produced the colonial enclave as a utopian island, both conceptually and practically.
{"title":"Literary and cultural (re)productions of a utopian island: Performative geographies of colonial Shamian, Guangzhou in the latter half of the 19th century","authors":"Ting-Ju Lin, Ping Su","doi":"10.24043/isj.379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.379","url":null,"abstract":"In the second half of the 19th century, Shamian was established and developed as a colonial island enclave in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. Simultaneously, literary and cultural imaginations, depictions, and narrations of the place produced a discourse of Shamian as a utopian island: geographically insular and bounded, environmentally beautiful and peaceful, socially exclusive and harmonious, and technologically progressive and advantageous. This paper examines contemporaneous (predominantly English) literary and cultural representations of Shamian as a colonial utopia and their interrelations with the island’s spatial formation and evolution. These texts (primarily written and pictorial descriptive, non-fictional accounts) reflected the spatial reality but also promoted spatial practices that reinforced the physical utopian island. This process exemplifies the theories of performative geographies in island studies and intertextuality in geocriticism, showing how a place’s spatial representations and reality are mutually constructed. Adopting a conceptual model of intertextual performative geographies, this paper investigates the dynamic interplay of these literary and cultural texts with the spatial reality, arguing that literary and cultural representations of Shamian (re)produced the colonial enclave as a utopian island, both conceptually and practically.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Guido Rojer, Jr., Karen Watkins-Fassler, Rebeca de Juan Díaz, A. Rai
This paper examines the impact of CEO characteristics on the International Entrepreneurship (IE) of listed island-based firms (IBFs) during the period 2009-2018. The research considers 164 companies from a sample of eight small islands with securities exchanges including more than one firm headquartered on the island. The selected islands are: Barbados, Cyprus, Fiji, Iceland, Jamaica, Malta, Mauritius, and Trinidad & Tobago. Framed on the upper echelons theory and social network theory, the influence on IE of CEO’s tenure, academic background and achievement, family allegiance, and international exposure is studied, taking into account the small island particularities. Through a binary probit model, it is concluded that CEOs’ family allegiance, tenure, and academic background (if the CEO majored in Business Administration, Finance, Accounting, or Economics) are negatively related with IE, while CEOs’ academic achievement and international exposure are positively associated with IE. Some of these results are atypical in the existing literature; nevertheless, islandness can explain these results. The conclusions attained suggest new theoretical and empirical lines of IE research for IBFs.
{"title":"The impact of CEO characteristics on the international entrepreneurship of small island-based firms","authors":"Guido Rojer, Jr., Karen Watkins-Fassler, Rebeca de Juan Díaz, A. Rai","doi":"10.24043/isj.406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.406","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the impact of CEO characteristics on the International Entrepreneurship (IE) of listed island-based firms (IBFs) during the period 2009-2018. The research considers 164 companies from a sample of eight small islands with securities exchanges including more than one firm headquartered on the island. The selected islands are: Barbados, Cyprus, Fiji, Iceland, Jamaica, Malta, Mauritius, and Trinidad & Tobago. Framed on the upper echelons theory and social network theory, the influence on IE of CEO’s tenure, academic background and achievement, family allegiance, and international exposure is studied, taking into account the small island particularities. Through a binary probit model, it is concluded that CEOs’ family allegiance, tenure, and academic background (if the CEO majored in Business Administration, Finance, Accounting, or Economics) are negatively related with IE, while CEOs’ academic achievement and international exposure are positively associated with IE. Some of these results are atypical in the existing literature; nevertheless, islandness can explain these results. The conclusions attained suggest new theoretical and empirical lines of IE research for IBFs.","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article looks at Richard Georges’ poetry collection Epiphaneia, which is set on the British Virgin Islands in the aftermath of hurricane Irma. While Georges’ poems are placed amidst destruction, they go beyond narratives of devastation; instead, they articulate a poetics of livingness on the hurricane-struck island. This paper first draws out critical debates on the coloniality of climate that show the longue durée and complexity of a history of catastrophe in the Caribbean context. It addresses how Epiphaneia challenges one-sided discourses of island dependency and victimization by offering ways to perceive islands in the Anthropocene not as passive victims of catastrophes but as sites of living within what Glissant calls a chaos-world. This article then advances an ecopoetics of the archipelago in the wake of the hurricane. The various tensions held by the island after the storm will be traced through the word ‘still’: the ongoing violence of coloniality, still present; yet continuously resisted due to the island’s and islanders’ resilience and survival, still alive. This paper explores the poetics emerging from the island in the Anthropocene: What poetics are needed to sustain life after, and within, catastrophe? What does it mean to exist and move, still, on the island in the wake of the hurricane?
{"title":"“we are still here holding fast”: Stillness in the wake of Hurricane Irma in Richard Georges’ Epiphaneia","authors":"Barbara Gfoellner","doi":"10.24043/isj.411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.411","url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at Richard Georges’ poetry collection Epiphaneia, which is set on the British Virgin Islands in the aftermath of hurricane Irma. While Georges’ poems are placed amidst destruction, they go beyond narratives of devastation; instead, they articulate a poetics of livingness on the hurricane-struck island. This paper first draws out critical debates on the coloniality of climate that show the longue durée and complexity of a history of catastrophe in the Caribbean context. It addresses how Epiphaneia challenges one-sided discourses of island dependency and victimization by offering ways to perceive islands in the Anthropocene not as passive victims of catastrophes but as sites of living within what Glissant calls a chaos-world. This article then advances an ecopoetics of the archipelago in the wake of the hurricane. The various tensions held by the island after the storm will be traced through the word ‘still’: the ongoing violence of coloniality, still present; yet continuously resisted due to the island’s and islanders’ resilience and survival, still alive. This paper explores the poetics emerging from the island in the Anthropocene: What poetics are needed to sustain life after, and within, catastrophe? What does it mean to exist and move, still, on the island in the wake of the hurricane?","PeriodicalId":51674,"journal":{"name":"Island Studies Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68954476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}