Isolation as disability and resource : considering sub-national island status in the constitution of the 'New Tasmania'

This paper has benefited greatly from discussions with Godfrey Baldacchino, University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, David Milne in Malta, and Richard Herr, Stewart Williams and Andrew Harwood at the University of Tasmania. Research informing the paper was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0342802) funded between 2003 and 2005.In light of the foregoing I intend to examine the emergence of the 'New Tasmania' as an open and accessible island imaginary of global international desire, which some suggest is at risk of reduction to an 'everywhere'. The term 'New Tasmania' encapsulates a thrust by State Government to ensure that Tasmania benefits from The constitution of the 'New Tasmania' 89 economic globalization by marketing its natural advantages (as an island) without degrading those same advantages.peer-reviewe

Isolation as disability and resource : considering sub-national island status in the constitution of the 'New Tasmania'

This paper has benefited greatly from discussions with Godfrey Baldacchino, University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, David Milne in Malta, and Richard Herr, Stewart Williams and Andrew Harwood at the University of Tasmania. Research informing the paper was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0342802) funded between 2003 and 2005.In light of the foregoing I intend to examine the emergence of the 'New Tasmania' as an open and accessible island imaginary of global international desire, which some suggest is at risk of reduction to an 'everywhere'. The term 'New Tasmania' encapsulates a thrust by State Government to ensure that Tasmania benefits from The constitution of the 'New Tasmania' 89 economic globalization by marketing its natural advantages (as an island) without degrading those same advantages.peer-reviewe

The Idea of the Archipelago: Contemplating Island Relations

Creative, innovative, and timely research on islands and island futures is warranted and pressing, not least because island(er)s are poorly served by established tropes of them as subordinate to continents or mainlands. Opportunities exist to provide a more thoroughgoing account of island life and island relations, and the seven papers in this special issue address that task. In works that consider islands in the Timor Sea, the Caribbean, the Pacific, Atlantic and Southern Oceans, and that span several different disciplinary frames—archival-historical, critical theoretical, literary, cultural, geopolitical, sociological and artistic—these papers evidence both the diversity of approach to thinking with the archipelago, and numerous points in common. Among the latter is an understanding that island relations are built on connection, assemblage, mobility, and multiplicity, and a commitment to critically examine the ways in which these entanglements affect and give effect to island life. The models of island relationality brought to light by this collective focus on the archipelago reveal new and diverse connections of island peoples with their physical and cultural environments, and with the world beyond; create spaces for growing resilience, association and engagement; and invite further study

Envisioning the Archipelago

Certain limitations arise from the persistent consideration of two common relations of islands in the humanities and social sciences: land and sea, and island and continent/mainland. What remains largely absent or silent are ways of being, knowing and doing—ontologies, epistemologies and methods—that illuminate island spaces as inter-related, mutually constituted and co-constructed: as island and island. Therefore, this paper seeks to map out and justify a research agenda proposing a robust and comprehensive exploration of this third and comparatively neglected nexus of relations. In advancing these aims, the paper’s goal is to (re)inscribe the theoretical, metaphorical, real and empirical power and potential of the archipelago: of seas studded with islands; island chains; relations that may embrace equivalence, mutual relation and difference in signification

Tuvalu, sovereignty and climate change: considering fenua, the archipelago and emigration

Tuvalu is a Pacific atoll nation-state that has come to stand for predicaments implicating climate change, forced emigration and resettlement, and loss of territory and sovereignty. Legal and policy remedies seek to address such challenges by radically reframing how sovereignty is conceived. Drawing on literary and legal theory, we seek to extend such work in the terms of cultural geography and anthropology by considering how the archipelago and cultural practices known as fenua could be deployed as symbolic and material resources emphasizing mobility and connection, in contrast to normative ideas of sovereignty, whose orientation to territory imperils atoll states. Our fundamental argument is that legal and policy reforms addressing climate change emigration must be enriched by accounting for the emotional geographies that attend the changing real and conceptual borders of sovereignty and by creating alternative spaces of hope and action