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9780199874002-0230

Introduction

Work on islands has long played a critical role in the development of many academic disciplines that overlap and are intimately connected with the discipline of geography. Islands were central to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and have subsequently been for the development of ecological, sustainability, and resilience approaches that are prevalent in geography in the 2020s. Islanders were the focal points for Margaret Mead’s and Marylin Strathern’s developments of the discipline of anthropology, concerns for Indigenous geographies, and the counterpositioning of nonmodern reasoning to European or Western frameworks of reasoning. Islands and islanders have also long been a key focus for many who have critiqued the forces of colonialism, such as Édouard Glissant, Kamau Brathwaite, Sylvia Wynter, and Derek Walcott, whose work is extremely influential for Critical Black Geographies. More recently, engaging islands and islanders shaped Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s and Epeli Hau‘ofa’s influential reappraisal of how academic research itself can and should do better, reorienting toward more geographically appropriate Indigenous perspectives. What this is already telling us is that any bibliography compiled under the title of “Geography and Islands” needs to work beyond the boundaries of neatly defined academic disciplines. The focus is the geographical form, the island, and associated island cultures, and thus geographers who study islands regularly step outside fixed disciplines. Thus, this article presents a range of references that are categorized by way of key early-21st-century island themes and topics that will be of particular concern to geographers. Here, the decades since the late 20th century have seen the rise of a more distinct or focused field of academic inquiry, which has come to be known as “island studies.” The key characteristics of this field are its diversity, interdisciplinarity, openness, and extremely rapid growth—geographically, intellectually, and in the broad range of topics and subjects being engaged with in the 2020s. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the term “island studies” did not have much purchase. In the 2020s, due to the strong repositioning of islands within broader concerns—such as human-nature relations, current developments in environmental and resilience approaches, the ongoing legacies and effects of colonialism, Indigenous geographies, migration patterns, mobilities and movements of humans and nonhumans, geopolitical tensions and strategies, and the Anthropocene, as just some examples—the figure of the island has moved considerably more to the center of many debates (and particularly those debates that concern geographers). This article therefore also reflects the sense of dynamism, as well as the interdisciplinary nature, of work with islands as an exponentially developing field of research.

General Overviews

A number of overview publications and textbooks for island studies have been produced since the late 20th century that are directly relevant to those concerned with various facets of island geographies. Perhaps most influential, at least from a European perspective, are the edited texts of Godfrey Baldacchino (Baldacchino 2007, Baldacchino 2018), and such publications as Baldacchino 2004, Depraetere 2008, McCall 1994, Royle 2002, and Ratter 2018. These include such key foundational topics as island typographies and classifications, origins, ecology and environments, colonialism, economy, tourism, migration, development, societies, communities, resilience, sustainability, and work on the concept of “nissology” (which has come to be known as “the study of islands on their own terms”). Edmond and Smith 2003, Hessler 2018 and Meleisea and Schoeffel 2017 are examples that focus on critiques of understandings of islands under the modern and colonial gaze and provide useful overviews of a range of non-Western and Indigenous perspectives.

Baldacchino, Godfrey. “The Coming of Age of Island Studies.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 95.3 (2004): 272–283.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9663.2004.00307.x Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
One of the most cited papers to focus on “island studies” as a field of research; defines island studies as the study of islands on their own terms and tracks the rise of island studies across the disciplines.
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Baldacchino, Godfrey, ed. A World of Islands: An Island Studies Reader. Charlottetown, PEI: Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, 2007.
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Still one of the most engaged textbooks on island studies; explores many aspects of islands and islander life: from definitions and typologies to the role of islands in theories of evolution, island flora and fauna, archaeology, development, political economy, tourism, and sustainability, for example.
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Baldacchino, Godfrey, ed. The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies: A World of Islands. London and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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Including an extremely useful overview from Baldacchino, this more recent textbook includes, among other subjects, chapters on island geomorphology, zoology and, evolutionary biology; the history, sociology, economics, and politics of island communities; urban islands and cities; tourism, well-being and migration; and island branding, resilience, and “commoning.”
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Depraetere, Christian. “The Challenge of Nissology: A Global Outlook on the World Archipelago, Part I; Scene Setting the World Archipelago.” Island Studies Journal 3.1 (2008): 3–16.
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An important paper that develops an understanding of “nissology” as being about “the study of islands on their own terms.”
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Edmond, Rod S., and Vanessa Smith, eds. Islands in History and Representation. London: Routledge, 2003.
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Still regularly engaged as a classic, in which various contributors examine island imaginaries and realities within and against the European imagination.
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Hessler, Stephanie, ed. Tidalectics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018.
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A useful edition to debates around islands and islanders that brings a broad range of Indigenous perspectives to the fore, focusing on islanders within transforming environmental, social, and colonial relations.
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McCall, Grant. “Nissology: A Proposal for Consideration.” 太平洋学会学会誌 63 (1994): 93–106.
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An island-studies classic that develops and provides eight characteristics of “nissology” as the study of islands on their own terms.
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Meleisea, Malama, and Penelope Schoeffel. “Forty‐Five Years of Pacific Island Studies: Some Reflections; Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Distinguished Lecture.” Oceania 87.3 (2017): 337–343.
DOI: 10.1002/ocea.5166 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines the rise and characteristics of Pacific island studies as an important field of research.
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Ratter, Beate M. W. Geography of Small Islands—Outposts of Globalisation. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-63869-0 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Bridges natural, social, and cultural science to examine the physical development and cultural, political, and economic particularities of islands.
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Royle, Stephen A. Geography of Islands. London: Routledge, 2002.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203160367 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Working at the intersection between academic and more-popular audiences, examines the many different facets of islands and islander life—from shape, size, and flora and fauna, to economic development, population, politics, tourism, communications, and services, for example.
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Non-English Overview Texts

Other influential broader texts and publications have been written in German (Mieth and Hans-Rudolf 2009), Swedish (Ronström 2016), and French (Moles 1982).

Mieth, Andreas, and Bork Hans-Rudolf. Inseln der Erde: Landschaften und Kulturen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009.
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Examining a broad range of islands and stressing the uniqueness of islands and island life, covers general aspects including island formation, geomorphology, climatology, biogeography and topography, and human/socioeconomic aspects, such as island economy, tourism, culture, tradition, and colonial history.
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Moles, Abraham A. “Nissonologie ou science des îles.” L’Espace Géographique Paris 11.4 (1982): 281–289.
DOI: 10.3406/spgeo.1982.3782 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Develops a psychological and phenomenological approach to the study of islands, focusing on the behavior of island life within the wider environment.
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Ronström, Owe. Öar och öighet: Introduktion till östudier. Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag, 2016.
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While focusing on the Nordic context, has important wider applicability for island studies as a cross-disciplinary introduction to many key aspects of islands and island life.
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Journals

The main international journals for island studies of direct relevance for geographers are Island Studies Journal, Shima, and the Journal of Marine and Island Cultures.

Baldacchino, Godfrey. “Studying Islands: On Whose Terms? Some Epistemological and Methodological Challenges to the Pursuit of Island Studies.” Island Studies Journal 3.1 (2008): 37–56.
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One of the foundational articles that marked the growing importance of Island Studies Journal.
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Grydehøj, Adam. “A Future of Island Studies.” Island Studies Journal 12.1 (2017): 3–16.
DOI: 10.24043/isj.41 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A really useful “snapshot” of how Island Studies Journal has developed since its launch, and the directions it might now take in the future.
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Hong, Sun-Kee, and Gloria Pungetti. “Marine and Island Cultures: A Unique Journey of Discovery.” Journal of Marine and Island Cultures 1.1 (2012): 1–2.
DOI: 10.1016/j.imic.2012.06.001 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A key article that signaled the launch and direction of Journal of Marine and Island Cultures.
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International Small Island Studies Association.
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This provides a useful list of updated links to a range of island-studies institutions around the world.
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Island Studies Journal.
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This is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes papers on island studies. It was launched in 2006, is open access, and is currently housed in the Institute of Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. The current executive editor is Adam Grydehøj (and was previously Godfrey Baldacchino). Two useful papers (Baldacchino 2008, Grydehøj 2017) give an overview of the journal’s development.
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Journal of Marine and Island Cultures.
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Launched in 2012, this focuses on interrelations between islands and oceans. The lead editors are Sun-Kee Hong and Gloria Pungetti.
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Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures.
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This is also interdisciplinary and open access. It was launched in 2007, and the lead editor is Phil Hayward. Shima publishes humanities-oriented articles that often work with a more expansive or fluid definition of islands; for example, peninsulas, lakes, enclaves, exclaves, and micronations.
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Shima Editorial Board. “An Introduction to Island Culture Studies.” Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 1.1 (2007): 1–5.
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A key article that signaled the launch and direction of Shima.
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Key Topics for Island Geography

This section addresses the key crosscutting themes of early-21st-century island studies that are most pertinent for geography. Thus, it starts with subsections that focus on long-standing interests in island economies and development, tourism, migration, immigration and mobilities, island societies and Indigenous islanders, literary geographies, and island aesthetics. With debates about decolonizing the university and research in mind, the following subsections move to foreground the broad geographical diversity of the early 21st century’s most influential island philosophies and critiques of colonialism in island scholarship. Here we see that if research on islands and with islanders has historically been foundational for theories of evolution, biodiversity, and understandings of Indigenous peoples, in the 2020s it is highly influential in Critical Black and Indigenous Geographies. Next, references are provided that focus on current innovative developments concerning urban and manufactured islands and the important emergence of explicitly feminist and queer approaches to island studies. Finally, continuing the theme of the power of thinking and working with islands in broader debates, this article ends with work associated with sustainability and resilience paradigms; the “relational” and “archipelagic” turns in island scholarship that move debate beyond the figure of the isolated island to island networks, assemblages, and relationalities; and islands as key figures in debates about the Anthropocene.

Island Economy and Development Geographies

Notwithstanding the salient point that island approaches to economics and development vary widely, island scholarship has drawn out some broad crosscutting themes and characteristics. These are recurrent in the literature and focus on questions of island isolation, size, scale, vulnerability, adaptability, and resilience, such as Briguglio 1995, Bertram 2006, and Bertram and Poirine 2018. They also regularly engage debates about island jurisdictional identity (Baldacchino and Milne 2000), colonialization, independence (Armstrong and Read 2000), openness and incorporation, or otherwise into broader economic, political regions and global economy (Khor, et al. 2016). Focusing on the characteristics of island communities, authors including Godfrey Baldacchino (Baldacchino 1993, Baldacchino 2010), W. A. Lewis (Lewis 2013), and Terrence Farrell (Farrell 1980) foreground and engage tropes of pragmatism, community cohesion, the complexities of political agency, and the sharing of a common identity within island communities, and how these play into and are shaped by wider patterns of development and political economy.

Armstrong, Harvey W., and Robert Read. “Comparing the Economic Performance of Dependent Territories and Sovereign Microstates.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 48.2 (2000): 285–306.
DOI: 10.1086/452459 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Engages a recurrent theme in island scholarship that examines the relationships among dependent territories, colonial powers, and economic development. Examines whether dependent states are performing better or worse than independent, sovereign island states.
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Baldacchino, Godfrey. “Bursting the Bubble: The Pseudo‐development Strategies of Microstates.” Development and Change 24.1 (1993): 29–52.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.1993.tb00476.x Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Excellent paper that suggests that orthodoxies in development (both liberal and radical perspectives) have little relevance to small island states. Proposes an alternative approach to understanding the survival strategies of small-island microeconomics.
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Baldacchino, Godfrey. Island Enclaves: Offshoring Strategies, Creative Governance, and Subnational Island Jurisdictions. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010.
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A powerful text that focuses on the distinctiveness of island forms of governance, politics, and economics, and how islands enter into special relationships with larger, metropolitan states and powers. Case examples include Guantánamo Bay, Macau, Aruba, the Isle of Man, and Prince Edward Island, and examined themes incorporate detention camps, offshore finance centers, military bases, heritage parks, or otherwise autonomous regions.
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Baldacchino, Godfrey, and David Milne, eds. Lessons from the Political Economy of Small Islands: The Resourcefulness of Jurisdiction. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 2000.
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Focusing on six North Atlantic islands, explores how many small islands work with the legal “gift of jurisdiction.” Examines the argument that islands, although asymmetrical, can sometimes work with globalization to their economic advantage.
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Bertram, Geoff. “Introduction: The MIRAB Model in the Twenty-First Century.” In Beyond MIRAB: The Political Economy of Small Islands in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Geoff Bertram. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 47.1 (2006): 1–13.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2006.00296.x Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
While reflecting older approaches to understanding island socioeconomic development, this is still an important paper because it represents an influential historical contribution to the field by introducing a special edition on the MIRAB model of island development (MIRAB: migration [MI], remittance [R], foreign aid [A], and public bureaucracy [B]).
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Bertram, Geoffrey. “Is Independence Good or Bad for Development in Small Island Economies? A Long-Run Analysis.” Region et Development 42.1 (2015): 31–54.
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Deserves to be read because it provides an interesting and revised take on debates about sovereign-island independence and economic development. Complicates the often-made argument that political affiliation leads to higher economic development.
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Bertram, Geoff, and Bernard Poirine. “Economics and Development.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies. Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 202–246. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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A particularly useful publication that gives an effective overview of the various facets of—and crosscutting themes associated with—economics and development on islands.
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Briguglio, Lino. “Small Island Developing States and Their Economic Vulnerabilities.” World Development 23.9 (1995): 1615–1632.
DOI: 10.1016/0305-750X(95)00065-K Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Still a well-cited paper that explores the purported economic disadvantages and vulnerabilities of small-island developing states (SIDS) due to their small size, insularity, remoteness, and proneness to natural disasters.
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Farrell, Terrence. “Arthur Lewis and the Case for Caribbean Industrialisation.” In Special Issue in Honour of Sir William Arthur Lewis, 1979 Nobel Laureate. Edited by Keith Worrell. Social and Economic Studies 29.4 (1980): 52–75.
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Discusses the widespread influence of Lewis’s economic approach on the Caribbean and beyond; in particular, his influential approach of “industrialisation by invitation.”
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Khor, Hoe Ee, Roger P. Kronenberg, and Patrizia Tumbarello. Resilience and Growth in the Small States of the Pacific. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2016.
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Examines how Pacific island countries face distinctive changes in their development. Discusses the need for wider regional cooperation, and solutions that address these specific concerns.
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Lewis, W. A. Theory of Economic Growth. London: Routledge, 2013.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203709665 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Produced by the St Lucian 1979 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Worth a read for how it sheds light on the extent to which this islander’s highly influential approach to economics was influenced by his thinking about how England recovered after the economic turmoil of the Industrial Revolution.
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Island Tourism Geographies

Island tourism is unsurprisingly one of the most engaged topics of island studies. Islands not only seem to lend themselves to romantic notions of escape and isolation from the troubles of the wider world, but also—from Madagascar to the Caribbean, and from the Shetland Islands to the Falklands—are often portrayed in terms of a generative and positive “island experience.” Here, island scholarship and research often seek to critically excavate and pick apart the complexities of island tourism, with research frequently being split between those who engage “cold” and “warm” tropical islands. Topics of research include the generation and sustaining of certain island imaginaries (Kelman 2019, Kingsbury 2005, Pattullo 2005, Schwartz 1999); economics (McElroy 2006); marketing processes and legacies of colonialism (Sheller 2004, Moore 2019); independence, ecotourism, and environmental management (Lim and Cooper 2009, Carlsen and Butler 2011); and the many uncomfortable realities of island tourism as it plays out through manifold complex practices (Wang and Bennett 2020).

Carlsen, Jack, and Richard Butler, eds. Island Tourism: Towards a Sustainable Perspective. Ecotourism 8. Wallingford, UK, and Cambridge, MA: CABI, 2011.
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Situated within debates about island vulnerabilities to social, economic, and environmental precarity, explores the complex role and power of tourism in island development.
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Graci, Sonya, and Patrick T. Maher. “Tourism.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies. Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 247–260. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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Provides a useful overview of the specificities, histories, geographies, and challenges of island tourism. Draws on a range of island case studies in order to ground debates and concerns.
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Kelman, Ilan. “Critiques of Island Sustainability in Tourism.” Tourism Geographies (2019): 1–18.
DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2019.1619825 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Explores how island sustainability is influenced by and influences tourism resources. Particularly focused on energy, waste management, climate change, “last-chance tourism,” and debates about island branding and marketing.
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Kingsbury, Paul. “Jamaican Tourism and the Politics of Enjoyment.” Geoforum 36.1 (2005): 113–132.
DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2004.03.012 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Innovative paper that explores the power, politics, and role of “enjoyment” in island tourism, by drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis.
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Lim, Charles C., and Chris Cooper. “Beyond Sustainability: Optimising Island Tourism Development.” International Journal of Tourism Research 11.1 (2009): 89–103.
DOI: 10.1002/jtr.688 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Develops a broad approach that examines challenges facing island tourism and how this can be optimized for sustainable development.
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McElroy, Jerome L. “Small Island Tourist Economies across the Life Cycle.” Asia Pacific Viewpoint 47.1 (2006): 61–77.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2006.00303.x Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Develops a three-stage destination life cycle of island tourism by examining thirty-six small islands. Explores the relationship between various factors associated with island tourism, including rising income, in-migration, literacy and life expectancy, falling unemployment, fertility, and infant mortality. Suggests that tourism-driven approaches to islands are an alternative to the MIRAB (migration, remittance, aid, and bureaucracy) model of island development.
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Moore, Amelia. Destination Anthropocene: Science and Tourism in the Bahamas. Critical Environments 7. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctvpb3wqz Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A powerful book that explores and critically interrogates how some islands are rebranding themselves, against the backdrop of debates about climate change and the Anthropocene.
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Pattullo, Polly. Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean. London: Cassell, 2005.
DOI: 10.3362/9781909013759 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
One of the most widely cited texts that critically examines the impact of tourism against the backdrop of tropes of island “paradise.”
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Schwartz, Rosalie. Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
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Examines Cuban tourism between 1920 and 1960, with a particular focus on the performances of the tourist industry and how tourism shapes actions, alters behaviors and attitudes, and influences art and culture.
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Sheller, Mimi. “Demobilizing and Remobilizing Caribbean Paradise.” In Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play. Edited by Mimi Sheller and John Urry, 13–22. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2004.
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Powerfully explores how Caribbean tourism cannot be understood as separate from frequently complex and interlinking mobilities, including those of tourists, images of paradise, histories of colonialism and slavery, workers’ movements, the movement of capital and finance, migrants, radio and electronic communication, disease vectors, and environmental change, among many others.
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Wang, Zhikang, and Mia M. Bennett. “Anywhere but Here: Experiences of Islandness in Pearl River Delta Island Tourism.” Island Studies Journal 15.1 (2020): 205–222.
DOI: 10.24043/isj.115 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Makes a useful contribution to understandings of the phenomenology of islandness by examining the experiences of tourists, islanders, and migrant workers. Focuses on the two islands of Dong’ao and Wailingding in the South China Sea.
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Migration, Immigration, and Mobilities

While tropes of isolation frequently dominate island studies, so do those of island movements, relations, and connections. Thus, in many current debates, it is probably more correct to consider the island as simultaneously insular and dynamically related in various and complex ways to the wider world. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than in debates about migrants, immigrants, and mobilities, in such examples as Sheller 2009, King 2009, and Connell 2018, including the movements of humans and nonhumans (Arnall and Kothari 2020). Dening 2007 and Finney 2003 reflect the widespread interest in the historical migration of humans and various other species across the islands of Oceania (the Pacific). Mortreux and Barnett 2009 and Suliman, et al. 2019 are illustrative of debates about rising sea levels and islander displacement due to environmental degradation and climate change. Nimführ and Sesay 2019 and Connell 2018 show the interest in the movements of islanders off or to islands, seeking work, freedom, and asylum, and Mountz 2020 in those forcefully moved to islands to be contained, constrained, and oppressed.

Arnall, Alex, and Uma Kothari. “Becoming an Island: Making Connections and Places through Waste Mobilities.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 45.4 (2020): 891–905.
DOI: 10.1111/tran.12391 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Explores the entanglements of humans and nonhumans that make up island life by way of an emblematic example: the movements and depositing of waste on the islands of the Maldives.
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Connell, John. “Migration.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies. Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 261–279. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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An excellent overview of key themes, tropes, and debates associated with island studies and migration.
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Dening, Greg. “Sea People of the West.” Geographical Review 97.2 (2007): 288–301.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2007.tb00404.x Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A classic island-studies paper that examines how islanders from across the Pacific have historically traveled vast distances to populate islands, foregrounding tropes of islander movements and mobilities.
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Finney, Ben R. Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging. Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum Press, 2003.
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Working at the intersections between a popular and academic text, examines Polynesian voyaging as a tool for reviving collective memory and generating ethnic pride.
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King, Russell. “Geography, Islands and Migration in an Era of Global Mobility.” Island Studies Journal 4.1 (2009): 53–84.
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Explores islands against the backdrop of the “mobility turn” in social sciences and humanities and in an era of globalization. Links islands and islanders closely to many of the key debates about migration in the contemporary era.
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Mortreux, Colette, and Jon Barnett. “Climate Change, Migration and Adaptation in Funafuti, Tuvalu.” Global Environmental Change 19.1 (2009): 105–112.
DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.09.006 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A well-cited paper that explores the relationships among migration, islands, and climate change. Focusing on Tuvalu and written in 2009, challenges the widespread notion that climate change and migration are a concern for these islanders.
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Mountz, Alison. The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020.
DOI: 10.5749/j.ctv15d8153 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A powerful text that examines the global chain of islands and other remote sites used by governments in the Global North to confine migrants and those seeking asylum.
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Nimführ, Sarah, and Buba Sesay. “Lost in Limbo? Navigating (Im)mobilities and Practices of Appropriation of Non-deportable Refugees in the Mediterranean Area.” Comparative Migration Studies 7.1 (2019): 1–19.
DOI: 10.1186/s40878-019-0132-8 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Focusing on Malta, explores the relationships among islands, refugee migration, and the systems governing their physical and social (im)mobilities.
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Sheller, Mimi. “Infrastructures of the Imagined Island: Software, Mobilities, and the Architecture of Caribbean Paradise.” Environment and Planning A 41.6 (2009): 1386–1403.
DOI: 10.1068/a41248 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Sheller has been foundational for the “mobilities turn” across the social sciences and humanities, and her work often focuses on islands. In this excellent publication she examines how software is playing a powerful role in rescaling island space, bringing islands into new forms of territoriality and governance.
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Suliman, Samid, Carol Farbotko, Hedda Ransan-Cooper, et al. “Indigenous (Im)mobilities in the Anthropocene.” Mobilities 14.3 (2019): 298–318.
DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2019.1601828 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Explores Indigenous islanders’ (im)mobilities, movements, and “cosmological compasses” for relating to the world around them. Positively compares and contrasts these with Western state-oriented ways of engaging the environment and the Anthropocene.
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Island Societies and Indigenous Geographies

From the work of Margaret Mead (Mead 2001) to Erving Goffman (Goffman 1978) and Marilyn Strathern (Strathern 2004), the study of island societies, communities, and cultures has been foundational to the Western academic discipline of anthropology, and the subsequent development of approaches to research and ethnography in disciplines such as geography. In the more contemporary era, islands and island cultures have increasingly become central for wider debates concerned with the dominance of “modern” and “Western” frameworks of reasoning. Thus, there is a burgeoning interest and growing range of literature being produced about Indigenous island cultures by various authors, including in Smith 2012, Ingersoll 2016, Louis and Kahele 2017, and Vaai and Casimira 2017. In the 2020s, these frequently link to broader debates about transforming environmental conditions such as global warming, environmental degradation, and capitalist consumerism in such examples as Percival 2008, Teaiwa 2012, Crook and Rudiak-Gould 2018, and Martinez 2020.

Crook, Tony, and Peter Rudiak-Gould, eds. Pacific Climate Cultures: Living Climate Change in Oceania. Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter, 2018.
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This edited collection examines different modes of Indigenous life in the Pacific. In particular, it is a useful addition to debates that explore how the approaches of Indigenous islanders are increasingly understood to be different and more effective than Western, modern frameworks for engaging broader environmental change.
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Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Harmondsworth, 1978.
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Drawing on Goffman’s research of Shetland Island crofting communities, this classic anthropology and sociology text explores the different social performances and interactions that characterize everyday human life. Thus, the island is figured as this laboratory for understanding the deeper nature of day-to-day human social interaction.
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Ingersoll, Karin Amimoto. Waves of Knowing: A Seascape Epistemology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
DOI: 10.1515/9780822373803 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A Hawaiian surfer, Ingersoll develops a powerful relational ontology and epistemology of Indigenous islander life connected to the oceans.
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Louis, Renee Pualani, and Moana Kahele. Kanaka Hawai‘i Cartography: Hula, Navigation, and Oratory. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2017.
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Situates mapping in the island environment and encodes Indigenous islanders’ spatial knowledge into bodily memory via repetitive recitations and other habitual cultural practices, such as hula.
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Martinez, Elena B. “Theoretical Dancing, Liquidity and Positioning: (Re)institutionalising ‘Nature’.” ESA Network of Ethnographic Theory, May 2020.
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A powerful article that critiques the ecoracism that is often inherent in ascribed island and islander ontologies and epistemologies.
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Mead, Margaret. The Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001.
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One of the most fundamental texts for the discipline of anthropology and approaches to ethnography more generally. Mead sets up the stakes for debate that have often followed, concerned with the difference between nonmodern islanders (in this case, Samoa) versus European or North American cultures, ways of thinking, and engaging the world.
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Percival, Galumalemana S. An Assessment of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge (IEK) in the Pacific Region to Improve Resilience Environmental Change. Kensington, Australia: Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, 2008.
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A useful report that examines how Indigenous Islander knowledge and epistemologies contribute to island resilience.
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Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books, 2012.
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One of the most important texts to have ever been written that crosses over into broader debates about “decolonialising the University”; specifically, what an approach to “research” might look like from an Indigenous islander perspective.
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Strathern, Marilyn. Partial Connections. Updated ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2004.
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Written by one of the leading anthropologists writing today, this is one of the most important texts that foreground how Indigenous Peoples—in this case, Melanesian islanders—are said to frequently adopt relational, nonmodern ways of engaging each other, culture, and the environment.
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Teaiwa, Katerina M. “Choreographing Difference: The (Body) Politics of Banaban Dance.” Contemporary Pacific 24.1 (2012): 65–94.
DOI: 10.1353/cp.2012.0006 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Powerfully locates the afterlives and ongoing effects on nuclear testing and fallout on these islands in the embodied movements and dances of Indigenous islander life.
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Vaai, Upolu L., and Aisake Casimira, eds. Relational Hermeneutics: Decolonising the Mindset and the Pacific Itulagi. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific Press, 2017.
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Focusing on a decolonializing mindset, foregrounds, explores, and examines the various relational ontologies and epistemologies of Pacific islander life.
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The Geographical Diversity of Island Philosophies

There is much debate today in geography and beyond about the importance of “decolonializing the university.” A central concern is that scholarship across the disciplines should be drawing on a more diverse range of research, produced from a wider range of researchers and sources, and not only by those who have traditionally dominated the universities of North America and Europe. While island research, like many other fields of inquiry, continues to struggle with this salient challenge, it is important to note that many of the key island philosophies and philosophically oriented publications in particular have been produced by island scholars from around the world. For example, these range from the Caribbean (such as Brathwaite 1999, Glissant 1997, and Walcott 1998) to Japan (including Suwa 2007), Oceania (including Hau‘ofa 2008 and Teaiwa 2015), North America (such as Gillis 2004 and DeLoughrey 2007), England (Pugh 2013), and Australia (Hayward 2012).

Brathwaite, Kamua. Conversations with Nathaniel Mackey: An Evening with Nate Mackey & Kamau Brathwaite, 18 Nov. 1993. Staten Island, NY: We Press, 1999.
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Brathwaite powerfully argues for a Caribbean islander psychology of “tidalectics,” rather than that of European, Continental “dialectics.” His work has been profoundly influential not only in Caribbean and islander studies, but in colonial and more recent Critical Black Studies.
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DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007.
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A classic island-studies text that foregrounds the complex movements and relational ontologies of islanders from the Caribbean and Oceania (the Pacific) in particular.
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Gillis, John R. Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
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Still probably the most important and comprehensive book to have been written on how Western thought and culture, and European in particular, has thought with islands over various times in history.
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Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
DOI: 10.3998/mpub.10257 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Probably the most important text that opened up the move in island studies to think with islands’ relations and movements, rather than in terms of static or insular islands. Writing from a Caribbean perspective, opened the way for the “relational and archipelagic turns” in island studies noted in the Relational and Archipelagic Turns subsection.
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Hau‘ofa, Epeli. We Are the Ocean. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008.
DOI: 10.1515/9780824865542 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Writing from Oceania (the Pacific), the author of this seminal text foregrounds how islands and islanders’ lived realities are implicated in vast networks of relations and movements.
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Hayward, Philip. “Aquapelagos and Aquapelagic Assemblages.” Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 6.1 (2012): 1–11.
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One of the most influential conceptual developments in the early 21st century; draws on new materialism, assemblage theory, and islander life in order to develop a relational ontology of island becoming.
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Pugh, Jonathan. “Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago.” Island Studies Journal 8.1 (2013): 9–24.
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Draws out the widespread turn in island studies to focusing on relational and archipelagic connections away from the figure of the insular or isolated island.
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Suwa, Jun’ichiro. “The Space of Shima.” Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 1.1 (2007): 6–14.
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Writing about Japan, foregrounds the islander ontology of Shima, aligning and contributing to debates about islands and islanders as connected through intricate relations to culture and place.
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Teaiwa, Katerina M. Consuming Ocean Island: Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.
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Written before the term “Anthropocene” had gained the power and purchase it has in the 2020s, one of the most influential texts to foreground islands as central figures in wider debates about colonialism, modernity, and environmental degradation.
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Walcott, Derek. What the Twilight Says. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1998.
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Arguably the most powerful set of essays on Caribbean island life written by this Nobel Prize–winning poet, drawing out many of Walcott’s key tropes that have been influential across island studies—such as those of “Adamic renewal,” the “sea is history,” and the “fragmented archipelago.”
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Colonialism and Islands

Many islands have been subjected to intensive legacies of colonialism—for example, from the Caribbean (Bongie 1998, Paravisini-Gilbert 2015, Sheller 2003) to Australia (Elias 2019) and the Pacific (Davis 2020). Islands have thus long been central for debates about colonialism and associated resistances, in such works as Grove 1995, Thompson 2010, Martínez-San Miguel 2014, and Gómez-Barris and Joseph 2019. In the 2020s, with these debates gaining increasing purchase, scholars and activists from a broad range of fields are increasingly working with islands and island cultures and drawing on island writers in order to explore contemporary manifestations of colonialism and its ongoing legacies. Saliently, most of the references noted in the Geographical Diversity of Island Philosophies section are also of direct relevance to debates about island colonialism.

Bongie, Chris. Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
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A detailed study of colonialism in the Caribbean that foregrounds relational entanglements, tropes of hybridity, and creolization on islands. Draws heavily on (post)colonial literature, in particular that of Édouard Glissant, and focuses largely on the French Caribbean.
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Davis, Sasha. Islands and Oceans: Reimagining Sovereignty and Social Change. Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation 48. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2020.
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctvqmp3th Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Drawing on in-depth empirical research, this is a powerful examination of questions of sovereignty, decolonization, resistance, and social struggle in a range of islands throughout the world, including Korea, Guam, Yap, Palau, the Northern Marianas, Hawaii, and Honshu and Okinawa in Japan.
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Elias, Ann. Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.
DOI: 10.1515/9781478004462 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines the work and colonial legacies of early Western explorers who documented and photographed islands and coral reefs in many parts of the world. Focuses on how John Ernest Williamson in the Bahamas and Frank Hurley in Australia played a role in exoticizing and portraying a picture of (civilized) humans dominating “nature,” linking this to questions of colonialism, indigeneity, racism, and environmental degradation.
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Gómez-Barris, Macarena, and May Joseph. “Introduction: Coloniality and Islands.” In Special Issue: Coloniality and Islands. Edited by Macarena Gómez-Barris and May Joseph. Shima 13.2 (2019): 1–10.
DOI: 10.21463/shima.13.2.03,2019 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Useful introduction to a special edition of this journal on coloniality and islands. Foregrounds the importance of Indigenous and transoceanic perspectives, which are linked by the authors to wider debates in island studies that position relational and archipelagic thinking against modern, continental reasoning.
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Grove, Richard. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Still widely cited today, this seminal text, focusing on islands, draws attention to the connection between environmentalism and colonialism.
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Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda. Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intra-colonial Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
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A wide-reaching and important text that approaches debates about colonialism on the islands of the Caribbean through such varied concerns as piracy in the 17th century, metropolitan racism, and feminist redefinitions of creolization in the middle of the 20th century.
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Paravisini-Gilbert, Lizabeth. “Bagasse: Caribbean Art and the Debris of the Sugar Plantation.” In Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches. Edited by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, Jill Didur, and Anthony Carrigan, 73–95. New York: Routledge, 2015.
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Intertwines ongoing legacies of Caribbean colonialism and the sugar plantation by focusing on the work of early-21st-century Caribbean artists.
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Sheller, Mimi. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203417942 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
In a seminal text for those concerned with colonialism and islands, Sheller impressively examines how the Caribbean tropics have been consumed in the colonial gaze and through colonial practices, from Europe to North America and through complex histories of slavery, mobilities, and material and cultural commodification.
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Thompson, Lanny. Imperial Archipelago: Representation and Rule in the Insular Territories under US Dominion after 1898. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834012.001.0001 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Compares symbolic representations—in both popular publications and official documents—of the islands of Cuba, Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, appearing in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898.
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The Colonial Gaze, Science, and Research

Research on islands in geography takes a keen interest in how islands and island aesthetics are generated through the Western, European, or colonial gaze (or a combination of these). Particular attention is given to the power of literary geographies in such works as Beer 1997; Brinklow, et al. 2000; Crane and Fletcher 2017; Graziadei, et al. 2017; Marland 2014; McMahon 2016; Riquet 2020; and Savory 2011, as well as in scientific (Greenhough 2006) and academic research (Dawson 2019, Evans 1973). The range of work is broad and wide reaching, including, for example, fiction, nonfiction, explorers’ journals, popular magazines and books, and scientific and social-scientific practices and publications.

Beer, Gillian. “The Making of a Cliché: ‘No Man Is an Island.’” European Journal of English Studies 1.1 (1997): 33–47.
DOI: 10.1080/13825579708574376 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines and critiques the complex history of the island trope, aesthetic, and cliché that “no man is an island.”
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Brinklow, Laurie, Frank J. Ledwell, and Jane Ledwell, eds. Message in a Bottle: The Literature of Small Islands; Proceedings from an International Conference, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 28 to 30, 1998. Charlottetown, PEI: Institute of Island Studies, 2000.
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Examines literary island geographies, poetry, and fiction, and the roles these have played in the representation and generation of island aesthetics; covers a broad range of islands, from Oceania and Tasmania to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Isle of Wight, and Iceland.
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Crane, Ralph, and Lisa Fletcher. Island Genres, Genre Islands: Conceptualization and Representation in Popular Fiction. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
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A really effective text that explores the various ways in which islands have been portrayed in popular fiction, examining “crime islands,” “thriller islands,” “romance islands,” and “fantasy islands.”
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Dawson, Helen. “Island Archaeology.” In Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. 2d ed. Edited by Claire Smith. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3280-1,2019 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A really useful overview that examines how archaeology regularly turns to islands as ideal, insular laboratories, and a microcosm of the continental mainland. Explores and examines the power of this particular island aesthetic.
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Evans, John D. “Islands as Laboratories for the Study of Culture Process.” In The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory. Edited by Colin Renfrew, 517–520. London: Duckworth, 1973.
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One of the earliest publications to introduce the “laboratory” analogy to island archaeology. Examines how distinct cultures develop through their location on islands, something that has had a lasting influence in the generation and construction of the island as an ideal site for scientific and social-scientific investigation.
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Graziadei, Daniel, Britta Hartmann, Ian Kinane, Johannes Riquet, and Barney Samson. “On Sensing Island Spaces and the Spatial Practice of Island-Making: Introducing Island Poetics, Part I.” Island Studies Journal 12.2 (2017): 239–253.
DOI: 10.24043/isj.28 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Produced by a really effective writing collective—the Island Poetics Research Group—focuses on the poetic construction of islands in island literatures (fiction, media, genres, and geographical regions).
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Greenhough, Beth. “Tales of an Island‐Laboratory: Defining the Field in Geography and Science Studies.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31.2 (2006): 224–237.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2006.00211.x Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Focusing on Iceland, examines the long history of the aesthetic of island as laboratory and ideal site for scientific investigation.
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Marland, Pippa. “‘Island of the Dead’: Composting Twenty-Thousand Saints on Bardsey Island.” Green Letters 18.1 (2014): 78–90.
DOI: 10.1080/14688417.2014.891446 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Powerfully examines the island aesthetics and ecological implications associated with how Brenda Chamberlain’s Tide-Race and Christine Evans’s Island of Dark Horses understand the figure of the island and the ubiquity of human remains on “Earth island.” Has important implications for island aesthetics in the Anthropocene.
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McMahon, Elizabeth. Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination. London: Anthem, 2016.
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Focusing on Australia, a seminal text that examines the figure of the island in literature and literary geographies. Focuses on the reductive ways in which the figure of the island has been framed by modern frameworks of reasoning and European colonialism.
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Riquet, Johannes. The Aesthetics of Island Space: Perception, Ideology, Geopoetics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
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A powerful text that explores the figure of the island in modern space and in literary texts, from Shakespeare to the journals of European explorers, and from Hollywood to the works of Charles Darwin. Develops and forwards a range of relational approaches for understanding the island as a malleable figure that “oscillates” between projected image and the physical world.
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Savory, Elaine. “Utopia, Dystopia, and Caribbean Heterotopia: Writing/Reading the Small Island.” New Literatures Review 47–48 (2011): 35.
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Focusing on Barbados, examines the figure of the island and the role it has played in the development of concepts of utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia.
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Generative Black Geographies

Research across the social sciences and humanities not only is marked by a widespread critique of colonialism where islands and islanders play a prominent role. It is also characterized by a prevalent turn against modern, “mainland,” or “continental” frameworks of reasoning, such as the human/nature, mind/body, and subject/object divides. Here, again, work with islands and islanders has come to play a powerful, generative role in the development of influential Critical Black Geographies associated with this wider search, and for alternative ways of thinking about being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology). Older island scholars such as Kamau Brathwaite, Édouard Glissant, Derek Walcott (see Brathwaite 1999, Glissant 1997, and Walcott 1998, all cited under the Geographical Diversity of Island Philosophies), and Sylvia Wynter (Wynter and McKittrick 2015) have long foregrounded how black islanders in regions such as the Caribbean should be understood by way of different, more relational ontologies and epistemologies—approaches that have been strongly embraced and reworked in the more recent works of influential scholars, including in McKittrick 2006, Sharpe 2016, and King 2019.

Dash, Michael J. “Farming Bones and Writing Rocks: Rethinking a Caribbean Poetics of (Dis)location.” Shibboleths: Journal of Comparative Theory 1.1 (2006): 64–71.
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A powerful engagement with the work of Glissant and the associated influence of thinkers such as Deleuze. Against the backdrop of (post)colonialism in Caribbean islands, explores and critiques controversial debates about the political power and purchase of concepts such as “nomadic thought,” “deterritorialization,” and “relation.”
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Handley, George B. “Climate Change, Cosmology, and Poetry: The Case of Derek Walcott’s Omeros.” In Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches. Edited by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, Jill Didur, and Anthony Carrigan, 333–352. New York: Routledge, 2015.
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A useful engagement with the work of Derek Walcott and its applicability to wider debates about Caribbean subjectivities and worldviews, climate change, environmental degradation, and the Anthropocene.
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King, Tiffany Lethabo. The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.
DOI: 10.1515/9781478005681 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Draws on island writers including Kamau Brathwaite, developing a new conceptual model or approach—called “shoaling”—to Critical Black and Indigenous Studies.
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McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
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Engages Sylvia Winter’s work on archipelagos, drawing out how literal and metaphorical island imaginaries produce spaces of “human Others.”
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Pugh, Jonathan. “The Affirmational Turn to Ontology in the Anthropocene: A Critique.” In Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Toward New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations. Edited by Michelle Stephens and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, 65–83. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
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Examines the widespread turn to foreground the power of the “more-than-human” in early-21st-century Anthropocene and island thinking. By way of an engagement with Frantz Fanon, critiques approaches for their impoverished way of approaching ontology and the political.
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Pugh, Jonathan, and David Chandler. “Storiation: Holding the World.” In Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds. By Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler. London: Westminster University Press, 2021.
DOI: 10.16997/book52 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Draws out the analytical logic of “storiation” prevalent in 2020s Black Studies, which engages notable island scholars including Glissant and Brathwaite. Analytically speaking, storiation is a way of “storiating” how the ongoing legacies of colonialism are not over but rather are constitutive of the present, registered in islander and island life in ways that profoundly disrupt modern and Euclidian notions of space-time.
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Schneider, Rebecca. “This Shoal Which Is Not One: Island Studies, Performance Studies, and Africans Who Fly.” Island Studies Journal 15.2 (2020): 201–218.
DOI: 10.24043/isj.135 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Drawing on Tiffany Lethabo King’s method of “shoaling,” undertakes a critical fabulation of the 1803 “Igbo landing” on St. Simons Island, Georgia, where enslaved Africans mutinied against their captors and ran aground upon a shoal.
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Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822373452 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
One of the seminal texts for early-21st-century Critical Black Studies; draws heavily on island tropes working at the interstices and with the disruptive capacities of land/water. Also draws heavily on key island scholarship, including that of Brathwaite.
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Wang, Jackie. Oceanic Feeling and Communist Affect. 2020.
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Examines how Fred Moten’s influential understanding of blackness is profoundly influenced by the ongoing legacies of enslaved Africans’ relationship to the sea. Explains how the Middle Passage creates an ontological rupture and thus creates a new ontology that unsettles modern understanding of being.
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Wynter, Sylvia, and Katherine McKittrick. “Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations.” In Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Edited by Katherine McKittrick, 9–90. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
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An extremely useful overview of Wynter’s work that examines how her influential conceptualizations of “Man” were shaped by her understanding of colonialism in the Caribbean.
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Urban and Artificial-Island Geographies

The first two decades of the 21st century have seen an exponentially growing interest in urban and manufactured islands. Spearheaded by the publication of Grydehøj, et al. 2015; Grydehøj and Swaminathan 2018; and Zhang and Grydehøj 2020, a range of associated conferences, publications, and debates have developed that focus on how many cities are islands—from New York to Singapore. Thus, the emergence of a field known as “urban island studies.” There has also been a developing interest in the building of islands in such works as Bonnett 2020 and Dodds and della Dora 2018, for a range of reasons, from the development of new ecological sites to the role of island building for geopolitical and strategic interests.

Bonnett, Alastair. The Age of Islands: In Search of New and Disappearing Islands. London: Atlantic Books, 2020.
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An important text that focuses on a new “age of islands,” where islands are both being built and disappearing at an unprecedented rate around the world. Engages how this variously speaks to the wider hopes, fears, and dreams of the times.
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Dodds, Klaus, and Veronica della Dora. “Artificial Islands and Islophilia.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies. Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 392–416. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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Defines and explores what makes “artificial islands” distinct from other islands. Explores how human-made islands, perhaps even more than “natural” islands, are places of human desire and possession, escapism, control, and autonomy—from in the Western cultural imagination to developments in the South China Sea.
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Grydehøj, Adam, Xavier Barceló Pinya, Gordon Cooke, et al. “Returning from the Horizon: Introducing Urban Island Studies.” Urban Island Studies 1.1 (2015): 1–19.
DOI: 10.20958/uis.2015.1 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Sets out an important new critical agenda for early-21st-century “urban island studies.”
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Grydehøj, Adam, and Ramanathan Swaminathan. “Cities and Urbanisation.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies. Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 312–324. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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Situates and argues for the development of “urban island studies” approaches that focus on island cities and cities of islands as definable strands of broader island scholarship and research.
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Zhang, Huan, and Adam Grydehøj. “Locating the Interstitial Island: Integration of Zhoushan Archipelago into the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration.” Urban Studies (2020): 0042098020937987.
DOI: 10.1177/0042098020937987 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Develops the idea of “urban island studies” further by examining how island place emerges and is developed through the interstices and interface zones associated with interurban boundary areas that facilitate exchange between and within wider and often-vast urban systems.
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Feminist and Queer Island Geographies

While many studies, including DeLoughrey 2007 (cited under the Geographical Diversity of Island Philosophies), DeLoughrey 2019 (cited under Islands as Key Figures in the Anthropocene), Sheller 2003 (cited under Colonialism and Islands), and Sheller 2020 (cited under Islands as Key Figures in the Anthropocene), have woven feminist concerns deeply into their island studies, more-recent publications such as Coss 2020, Gaini and Nielsen 2020, Karides 2016, and Karides 2017 have begun to set out what a more explicit feminist agenda for island studies might look like. Queer histories and geographies have been examined and developed by several authors, including Marina Karides (Karides 2017).

Coss, Noralis Rodríguez. “A Feminist Intersectional Analysis of Economic and Resource (In)equality in Puerto Rico before and after Hurricane Maria.” Gonzaga Journal of International Law 23.1 (2020): 97–113.
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Makes the case for a feminist approach to island studies by examining the intersections among disaster, gender, and islandness.
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Gaini, Firouz, and Helene P. Nielsen. Gender and Island Communities. Abington, UK: Routledge, 2020.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429263705 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Develops a significant new agenda for feminist approaches to social inequalities, gender, and island studies.
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George, Nicole. “‘Just like Your Mother?’ The Politics of Feminism and Maternity in the Pacific Islands.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 32.1 (2010): 77–96.
DOI: 10.1080/13200968.2010.10854438 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines the relationship between maternity and feminism in the Pacific islands.
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Gill, Lyndon K. Erotic Islands. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018.
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Examines how the Caribbean has long had a queer presence, and draws this out by way of such queer histories as Carnival, calypso, and HIV/AIDS.
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Hall, Lisa Kahaleole. “Navigating Our Own ‘Sea of Islands’: Remapping a Theoretical Space for Hawaiian Women and Indigenous Feminism.” Wicazo Sa Review 24.2 (2009): 15–38.
DOI: 10.1353/wic.0.0038 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines how feminism is central to processes of decolonization in Hawaii.
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Karides, Marina. “An Island Feminism: Convivial Economics and the Women’s Cooperatives of Lesvos.” In Island Geographies: Essays and Conversations. Edited by Elaine Stratford, 78–97. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.
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Develops an understanding of island feminism as an intellectual sensibility that focuses on the intersections among island place, gender, sexuality, and economic, social, ecological, political, and cultural life on islands.
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Karides, Marina. “Why Island Feminism?” Shima 11.1 (2017): 30–39.
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Makes the powerful case for and outlines a synergistic, feminist, and queer-studies approach to the study of islands.
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Nixon, Angelique V. Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.
DOI: 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462180.001.0001 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines the relationships among tourism, culture, and sex in the Caribbean.
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Island Sustainability and Resilience

Charles Darwin worked with islands in order to reveal the differentiating and adaptive powers of life itself to the wider world. Thus, islands have been widely understood as key sites for understanding the fundamental aspects of evolution, ecology, and biogeography in such examples as Berry and Gillespie 2018; Darwin 1988, and Hennessy 2019; also see the Oxford Bibliographies in Geography entry on “Biogeography.” More recently, islands have emerged as emblematic sites for developing understandings of adaptive potential to climate change and sustainability, as in Clark and Tsai 2009 and Grydehøj and Kelman 2020, as well as resilience, as in Baldacchino 2018, Chandler and Pugh 2020, Kelman and Randall 2018, Petzold and Ratter 2015, and Pugh 2017.

Baldacchino, Godfrey. “Seizing History: Development and Non-climate Change in Small Island Developing States.” International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management 10.2 (2018): 217–228.
DOI: 10.1108/IJCCSM-02-2017-0037 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Critically engages with discourses of climate change and resilience on islands. Argues that these can end up as “ontological traps,” supported by international donors, and shifting scarce resources away from other local development approaches.
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Berry, Andrew J., and Rosemary G. Gillespie. “Evolution.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies. Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 72–100. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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A useful and detailed overview of how work on islands has been central for the development of theories of evolution, and how islands have become exemplary sites for understanding the adaptive potential of life itself.
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Chandler, David, and Jonathan Pugh. “Islands of Relationality and Resilience: The Shifting Stakes of the Anthropocene.” Area 52.1 (2020): 65–72.
DOI: 10.1111/area.12459 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines both how the figure of the island is central to the prolific rise of “resilience” as a broader early-21st-century development discourse, and how the stakes of resilience are changing in debates about the Anthropocene.
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Clark, Eric, and Huei-Min Tsai. “Ecologically Unequal Exchange and Landesque Capital on Kinmen Island.” Asia-Pacific Forum 44.2 (2009): 148–167.
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Employs a useful case study to explore ecological degradation on islands and how this is associated with the forces of capitalism, unequal exchange value, and the potential power to improve island environmental conditions.
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Darwin, Charles. The Works of Charles Darwin. Vol. 16, The Origin of Species, 1876. New York: New York University Press, 1988.
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Perhaps the most well-known work to bring islands onto the broader international stage. Darwin developed his theory of evolution by thinking with islands as intensifying or amplifying sites of species differentiation, individuation, and adaptation.
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Grydehøj, Adam, and Ilan Kelman. “Reflections on Conspicuous Sustainability: Creating Small Island Dependent States (SIDS) through Ostentatious Development Assistance (ODA)?” Geoforum 116 (November 2020): 90–97.
DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.08.004 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A critique of how Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have emerged as emblematic figures for “sustainability” paradigms, and how this plays out through international donor regimes.
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Hennessy, Elizabeth. On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019.
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctvqc6h1b Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A critical analysis of how the Galápagos archipelago is often romanticized as “pristine nature” and an “evolutionary Eden.” Foregrounding the relational entanglements of human/nature, brings to light the paradoxical (and indeed impossible) aim of conserving the iconic giant tortoises by restoring “nature” to some past, pure state.
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Kelman, Ilan, and Jim E. Randall. “Resilience and Sustainability.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies. Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, 353–368. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
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A really useful overview that situates islands as key figures within debates about resilience and sustainability paradigms.
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Petzold, Jan, and Beate M. W. Ratter. “Climate Change Adaptation under a Social Capital Approach—an Analytical Framework for Small Islands.” Ocean & Coastal Management 112 (August 2015): 36–43.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2015.05.003 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
An important paper that examines islands as emblematic sites of vulnerability and resilience.
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Pugh, Jonathan. “Postcolonial Development, (Non)sovereignty and Affect: Living On in the Wake of Caribbean Political Independence.” Antipode 49.4 (2017): 867–882.
DOI: 10.1111/anti.12305 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Focusing on everyday life in an St. Lucian government office, draws out the tensions between the positive ideals of postcolonial independence and resilience as adaptation to the status quo of neoliberal capitalism.
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The Relational and Archipelagic Turns

Recent decades have witnessed what have come to be known as the “relational” and “archipelagic” turns in island studies in such works as Hay 2013 and Pugh 2016. Again, and importantly, these often build directly from the work of those noted in the Geographical Diversity of Island Philosophies section. Relational and archipelagic approaches trouble the long-held notion (in Western, modern, mainland frameworks of reasoning) of the insular and isolated island, instead foregrounding how islands are implicated within complex relations of networks, flows, assemblages, and archipelagic movements. As Stephens and Martínez-San Miguel 2020 exemplifies, the relational turn is far reaching. It includes diverse work with gardens as key sites for “island” relational thinking in Daou and Pérez-Ramos 2016, developments in philosophy in Carter 2018, Hong 2017 (on work in China), Joseph 2019 (on work spanning India and New York), Roberts and Stephens 2017 (in the archipelagic Americas), and Rakuita 2017 (in Oceania).

Carter, Paul. Decolonising Governance: Archipelagic Thinking. London and New York: Routledge, 2018.
DOI: 10.4324/9781351213035 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Moving against Westphalian notions of sovereignty, and drawing on debates surrounding colonialism and islands, develops a conceptual approach where regions are instead constituted archipelagically.
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Daou, Daniel, and Pablo Pérez-Ramos, eds. New Geographies 08: Island. Cambridge, MA: Universal Wilde, 2016.
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Examines the wide range of ways in which early-21st-century design practices are working, conceptually and in practice, with the figure of the island as an emblematic space of relational movements and entanglements—from garden to city design.
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Hay, Pete. “Phenomenology of Islands.” Island Studies Journal 1.1 (2006): 19–42.
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Another powerful paper by Hay that goes against the grain of relational thinking in island studies and seeks to return to the importance of island phenomenology.
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Hay, Pete. “What the Sea Portends: A Reconsideration of Contested Island Tropes.” Island Studies Journal 8.2 (2013): 209–232.
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One of the most cited and engaged papers to have critiqued the relational turn in island studies; seeks to reorient debate away from theories of “islandness” and more toward the psychology of island experience.
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Hong, Gang. “Locating Zhuhai between Land and Sea: A Relational Production of Zhuhai, China, as an Island City.” Island Studies Journal 12.2 (2017): 7–24.
DOI: 10.24043/isj.16 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Crosses over with wider debates in island scholarship in order to develop a relational approach to the study of Chinese islands, focusing on the production of Zhuhai, China.
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Joseph, May. Sea Log: Indian Ocean to New York. London and New York: Routledge, 2019.
DOI: 10.4324/9781315109923 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Foregrounding tropes of displaced histories, memory, belonging, and mobilities, develops an impressive feminist approach that focuses on the repressive hauntings of various urban artifacts working across a maritime archive of Dutch and Portuguese colonial pillage.
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Pugh, Jonathan. “The Relational Turn in Island Geographies: Bringing Together Island, Sea and Ship Relations and the Case of the Landship.” Social & Cultural Geography 17.8 (2016): 1040–1059.
DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2016.1147064 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Maps the rise of the “relational turn” in island studies, paying particular attention to Édouard Glissant as a key figure. Grounds relational thinking by way of an examination of the Barbados Landship—an island-based cultural, social, and political institution that blurs the boundaries between land and sea.
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Rakuita, Tuinawi. “The Notion of ‘Constellative Thinking’ in Pacific Thought: Expanding Oceania.” Pacific Dynamics: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 1.1 (2017): 33–45.
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Engages the work of Hau‘ofa by foregrounding the importance of “constellative thinking” to the peoples of Oceania. Rejects notions of the isolated island or islander in favor of approaches that bring to the fore shifting island and islander relations and hybridities that are part of dynamically changing assemblages.
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Roberts, Brian R., and Michelle A. Stephens, eds. Archipelagic American Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.
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An exemplary edited collection that brings the relational and archipelagic turns in island studies into American studies, foregrounding the Americas as complex, dynamically shifting archipelagic relations rather than a single and coherent continental mass.
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Stephens, Michelle, and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, eds. Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Toward New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
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The most important edited collection of early-21st-century relational and archipelagic thinking to date. Extremely comprehensive and wide ranging in scope; conceptual, empirically and methodologically.
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Islands as Key Figures in the Anthropocene

Islands are not only high-profile symbols of global warming, rising sea levels, nuclear testing and fallout, the legacies of mainland consumerism, continued colonialisms, ecological and environmental degradation, and many of the other forces associated with the Anthropocene. Working with islands and island cultures in the early 21st century is also widely understood to be highly productive and generative for the development of new and alternative ways of conceptualizing the stakes of debate and governance in the Anthropocene, as exemplified in Pugh 2018, Chandler and Pugh 2021, Sheller 2020, DeLoughrey 2019, and Watts 2018. In particular, work with islands and islanders is seen as highly important for the development of relational ontologies and epistemologies that enable research to better grapple with “relational entanglements” as the central, overriding problem of the Anthropocene—from islands and islanders being widely understood as emblematic sensors of climate change, the “canaries in the coal mine” (Chandler and Pugh 2020, cited under Island Sustainability and Resilience), to recent developments in critical philosophy (Barad 2019, Morton 2016, Wolfe 2017), and to critiques of colonialism on islands in the Anthropocene (Kanngieser 2020, Sheller 2020), which draw heavily on work with islands, islanders, and island scholarship. Early-21st-century Anthropocene scholars, international policymakers, artists, and critical activists alike increasingly work and think with islands as key sites for understanding the changing nature of relational entanglements in the Anthropocene.

Barad, Karen. “After the End of the World: Entangled Nuclear Colonialisms, Matters of Force, and the Material Force of Justice.” Theory & Event 22.3 (2019): 524–550.
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Written by a leading Anthropocene scholar and drawing on her influential research on quantum theory, this article foregrounds islands—in this case, the Marshall Islands, subjected to nuclear testing and fallout—as holding spaces for the legacies and ongoing effects of modernity and colonialism.
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Chandler, David, and Jonathan Pugh. “Islands and the Rise of Correlational Epistemology in the Anthropocene: Rethinking the Trope of the ‘Canary in the Coalmine.’” Island Studies Journal (2021).
DOI: 10.24043/isj.119 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Focuses on the underlying logic at play in debates where the figure of the island has been reduced to the emblematic “canary in the coal mine” in the Anthropocene.
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DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. Allegories of the Anthropocene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.
DOI: 10.1215/9781478005582 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
One of the most important publications on islands in the Anthropocene, focusing on how islands emerge as “allegories” for wider debates about the Anthropocene. Pays particular attention to the importance of developing feminist and postcolonial approaches for reading and registering the ongoing legacies and effects of modernity and colonialism in debates about the Anthropocene, where islands and islanders figure extremely prominently.
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Kanngieser, Anja. Listening to Ecocide. Sonic Acts 2020.
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A powerful talk supplemented by recordings concerned with how we can better attune, listen to, and literally hear unfolding ecological, colonial, and other current crises on islands in the Anthropocene.
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Morton, Timothy. “Molten Entities.” In New Geographies 08: Island. Edited by Daniel Daou and Pablo Pérez-Ramos, 72–76. Cambridge, MA: Universal Wilde, 2016.
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Written by probably the most well-known philosopher of the Anthropocene. Morton argues for engaging the geographical form of the island in particular as a powerful way of rethinking the stakes of Anthropocene philosophy. Moves beyond posthuman approaches to foreground an object-oriented approach to island studies in the Anthropocene.
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Pugh, Jonathan. “Relationality and Island Studies in the Anthropocene.” Island Studies Journal 13.1 (2018): 93–110.
DOI: 10.24043/isj.48 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Foregrounds how the broader stakes of island studies have dramatically changed in the Anthropocene. Relations are understood to have become too complex to be grasped by way of either modernity’s human/nature divide and even more recent posthuman approaches, which now do not seem to be posthuman enough for the stakes of many recent debates about the Anthropocene.
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Pugh, Jonathan, and David Chandler. Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds. London: Westminster University Press, 2021.
DOI: 10.16997/book52 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Examines and analytically draws out how work with islands is increasingly influential in broader Anthropocene thinking that challenges modern reasoning. Focuses on how work with islands, islanders, island art, activism, poetry, and scholarship has been extremely influential in the development of alternative and new relational ontologies and epistemologies. Breaks down and categorizes these in terms of the analytics of “Resilience,” “Patchworks,” “Correlation,” and “Storiation.” Maps out a new agenda for island studies in the Anthropocene.
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Sheller, Mimi. Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.
DOI: 10.1215/9781478012733 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A key publication on islands and the Anthropocene, and a particularly powerful text that examines the Caribbean in a time of ecological crisis. Focusing on post-earthquake Haiti, critiques the drive for “recovery” and resilience that has emerged through the dynamics of particular cultural, political, and economic trends and forces.
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Watts, Laura. Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018.
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Already a classic, Watts’s book examines how islanders work productively with complex relational entanglements in order to pragmatically “stay with the trouble” of the Anthropocene as a condition in which we are all already in.
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Wolfe, Cary. “Of Ecology, Immunity, and Islands: The Lost Maples of Big Bend.” In Posthumous Life: Theorizing beyond the Posthuman. Edited by Jami Weinstein and Claire Colebrook, 137–152. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
DOI: 10.7312/wein17214-007 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Draws on Jacques Derrida’s observation that after the end of modern frameworks of reasoning, “There is no world; there are only islands.” A very good example of contemporary thinking with islands as a conceptual framing device for engaging the Anthropocene as an epoch where relations have become too rich, too complex, and too entangled to be grasped by older, modern reasoning that focused on a human/nature divide and linear conceptualizations of time and progress.
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Work on the Anthropocene by Island Poets

Some of the most influential work on islands in the Anthropocene is being developed by leading island poets, including Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner (Jetñil-Kijiner 2019), Craig Santos Perez (Perez 2020), and Julianna Spahr (Spahr 2005), who variously document island life under transforming environmental and colonial conditions.

Jetñil-Kijiner, Kathy. “Bulldozed Reefs and Blasted Sands: Rituals for Artificial Islands.” Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner (blog), 2 July 2019.
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Written by one of the most influential poets of the Anthropocene, focuses on the complex challenges and tensions between building new islands and islanders having to leave their existing island homes because they are sinking under rising seas due to climate change.
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Perez, Craig Santos. Habitat Threshold. Oakland, CA: Omidawn, 2020.
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One of the most important poets of the Anthropocene, Perez examines the complexities of engaging transforming planetary change from his own islander perspective.
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Spahr, Julianna. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
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Spahr is one of the most well-known poets of the Anthropocene, and her Hawaiian poetry attunes to the conditions of the Anthropocene on a small island.
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Human Geography and Islands
by
Jonathan Pugh
LAST MODIFIED: 23 June 2021
DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0230

Introduction

General Overviews

Non-English Overview Texts

Journals

Key Topics for Island Geography

Island Economy and Development Geographies

Island Tourism Geographies

Migration, Immigration, and Mobilities

Island Societies and Indigenous Geographies

The Geographical Diversity of Island Philosophies

Colonialism and Islands

The Colonial Gaze, Science, and Research

Generative Black Geographies

Urban and Artificial-Island Geographies

Feminist and Queer Island Geographies

Island Sustainability and Resilience

The Relational and Archipelagic Turns

Islands as Key Figures in the Anthropocene

Work on the Anthropocene by Island Poets

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Human Geography and Islands

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Human Geography and Islands byJonathan PughLAST MODIFIED: 23 June 2021DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0230

Introduction

General Overviews

Non-English Overview Texts

Journals

Key Topics for Island Geography

Island Economy and Development Geographies

Island Tourism Geographies

Migration, Immigration, and Mobilities

Island Societies and Indigenous Geographies

The Geographical Diversity of Island Philosophies

Colonialism and Islands

The Colonial Gaze, Science, and Research

Generative Black Geographies

Urban and Artificial-Island Geographies

Feminist and Queer Island Geographies

Island Sustainability and Resilience

The Relational and Archipelagic Turns

Islands as Key Figures in the Anthropocene

Work on the Anthropocene by Island Poets

Geography

Article

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

Human Geography and Islands
by
Jonathan Pugh
LAST MODIFIED: 23 June 2021
DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0230