Flows and boundaries: small island discourses and the challenge of sustainability, community and local environments

Abstract

Islands (also islets, isles)—paradoxical spaces: absolute entities surrounded by water but not large enough to be a continent, territories, territorial; relational spaces—archipelagos, (inter dependent, identifiable; relative spaces—bounded but porous; isolated, connected, colonized, postcolonial; redolent of the performative imaginary; vulnerable to linguistic, cultural, environmental change; robust and able to absorb and modify; placed in regions,(part of) nation states and global life; paradisiacal, utopian and dystopian, tourist meccas, ecological refugia; frames within which interdisciplinary scholarship and dialogue can be constituted and deployed …