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Guest editorial introduction: Islanding cultural geographies

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Author

Summary, in English

Islands allure imagination, thought and affect. Imagination, thought and affect conjure islands. Literary imaginations create islands more than any other geographical form. Metaphorically, we use concepts of bounded and contained islands to think with, to an extent not commonly recognized. Emotions and desires are moved by and commonly move us towards or away from islands. Relatedly, in a deeper time scale, islands have played a central role in the evolution of life forms, spawning biocultural diversity. Torsten Hägerstrand recognized this in identifying the ‘dilemma which arises from expanding over given boundaries while remaining sheltered [as] the eternal theme of first biological evolution and then cultural’. Islands bind and shelter, for better or worse, by design or imposition. Commonly associated today with escape – from tedious, stressful and mundane everyday lives; from financial regulation and taxation; from the chaos, destruction and chemical cocktails of modern society – islands serve a host of other purposes on the maps of higher authorities: for locating military outposts, incarcerating political foes, dumping waste, expanding markets or engineering sites of social experimentation. If islandness is a particular state or condition of being, there is a corresponding action in islanding. We propose island as a verb, islanding as an action. With this collection of papers, we wish to contribute to the islanding of cultural geographies, most definitely not in the sense of bounding off and isolating, but rather in the sense of bringing the stream of cultural and social theory into communication with alternative currents, byways and eddies created by islands. We believe that the islanding – in this sense – of cultural geographies is underway, and that there are new spatial understandings that can be brought into play from the island perspective. Finally, we hope this collection will encourage your participation in islanding cultural geographies.

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

129-134

Publication/Series

Cultural Geographies

Volume

20

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Human Geography

Keywords

  • connection
  • cultural geography
  • islanding
  • human geography
  • isolation

Status

Published

Project

  • LUCID - Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability

Research group

  • LUCID - Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1474-4740