Special section - Considering suitable research methods for islands

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2023-01-26
Journal	Geographical Research
Authors	Elizabeth McMahon, Godfrey Baldacchino
Institutions	UNSW Sydney, University of Malta
Citations	3

Abstract

The last 30 years have seen the consolidation of island studies as a field of research with particular imperatives and methodologies of interest to geographers and others, and not least the readers of this journal. This consolidation has been achieved through a range of strategies and practices from the involvement of government agencies and island development legislation and plans to the establishment of academic associations, dedicated scholarly journals, large-scale publishing projects in diverse locations and languages, conferences, interdisciplinary forums, postgraduate programmes of study, and collaborative research (including special journal sections, as here). A key objective of this (ongoing) project has been to reframe research methodologies that deal with and work for islands and archipelagos. For research findings to be meaningful to islands and islanders themselves, there is a heartfelt need to enact profound shifts in the premises and practices by which islands and islanders have been framed as convenient, even coy, objects of study (Baldacchino, 2008). Most fundamentally, there has been a perceived need for the relationship between among researchers, islands, and islanders to be reconceived and repurposed in terms of Indigeneity, decoloniality, scale, ethics, relationality, and standpoint. The conception of islands as readymade laboratories and amenable case study material has been axiomatic across the disciplines, as with Charles Darwin and the Galápagos Islands and Margaret Mead on Samoa (Baldacchino, 2004). In 1965, Surtsey island off Iceland was declared a nature reserve for scientists while it was still in the process of being formed by volcanic action: a perfect, pristine research laboratory. In a related way, islands have also operated in the imagination as the primordial or pure homeplace, even for non-islanders. Moreover, history has shown how easily the imaginary island-homeplace fuelled and then consolidated European colonisation via the control of the sea lanes (for example, Benton, 2009). Islands are also imagined as perfect mirrors for the human psyche—hence the warning “No Man is an Island” (Beer, 1990; Deleuze, 2004; McMahon, 2016; Smith & Smith, 2003; Tuan, 1977). The topos of the island has been mapped as the topos of the self, of (self) possession, and the possession of knowledge. It is the topography that most profoundly connects being and space and their inter-relationship. In all these ways, it is the clearly self-enisled topography of the island that brings researchers across many fields to the disciplinary ontologies of geography. Islands hold us captive, but they are also captivating. This “island turn” has focused attention on the manifold shortcomings of much research on and about (but not for or with) islands, including ongoing practices of objectification, colonisation, and segregation (Baldacchino, 2008; Stratford et al., 2011). Much has been achieved, often through connections across the interdisciplinary reach of the field and by the deployment of mixed methodologies that render the complexities and contradictions of islands more visible. Islands have also become emblematic of the Anthropocene, a model for researchers to think through environmental and cultural relationality. This model follows Deleuze’s (1997) ideal of archipelagic relationality in which islands are defined by their singularity, independence, interdependence, and mobility: a raft of qualities that, in his formulation, also enable political resistance. Chandler and Pugh (2021, p. 209) argue that islands have become “instruments of productive knowledge” and are “fundamental to an alternative, correlational, epistemology.” Islands also provide an alternative model of scale, opposed to a single globe, which, as Spivak (2003) has argued, is a logo of capitalism and “a totalizing image of reified ideology” (McMahon, 2013, pp. 55-56). While easily persevering as outliers and “elsewheres” in the public imaginary (Bonnett, 2020), islands are now being foregrounded as pivotal and vital spaces to enact and evaluate a different kind of practice and not just for the purpose of understanding how to transition to a decarbonised and sustainable future. The five essays on island geographies and methods in this section reflect a growing sensitivity about research subjectivity, alternative methodologies, unorthodox datasets, and community engagement. In “Decolonising methodologies: Emergent learning in island research,” Farbotko et al. (2023) document how three Australian geographers undertake to decolonise their empirical research, in this instance on the Pacific archipelago of Tuvalu. At the heart of this re-formation are the ways the researchers “embed” themselves in alternative practices from Tuvalu culture in part through Talanoa and Sautalaga (conversations held in an inclusive, respectful space). These discussions are understood as constructing empathic understanding. Ultimately, after numerous missteps, the researchers realise that a more fundamental shift is needed in the project design and the research team itself re-forms to include a fourth member who is part of the Tuvalu community. In this way, the “embedding” practice becomes reciprocal, and the whole team can properly enter into Tuvaluan practices, such as Fale Pili (that is, my neighbour’s problems are my own), which define community locally and internationally. The research is thus constructed by reciprocity and mutual respect and by the primacy of knowledges of the islanders themselves. In reading Farbotko et al. (2023), we are reminded of some of the challenges and pitfalls of ethical island research (Matheson et al., 2020). Laurie Brinklow’s essay, “Studying islandness through the language of art,” is the result of a qualitative research project that compared two islands from opposite hemispheres: Newfoundland at the easternmost edge of Canada in the northern Atlantic Ocean and Tasmania as the southernmost point of Australia in the Southern Ocean. While geographically antipodean, Newfoundland and Tasmania bear many similarities, as Brinklow (2023) sets out. Her research lens is phenomenology, specifically a radical empiricism (Seamon, 2008) that understands people and place as indivisible. The interviews she conducts with artists in both places engage with their responses to islandness, whose artworks “mirror people and cultures back to themselves.” The project included the main islands and one each of their satellite islands (Fogo and Bruny, respectively), which produced different levels of intensity. Brinklow’s methodology included an embedded approach and an immersion in events, interviews, symposia, and conferences. The screen of artistic expression provides complex translations of islanders to themselves and to the researcher. Karl Agius’s article, “Island settings and their influence on geographical research methods” measures the success of ecotourism in four islands in Malta-Sicily archipelago, in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea. The research was conducted over eight years and included 12 field trips—three on each of four islands—using questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with a range of stakeholders. Agius’ fieldwork was undertaken following the call of various island scholars for researchers to take what is known as a nissological point of view (McCall, 1996) and study and represent the experiences and views of islanders on their own terms. Agius takes up the challenge to rethink island research methodologies by adopting mixed methods and arguing for an adaptive approach to research design: “studies of islands and the methods deployed in those studies need to adapt to environments being studied and be informed by local and regional perspectives.” As Agius (2023) documents, there is a great need for adaptive strategies given the difficulties of access to these and similar small islands, language barriers, the many and varied systems used across different contexts regarding government data collection, and the unwillingness of some tourism providers to divulge data in competitive contexts. Integral to this adaptive approach is communication with all parties involved. Moreover, as an islander himself, Agius has found that individuals and organisations were generally willing to share information. Landscapes are integral to island living and not just to humans. Conservation planning has long been grappling with the wisdom (and expense) of “corridors” that connect species across “habitat islands” or isolated spaces (Diamond, 1975). Jamie Kirkpatrick’s article, “A lesson from Bass Strait on connectivity conservation” focuses on the isolation effects upon the distribution of E. regnans (a eucalypt plant species, also known as mountain ash) in fragmented forests brought about by the formation of Bass Strait: a body of water, 250 kilometres wide, that has separated the island of Tasmania from continental Australia for thousands of years. In summary, Kirkpatrick (2023) finds that this isolation has not “substantially affected vascular plant species composition” but only as long as the habitat islands are large enough. The implications of this finding raise questions about the perceived obligation to create corridors “to connect large areas separated by anthropogenic landscape modification” and point towards a further nuancing of our understanding of isolation. “Incidental researchers: Investigating islands from the inside out” is work by Jennifer Teasdale and Robert Teasdale that takes the imperative for researchers to embed themselves in their island subject to a new level. Jenny and Bob are retired academics who, 20 years ago, relocated permanently from mainland Australia to Kangaroo Island, located off South Australia in the Great Australian Bight. They have spent their time immersing themselves in the ecological and social life of the island and nurturing a strong “awhereness” (Thrift, 2008) and sense of place. Their essay document “the techniques … found most effective in … ‘insider’ studies of island environments and inhabitants.” Their research is not motivated by “a public outcome nor a contribution to their professional development” but rather by “enriching day-today life in an island environment.” In this context, the methodology deployed by Teasdale and Teasdale (2023) is also the outcome in that they promote “a model of intellectual engagement for building communicative connections.” Their methodological toolkit is community involvement in school education, local history projects, and community service. The latter includes bearing the costs and loss and testing the resilience of islanders in the wake of the environmental devastation caused by the 2019-2020 bushfires that destroyed a third of the island. We are delighted to have curated this collection, and we trust that you find its articles insightful and thought-provoking.

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Original Source

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12586

References

2023 - Island settings and their influence on geographical research methods
1990 - Nation and narration
2023 - Studying islandness through the language of art [Crossref]
1997 - Essays critical and clinical