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Previous Issues
v1n2
- Cover
- Contents
- Transperipheral Networks: Bullfighting and Cattle Culture in Japan’s Outer Islands
Sueo Kuwahara, Takahiro Ozaki and Akira Nishimura
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Amami, bullfighting, transperipheral networks
Abstract: Organised fights between trained bulls have been staged in several locations in Japan, Korea, and China for several hundred years (Ishii, 1990a). This article analyses the manner in which a group of Japanese islands have played a prominent part in this activity and now form part of inter-regional networks linking disparate, non-metropolitan communities across the region. These linkages are characterised and discussed as constituting a transperipheral network.
- Gourmet and Green: The Branding of King Island
Susie Khamis
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: King Island, food, branding, tourism
Abstract: In less than thirty years, King Island - in Australia’s Bass Strait - has become popularly synonymous with quality foods and unspoilt beauty. The marketing success of King Island Dairy, in particular, has helped orient much of the island’s activities towards particular services and goods. They benefit from a general perception that, for reasons both coincidental and contrived, King Island is singularly blessed for premium produce. This article traces the rise this image, and considers its irony in light of the various vulnerabilities that have otherwise hindered King Island’s development. From the hazardous winds of the ‘Roaring 40s’, to the sporadic investment in its infrastructure, King Island’s history is dotted with obstacles and setbacks. In turn, it is argued that, insofar as the King Island brand now relies on certain associations for effectively marketing both its export commodities and its tourist attractions, islanders must address if not resolve a range of issues and/or inadequacies that undermine the brand’s integrity.
- Norfolk Island: Thanatourism, History and Visitor Emotions
Megan Best
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Norfolk Island, thanatourism, emotions, convict settlement, history, heritage, tourism
Abstract: An increasingly popular tourism niche involves visits to sites of death and human suffering. This form of travel has become known as ‘thanatourism’ and its study is a research field that has emerged from studies of war and battlefield tourism (Seaton, 1996, 1999). Although considered to be a highly emotional experience for visitors, little remains known about thanatourists’ emotions during visits (Austin, 2002). To begin to fill this research gap, the current study explored tourists’ emotions whilst visiting Norfolk Island’s convict sites and attractions. Norfolk Island is a self-governing external territory of Australia, located in the South-West Pacific. It is rich in history and culture; a heritage that remains the nucleus of the islands primary industry - tourism. Study findings are drawn from arrival and departure visitor questionnaires and follow-up, in-depth, post-travel interviews. The findings indicate that viewing convict sites produces a multitude of emotions, all of which impact on visitor experiences in some way. The study utilises Fredrickson’s (1998) Broaden and Built Theory of Positive Emotions to explore how visitors’ thought-action repertoires are broadened throughout their emotional encounters. Findings build upon current knowledge of thanatourism and Norfolk Island’s history and heritage. In doing so, the study has developed a greater understanding of the role of emotions in visitor experiences.
- Reinventing ‘Springs’: Constructing Identity in the Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles
Meghan Forsyth
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Shetland Isles, fiddle, contemporary tradition, identity construction, representation
Abstract: The relative isolation of the Shetland archipelago until the beginning of the 20th Century promoted the development of a fiddle tradition distinct from either that of neighbouring Scandinavia or mainland Scotland. Contemporary Shetland fiddling reveals changing perceptions of space, in relation to generational differences and the dichotomy of traditional/contemporary, and constructions of place, in terms of individual interpretations of islandness and individuals’ ties to their environment. This paper focuses on recent and current fiddling in the Shetland Isles in the context of identity construction and representation. I consider changes to Shetland fiddling since the development of the contemporary tradition in the 1970s, and explore how Shetland fiddlers construct their identities as Shetlanders through their individual interpretations of the tradition. Moreover, I examine how they choose to represent Shetland fiddling in the contemporary global market.
- “The Spell of Sarnia”: Fictional Representations of the Island of Guernsey
Peter Goodall
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Guernsey, Channel Islands, Hugo, Edwards, Peake, religion
Abstract: Although there is nothing that resembles a comprehensive literary history of Guernsey, or of any of the islands of the English Channel, Guernsey has been the subject of many interesting representations in fiction. Two great novels dominate this tradition: Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer (Toilers of the Sea) (1866) and G. B. Edwards’s The Book of Ebenezer Le Page (1981), and these novels have a powerful intertextual relationship. One or two novels written in between are major works of literary art, for example Mervyn Peake’s Mr. Pye (1953), but most of the other eighty or so novels are works of popular fiction in a variety of genres and modes, especially the historical romance and the adventure story. On the whole, these novels rehearse a limited number of common themes: a romantic conception of Guernsey’s history, the physical beauty of the island coupled with a sense of the dangers of its dramatic coastline and the sea that surrounds it, and the prominence of religion in island society, in terms of both Christian sectarianism and the underground presence into modern times of paganism and witchcraft.
- On the Margins: Torres Strait Islander Women Performing Contemporary Music
Katelyn Barney
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Torres Strait Islanders, women, contemporary music, marginalisation
Abstract: Despite the increasing number of Torres Strait Islander musicians who are now recording their contemporary music, and aside from the work of a few notable exceptions (eg Beckett 1981; Neuenfeldt, 2002; Magowan and Neuenfeldt, 2005), Torres Strait Islander performers continue to remain marginalised in academic discourse. Further, what has been written about contemporary Indigenous Australian performance is largely about male performers—the voices of Torres Strait Islander women are noticeably absent. With reference to feminist theories of marginalisation and difference and drawing on first-hand interviews, this paper examines how Torres Strait Islander women negotiate issues of marginalisation, differentiation and identity through their music. It also considers what it means to Torres Strait Islander women to perform on the margins and the ways that contemporary music performance functions in this context as a site for resistance and affirmation of their Torres Strait Islander identities.
- Feature Review – Western Edges: Evil Aliens and Island Otherness in British Cinema
Philip Hayward
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: British islands, cinema, Horror, Wales
Abstract: The British film Evil Aliens (2005), directed by Jake West, offers a vivid representation of a western British island as a place of liminal otherness. It builds on a British cinematic tradition of representing such locations as places of difference and transition and provides a new inflection through a mix of current film genres that allows full reign to humour and thematic invention. The following analysis identifies the significance of the island location to Evil Aliens’ narrative and reflects on the continuing sense of western liminality present in a 21st Century imagination of Great Britain’s island fringe.
- About The Authors
v1n1
- Cover
- Contents
- An Introduction To Island Culture Studies
The Shima Editorial Board
- The Space of Shima
Jun'ichiro Suwa
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Amami (Japan), landscape, imagination, performance, human security
Abstract: Drawing on a discussion of the Japanese/Ryukyuan concept of shima, this paper attempts
to reconsider a fundamental aspect of Island Studies: the cultural dimensions of islands. The
term shima, denoting ‘island’, is interesting in that it embodies a dual meaning - islands as
geographical features and islands as small-scale social groups where cultural interactions
are densely intermeshed. The Amami Islands of southwestern Japan are marked by their
population’s deep attachment to their own shima, as enacted through various practices and
performances of demarcation. Each shima is a work of territorial imagination, an extension of
personhood and a ‘cultural landscape’. In this sense, a shima is a sanctuary, in that the
natural environment and social space are articulated by the performative in such a way that
one imagines them as a totality. Islands are both the ground and product of cultural
practices and threats to their viability can thereby be construed as threats to human security
more generally.
- When Islands Create Languages - or - Why Do Language Research with Bonin [Ogasawara] Islanders?
Daniel Long
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Japan, Ogasawara, Bonin, Chichijima, language contact, Mixed Language, creoloid
Abstract: This paper examines the role that the geographical and social factors of isolation (from the outside world) and intense contact (within the community) commonly associated with small island communities can play in the development of new language systems. I focus on fieldwork studies of the creoloid and Mixed Language of the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands.
- One Foot on Either Side of the Chasm: Cape Breton Singer Mary Jane Lamond’s Gaelic choice
Heather Sparling
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Gaelic, Cape Breton, popular music, language, reception
Abstract: Mary Jane Lamond has recorded five albums of Scottish Gaelic songs known and sung in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. Yet fewer than 500 native Gaelic speakers are estimated to remain in Cape Breton. Song lyrics are central to traditional Gaelic performance and aesthetics and yet the majority of Lamond’s audience is a mainstream, non-Gaelic speaking one. Reviewers of Lamond’s albums mention her powerful vocals but can only draw meaning from the sound of her voice, rather than from the words themselves. Lamond’s language choice identifies her as a Cape Breton Gael to both local and inter/national audiences, but the ways in which her lyrics are considered meaningful vary. Lamond is a cultural activist who has deep respect for the Cape Breton Gaelic tradition. But is it possible to bridge the chasm between traditional and popular Gaelic music audiences when language is central to the former, but incomprehensible to the latter?
- Te Wa: The Social Significance of the Traditional Canoes of Kiribati
Tony Whincup
[Abstract] [Keywords]
a. Introduction
b. Photo Essay
Keywords: Micronesia, canoe, Kiribati, cultural artefact, self-definition
Abstract: Through the vehicle of the photographic essay, a “thick description” (Geertz, 1973: 3-30) incorporating participant quotations, reflexive writing and photographic images, this article examines the roles of magic, gender, sport, skill, ownership and the pragmatics of survival in relation to te wa, the traditional canoe of Kiribati. It is stressed that something that is made reaches deeply into cultural beliefs and strategies for self-recognition and self-definition. In Kiribati, knowledge is closely guarded. Skills associated with the canoe, such as construction, navigation, magic and sailing, will be passed on only to close and trusted family members. A sense of self is recognised not from material possessions but rather as the guardian of unique cultural practice. The canoe is an expression of these complex and fundamental human social concerns. This visual work explores the deeply rooted traditional values and practices which mirror those enduring qualities that remain at the heart of what it is to be I-Kiribati.
- Mangyan Internal Refugees from Mindoro Island and the Spaces of Low-Intensity Conflict in The Philippines
Jonas Baes
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Mangyan, Mindoro Island, Internal refugees, conflict, Iraya-Mangyan CD
Abstract: In 2002 and 2003, groups of disparate Mangyan [upland indigenous] peoples from Mindoro island sought refuge in nearby provinces to escape escalating military operations in the island. The Armed Forces of the Philippines stepped-up their operations as part of a ‘clean-up’ drive on insurgency, following the US-led ‘Global War on Terrorism’. The low-intensity nature of the operations has had cataclysmic effects on those residing in the island, most especially the indigenous peoples living in the central highlands. This has entailed absorption into a national body politic and a global world order. It also raises the possibility of exploring avenues for the regeneration of culture among peoples like the Mangyan, caught in the mainstream of change and marginal conditions in the country.
- Jersey: The Development of an Island Cultural Strategy
Adam Riddell
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Jersey, Cultural Strategy, Channel Islands
Abstract: In 2005 Jersey’s government approved a ‘Cultural Strategy’ document. This paper traces how the Cultural Strategy document was developed and offers an analysis of what its contents mean for Jersey’s cultural identity and cultural organisations. The author looks at the problems that were encountered in the development of the Cultural Strategy and offers his views on where these problems originated, suggesting that some of the difficulties arose from Jersey’s island status. An acute awareness of the Island’s own traditions, heritage and cultural values together with its often complex relationships with what lies beyond its shores, (ie ‘the external’), are some of the concepts discussed. By referring specifically to the various cultural organisations, the paper also offers an overview of Jersey’s cultural sector. The practical manifestations of the Cultural Strategy document are analysed in terms of what they might indicate for the future development of Jersey’s cultural sector.
- Romance, Insularity and Representation: Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love and Hong Kong Cinema
Giorgio Biancorosso
[Abstract] [Keywords]
Keywords: Hong Kong, Hong Kong cinema, Wong kar-wai, Self-Representation
Abstract: Wong Kar-wai’s film In the Mood for Love (2000) is set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s and explores the predicament and reactions of a female character (So Lai-chen) who experiences a personal crisis at a time of political turmoil. Like that other great film about passion and solipsism, Nagisa Oshima’s Ai no corrida (1976), In the Mood for Love poses as a mere love story only to open up, in a brilliantly off-handed fashion, a scenario of political devastation against which romance becomes all but impossible. For all its casual tone, the backdrop of the 1966 riots is a shivering revelation of the social and political conditions that have made possible the protagonists’ solipsistic absorption in their feelings as well as the fragility of Hong Kong’s status as a geographical and political island. This article discusses these elements of the film in the context of contemporary Hong Kong society and cinema.
- About The Authors
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