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The island as a political interstice

Kelman, I; (2023) The island as a political interstice. Political Geography , 107 , Article 102977. 10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102977. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Islands are often defined with respect to their physicality, namely small pieces of land surrounded by water. One inherent assumption is that islands can be defined distinctly from other geographic entities, such as the often-presumed dichotomies of island-mainland and land-water. This vocabulary is imbued with political meaning, especially that the opposite of an island is apparently the “main land”. Island studies challenges these notions, reinterpreting them in contemporary political domains, with one framing being interstitiality. From this baseline and drawing on some political geography work, this paper argues that the interstitial island is principally a political construction. Islands are, or at minimum can be, multiple forms of interstices, but they are very much created as such—whether inadvertently, deliberately, or a combination—making the island a political interstice. This paper follows this line of reasoning by selecting two characteristics discussed in island studies and geography with respect to islandness: separation and connection. The result is to explore separation and connection as interstitial, demonstrating that politics infuses the discussions, conceptualisations, and practicalities of the interstitial island, although this situation is not necessarily detrimental. Philosophically and practically, many advantages result from constructing the island as a political interstice, suggesting that island interstitiality has far more political than physical value.

Type: Article
Title: The island as a political interstice
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102977
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102977
Language: English
Additional information: © 2023 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Island studies, Island, Mainland
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Inst for Risk and Disaster Reduction
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10177866
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