Introduction [Shima, 17(1)]

Abstract

This issue of Shima consolidates research on a number of areas explored in previous theme and general issues. Articles 1, 6 and 7 arose from a call for papers on “The island as ‘watery land’: water-land interfaces in island discourses, experiences and practices: Ecocritical, political and cultural perspectives”. This call was initiated in the context of on-going research within the DFG (German Research Foundation) funded Island Studies Network: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Island Exchanges, Environments, and Perceptions. Etymologically, island means ‘watery land’, going back to Old English – ‘of or pertaining to water’, ‘watery’, and land (OED, 2022). Linguistically, then, islands transgress the binary opposition between land and water. Rather than just being land surrounded by water, they are themselves characterised by water. Island Studies has long emphasised the close connection between terrestrial and aquatic spaces and in recent decades has turned to the study of the multifarious interrelations between islands and water, for instance with the concept of aquapelago, which conceives (some) archipelagic areas as “an intermeshed and interactive marine/land environment” (Hayward, 2012, p.5). Islands’ watery or ecotonal character (Gillis, 2014) shapes human behaviour on the edge of two ecosystems. The opposition between land and water, however, remains a dominant discursive pattern and is connected to other distinctions playing a fundamental role in Western discourses (Moser, 2005, pp. 408:409): the contrast between structured and amorphous space, order and chaos, the human world and its other. Focussing on islands as ‘watery lands’ and on related socio-cultural contexts muddies such seemingly clear-cut distinctions and highlights different perspectives on nature and culture, not as dichotomy but as inseparably intertwined. Developing such non-dichotomous viewpoints and strengthening their influence within hegemonic discourses and practices has become increasingly urgent in times of accelerated environmental destruction and anthropogenic climate change.