Adam Grydehoj

• PhD, University of Aberdeen
• Professor at South China University of Technology

Islands are often associated with sites of memory, forgetting, and nostalgia. People find islands in the world and imbue them with social and cultural meaning. Drawing upon studies of islands as sites of memory and forgetting, and taking the case of Thousand-Island Lake (Qiandaohu) in Zhejiang, China, this paper argues that it is important to denat...

Studies of culture, history, literature, and art can provide insight into our multiple senses of place. The manner in which we speak, write, illustrate, and produce our landscapes; the politics of land use; and life on land or sea (or away from it) reflect human efforts to live locally. Similarly, studies of ecologies, landforms, weather, and other...

This paper explores ethical pitfalls and potential harms that arise in autoethnography. I use evocative autoethnographic writing to reflect upon my experiences undertaking a research project on social and natural isolation in Orkney and Svalbard (2001-2002). This project involved a commitment for me to remain silent and not speak for six months. On...

Islands have come to be seen as a distinct object of disaster risk and climate change policy and research. This is reflected in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR), which specifies Small Island Developing States (SIDS) as in need of specialized policies, attention, and support. This article directs an island studies p...

This paper asks how researchers can fruitfully and respectfully approach traditions of the sacred. It centres on the author’s efforts to use autoethnography to interact with the Chinese sea goddess Mazu at Nansha Tianhou Temple in Guangzhou, China. Combining methods and concepts from folklore and human geography, the paper takes an experience-centr...

Over the centuries, migration has significantly impacted Croatian islands and islanders. Taking a life course perspective and deploying semistructured interviews, this paper analyses time as a variable in contemporary return migration to Dugi Otok, a small island in Croatia. The focus is on the personal experiences of key events in the interviewees...

As greater attention has been paid to island research in China, interactions between Chinese and international island scholars have increased. However, research has tended to take an ‘islands of China’ approach, which perceives China as a continental country surrounded by a large number of islands. The present paper proposes an alternative ‘island...

Despite considerable research into special economic zones (SEZs) and Island Studies, islands and SEZs are rarely considered together. Islands and SEZs are, however, closely associated, in part due to the attractiveness of island characteristics (remoteness, boundedness, isolation) for exclusive economic processes. Many prominent SEZs are located on...

This paper discusses tensions in journal editing and management, particularly for non-fee charging open access (diamond open access) journals. Even diamond open access journals and other journals published on a non-commercial basis are subject to financial and labour costs. Because diamond open access journals do not gain income from subscriptions...

This editorial conclusion looks back on how Island Studies Journal has developed from its start in 2006, up through the beginning of the current editorship in 2017, and through to the start of a new editorship in mid-2023. Island studies has transformed from being a close-knit community centred on a few key scholars to being a field composed of num...

Islands are associated with both high levels of autonomous status and sovereign status on the one hand and the creation of exceptional spaces on the other, both linked with the development of distinctive island cultures. This article argues that there is a tension between these tendencies, as is illustrated by the case of Jeju Island, South Korea....

Calls to decolonise academia are increasing, yet progress has been halting, including in academic publishing. This paper considers publishing practices and outcomes in Island Studies Journal (a diamond open access, multidisciplinary, high‐ranked journal), which has taken an explicitly decolonial editorial direction in recent years. We undertake a c...

Island communities and fishing villages in South Korea have been affected by changes in policy and environmental conditions. This paper presents an overview of and potential solutions to sustainability challenges confronting Korea’s island communities and fishing villages. The paper is grounded in a review of the relevant Korean and international r...

The Pearl River Delta in South China is today associated with one of the world's largest megaregions. Even though scholarship often treats the Pearl River Delta as a natural region and unit for analysis, this area has only recently been regionalised. This paper undertakes a critical rewriting and remapping of the Pearl River Delta's history, starti...

The science fiction genre emerged gradually in Western colonialism, especially during the development of industrial sciences and technologies, as well as during the colonial and expansionist desires of the nineteenth century. This genre, complicit with colonial ideologies and discourses at the early stage, has often maintained a colonial pattern, w...

Although the field of island studies has from the start regarded itself as a defender of islands and islander interests, it is entangled in coloniality. This editorial focuses on issues of power, knowledge, and position. Who wields power in island studies? Who knows about islands? Where is island studies located, and how does it position itself? Th...

Greenland is a strongly autonomous subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ) within the Kingdom of Denmark. This paper takes its point of departure in studies of politics in small island territories to ask to what extent Greenland matches findings from other small island states and SNIJs in terms of personalisation of politics, party performance, and...

Island peoples around the world remain entangled in colonial processes. Western and metropolitan powers are increasingly deploying discourse of a ‘China threat’ to justify neocolonial entrenchment in the form of greater Western militarisation and economic dominance. In this paper, we investigate how Western and metropolitan powers use the China thr...

This article discusses the growth of island studies in China and how the field of island studies is expanding to include insights from new research areas.

Islands and archipelagos are exceptionally dependent on the nature of their transport infrastructure, with cross-sea transport links being of fundamental importance for mobility. Traditionally, the island geography research literature has engaged in a binary and oppositional understanding of the relationship between fixed links such as bridges and...

This paper analyses the ancient Maritime Silk Road through a relational island studies approach. Island ports and island cities represented key sites of water-facilitated transport and exchange in the ancient Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Building our analysis upon a historical overview of the ancient Maritime Silk Road from the perspective of...

It is frequently noted that small islands, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS), receive hugely disproportionate levels of aid or official development assistance (ODA) relative to other states and territories. However, the precise relationship between 'islandness' and aid remains underexamined. This paper uses the concept of 'conspicuous...

The concept behind the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; formerly 'One Belt, One Road') began to take shape in 2013. Since then, this Chinese-led project has become a major plank in China's foreign relations. The BRI has grown from its basis as a vision of interregional connectivity into a truly global system, encompassing places-including many island...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a project conceptualized and developed by the Chinese state, aims to enhance international cooperation, address issues of shared regional and global concern, and create opportunities for foreign direct investment in struggling economies. The BRI can be seen as a system for supplying global public goods, including...

This paper considers the cases of urban redevelopment at waterfront and brownfield sites in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Hamburg (Germany) to explore how two municipal governments have pursued divergent kinds of entrepreneurial governance, even as they have aimed to create similar kinds of new-build neighbourhoods. Copenhagen and Hamburg have both enga...

Denmark’s private non-profit housing (almene boliger) sector provides affordable housing and social housing and is capable of being self-governing and self-financing. We examine the private non-profit housing sector’s governance and financing model and assess the extent to which its institutional framework and revolving funds model allow it to serv...

Amidst the debate concerning how to interpret the emergence of new forms of urbanism in today’s world, little attention has been given to urban interstices – the inter-urban boundary areas and interface zones that facilitate exchange between and within vast urban systems. The present paper considers how place is made and developed at these intersti...

Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) is an Arctic highly autonomous subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ) of Denmark, its former coloniser. The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic of 2020 has influenced both Kalaallit Nunaat’s relations with the outside world and relations between people and places within the territory. The Kalaallit Nunaat government’s respo...

Economic challenges are often invoked in discussions of island sovereignty and non- sovereignty. This paper explores the perceived link between a subnational island jurisdiction’s ability to achieve economic independence and its ability to achieve political independence. In the popular and political discourse, it is frequently argued that island te...

Many island cities have vulnerable ecosystems, yet island ecosystems also present special challenges for research. Ecological footprint analysis is an effective method of evaluating the ability of island cities to engage in regional ecological sustainable development. This study uses ecological footprint analysis combined with the ArcGIS platform t...

Islands are often associated with distinct cultures. Although the island polities that formed during the withdrawal of empire frequently brought together various ethnicities, Indigenous governance and claims to cultural distinction have often remained an ideal for such islands and archipelagos. This paper examines the complex causality behind assoc...

This special section seeks to identify what it is that makes islands special as well as to critique the limitations of generalised conceptions of islandness. In recent years, the field of island studies has drawn on critical trends in geography, being particularly influenced by the “relational turn,” the “decolonial turn,” and theories of the Anthr...

Researchers are increasingly turning to relational approaches to island geography, with special emphasis being placed on archipelagos and land–sea interactions. Islands nevertheless continue to be associated with isolation, peripherality and/or disconnectedness, and fixed links such as bridges and causeways continue to be regarded as factors that d...

Islands may be defined by a particular relationship between land and water, but discussions of island development often focus on either land-based activities or on sea-based activities, with little attention to how the terrestrial and marine realms interact. This chapter argues that islands possess a number of spatial characteristics related to coa...

Overview of politics and policies in Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat).

Despite considerable research within the field of island studies, no consensus has yet been reached as to what it is that makes islands special. Around the world, islands and archipelagos are shaped by diverse spatialities and relationalities that make it difficult to identify clear general characteristics of islandness. This paper argues that one...

This editorial introduction delves into problematic aspects of positionality and publishing ethics related to island and Indigenous issues. Taking its point of departure in Gilley’s paper on ‘The case for colonialism’ and Pöllath’s paper ‘Revisiting island decolonization’, the present paper questions: Whose voices should we listen to when consideri...

Assessments of both legitimate governmental activity and responsible economic policy tend to be dominated by conceptions developed at the scale of the large state. Nevertheless, large state perspectives on appropriate levels of public spending relative to economic size and appropriate forms of economic activity do not always match the reality of go...

The island city of Macau, part of China’s Pearl River Delta megacity region, has undergone urban fragmentation, occasioning transport problems and environmental inequalities as well as conditioning future urban development. Land scarcity associated with island spatiality encourages dense and incremental urban expansion, facilitated by coastal land...

This special thematic section lays the groundwork for the development of island studies in the Sinophone world as well as introduces international scholars to the region’s islands. Papers are included from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. © 2017 – Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.

This paper explores conceptions of islands in Ancient and Imperial China. From at least the 3rd Century BCE, mainland Chinese culture regarded islands as sacred, unapproachable fairylands, home to the elixir of immortality. This inspired a trend for voyages in search of mythological sacred islands as well as a landscape architecture trend for const...

The paper considers Lieyu island from a relational geography perspective, relative to the islands of Kinmen, Xiamen, and Taiwan. Lieyu retains its natural landscape and military heritage in part due to its remote location and military restrictions relative to nearby Kinmen Island. Local politicians harness Lieyu's archipelagic relationality and sen...

Island studies has developed into an established, interdisciplinary research field. It is important that island studies not only continue deepening its internal theoretical understandings but also reach out to other fields and regions that have received limited attention within island studies. It is also necessary for island studies to grapple with...

Governments and developers around the globe are exploiting the benefits of island spatiality to sell urban sustainability. Many new-build smart cities, eco-cities, and sustainable cities (‘smart eco-cities’) are constructed on small islands or otherwise bounded from surrounding urban space. Island spatiality presents benefits for selling smart eco-...

The phenomenon of colonialism influenced the cultures, economies, and politics of the majority of the world's population. The subsequent decolonization process has likewise had profound affects on colonized societies. Island societies undergoing decolonization face many of the same pressures and challenges as do mainland societies, yet island spati...

Small islands worldwide are increasingly turning to conspicuous sustainability as a development strategy. Island spatiality encourages renewable energy and sustainability initiatives that emphasise iconicity and are undertaken in order to gain competitive advantage, strengthen sustainable tourism or ecotourism, claim undue credit, distract from fai...

Although democracy is often discussed as a universally applicable ideology, the liberal democratic state tends to assess democracy on the basis of government institutions. This paper argues that democratic institutionalism favours national governments and makes it difficult for subnational governments to expand their governance capacity and exercis...

This article foregrounds urban public space by considering land reclamation in island cities. Land reclamation is nearly ubiquitous in the urban development of coastal cities, and island cities in particular are subject to exceptionally dense urbanisation and thus exceptionally strong conflict over urban space. Drawing upon theories at the intersec...

Regional, national and global cities are disproportionately located on small islands and archipelagos. The ‘spatial turn’ within island and urban geography increasingly privileges abstract notions of space, yet the prevalence of big cities on small islands suggests that sensitivity to place-specific spatial factors is necessary if we are to underst...

Some preliminary thoughts were penned in 1991, on the founding of an academic journal devoted to the study of the world's islands. This collated contribution is an opportunity to look back critically at what was advised then, and what has actually come to pass through Island Studies Journal. Russell King's prescient report from 1991 is followed by...

Island studies tends to focus on peripheral, isolated, and marginal aspects of island communities, while urban studies has showed scant awareness of islandness: Although many people research cities on islands, there is little tradition of researching island cities or urban archipelagos per se. Island cities (densely populated small islands and popu...

Islandology: geography, rhetoric, politics, by Marc Shell, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2015, xiii + 361 pp., US$28.78 (hardback), ISBN 978-08047-8629-4 In 2011, Lisa Fletcher ("Some Distance to Go...", New Literatures Review, 47-48, p. 18) argues that, despite its claims to interdisciplinarity, the field of island studies is "undermined by...

Technology has politics and plays a role in societal governance. This article explores the fishing community of Karanrang island (Spermonde Archipelago, Indonesia) to consider how fishing technologies reinforce existing power structures in the local informal governance system. Informal governance actors deploy the politics of technology in order to...

Efforts to preserve fragile ecosystems that focus on removing human intervention from the environment risk ignoring the political and social systems underlying environmentally destructive economic activities. In contrast, a biocultural diversity perspective allows for environmental protection to be approached with sensitivity to human needs. This p...

Island studies research has traditionally focused on relatively rural, peripheral, and isolated communities, yet island cities (strongly urbanized small islands or archipelagos or major population centres of large islands or archipelagos) also represent an important research area. Island spatiality has a host of historical and continuing effects on...

Both islands and cities are often conceptualized in terms of centre-periphery relationships. Scholarly attempts to nuance popular associations of islands with peripherality and cities with centrality reflect awareness of underlying power relationships. Drawing upon island studies and urban studies knowledge, the case of Nuuk, Greenland, is used to...

This paper explores processes of islanding, de-islanding, and re-islanding in the context of island cities. Although today popularly associated with rural, peripheral, and isolated landscapes, concepts of the ideal city coincided in Medieval and Renaissance Europe with emergent notions of the ideal island. Major European cities such as Amsterdam, P...

A local government can use innovative governance practices to expand its jurisdictional capacity, thereby promoting local economic development. There are, however, legal and institutional impediments to the exercise of such innovative economic development policy. Using the subnational jurisdiction of Shetland as a case study, this paper considers h...

There has been increasing awareness that communities based on islands are subject to particular island-related factors (the so-called ‘island effect’). This paper sheds empirical light on how the island effect differs in different kinds of island communities, specifically solitary islands on the one hand and archipelagos on the other. It does so by...

The Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is under a limited form of Norwegian sovereignty and its settlements – among the northernmost in the world – are sites of activity by a range of states, most notably Russia. Norway's Svalbard policy has historically focused on marginalizing Russian influence. Through the use of informal diplomacy involving the cre...

Micronations are often viewed as humorous phenomena, but, when linked to serious political movements, they have the potential to exert real political influence. In 2008, Stuart Hill (known as Captain Calamity) founded the micronation of Forvik on a small island in the archipelago of Shetland (Scotland, UK). Arguing that Shetland had never become pa...

This paper defines paradiplomacy as 'a political entity's extra-jurisdictional activating targeting foreign political entities'. Because paradiplomacy is specifically an example of political interaction between unequal partners, taking place outside of the internationally accepted political sphere, it is by nature a contested practice. This paper a...

The population of the North Sea archipelago of Shetland, UK possesses a distinct sense of ethnic identity, which connects the island’s present-day community to that of its Old Norse/Viking settlers from Scandinavia. This sense of Viking ethnicity, however, is relatively recent, first arising in the 19th Century. This paper argues that Shetland’s cu...

The population of the North Sea archipelago of Shetland, UK possesses a distinct sense of ethnic identity, which connects the island’s present-day community to that of its Old Norse/Viking settlers from Scandinavia. This sense of Viking ethnicity, however, is relatively recent, first arising in the 19th Century. This paper argues that Shetland’s cu...

A local government can use innovative governance practices to expand its jurisdictional capacity, hereby promoting local economic development. There are, however, legal and institutional impediments to the exercise of such innovative economic development policy. Using the subnational jurisdiction of Shetland as a case study, this paper considers ho...

The Arctic region's emerging accessibility to trade and industry, largely as a result of climate change, has enhanced interest among the Arctic states in exploiting new trade routes and natural resources (fossil fuels, fisheries, precious metals, etc.). It is tempting to view these developments either in terms of regional cooperation or zero-sum co...

The Arctic archipelago of Svalbard has been under Norwegian sovereignty since 1920 yet remains subject to international law. Until recently, the islands' only major economic activities were unprofitable Russian and Norwegian funded mining operations aimed at maintaining continuous settlement. Now, however, Norway's top-down governance of the territ...

Recent research has shown how the economies of very small jurisdictions function differently from the economies of larger jurisdictions. Due to the small populations and small economic size of microstates and SNIJs (sub-national island jurisdictions), their governments function differently as well, tending to be disproportionately large relative to...

Ronström's tradition/heritage dichotomy is used to explore issues of cultural inheritance in the Danish island of Ærø. The 2006 publication of Carsten Jensen's best-selling historical novel We, the Drowned turned the Baltic Sea village of Marstal into Denmark's best-known maritime community. Locally, however, there had long been a tradition of Mars...

This article addresses the nature of autonomist impulses and initiatives that developed on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England, in the late 20 th Century. Drawing on recent discussions of the process of decolonization of island territories and the broader field of study of ethnopolitical mobilization in support of regional autonomy...

The municipal authority of Shetland (Scotland) uses tourism promotion as a carrier for holistic brand messages and as a tool of paradiplomacy. This comes into conflict with Shetland's local identity concept, which discourages community engagement with certain types of tourism and heritage development and clashes with the tourism promotion's wider a...

Heritage implies inheritance, a community-negotiated concept defying easy historical determinism. Utilising Ronström's distinction between tradition and heritage, this paper uses case studies from the islands of Shetland, Åland, and Svalbard to analyse how the uninherited nature of some heritage can influence its reception by the local community. T...

Making use of knowledge from a wide range of disciplines, this thesis analyses the interactions of culture and economy, particularly regarding the influence of nineteenth- century historiography, on Shetland’s present-day economic development. Shetland’s local identity concept is strongly influenced by this North Sea archipelago’s Norse history....

This paper considers the development of a generic cultural brand for islands. In 2002, Shetland’s local government and the Corporate Edge consultancy developed a modernized, internationally-oriented Shetland brand. This official brand conflicts with Shetlanders’ traditional, locally-oriented identity concept, which has impeded the brand’s success....

Fetlar, one of the peripheral islands in the Shetland archipelago, is blessed with rich soil, a local shop, frequent ferry connections and a strong sense of community. Nevertheless, it is an island at risk, its population having dropped to just 48 individuals. This article compares the situation in Fetlar with those of Shetland's other peripheral i...