Insular Space Research Articles

Social realism and labour strikes in interwar Bombay: what has socialism got to do with it?

ABSTRACT The 1920s and 30s were a period of frequent, industry-wide labour strikes in the cotton mills of Bombay city. Labour upheaval inspired literary production in Marathi, the primary language of many workers in the city. In the early 1930s, the prolific and beloved Marathi writer Bhargavram (Mama) Varekar published a play and a novel set in the mill district of the city (Mumbai in Marathi); social realism was the mode of depiction in these works. The setting, storyline, and many characters in the play and the novel were the same, but the resolution of the central conflict in these works – the tussle between millowners and millworkers – was different. At around the same time, a textile worker from the city, P. S. Sawant, wrote a play when he was on strike; it was performed in the mill district of the city. Both the plays by Varerkar and Sawant proposed co-operation between millowners and workers as a solution to the strike. The novel, though, left the conflict unresolved. Does genre itself account for a different ending? What was the politics of depiction of the working class in these works? What role did the literary history of the region and the politics of the conjuncture play in influencing them? The paper argues that political economic categories deployed by the city’s Marxists at the time inform the play and the novel. But the authors take great pains to skirt a socialist horizon. In its absence, the works reflect the perspective of social reformers who had an important presence in working-class neighbourhoods and imagined the mill district as an insular space where socialists and socialism were intrusions from outside.

“Whence, Then, Is This Change of Sentiment?”: Homesteading and Restorative Nostalgia in The Woman of Colour

Following the lead of recent inquiries into The Woman of Colour (1808) as a sensibility narrative that fleshed out the unfinished project of abolitionism at around the time when the slave trade was being outlawed in England (1807), this study explores the intermingling between what Svetlana Boym has identified as two distinctly oriented strands of nostalgia, reflective v. restorative, that innervate the title character’s sensibility of (dis)enchantment with her homesteading voyage, as she is transported from her native island into another – partly ancestral yet also foreign and emetic – insular space, from which she eventually tries to expunge herself into a yet-to-be-undertaken voyage of return.

Suzuki Izumi’s Escape from the World of Women

Suzuki Izumi’s (1949–1986) short story “Onna to onna no yo no naka” (A World of Women and Women) was published in 1976, at the time when the genre of separatist feminist utopia was flourishing in the West. Worlds of women in the context of Western literature have been viewed as part and parcel of the feminist movement and debates of the 1970s and 1980s and some attempts have been made to look at Suzuki’s story through the same lens. However, this essay claims that “A World of Women and Women” should be examined as an expression of discomfort experienced by women in society rather than as a possible blueprint for a better social order or utopian feminist vision. I contend that Suzuki’s work reflects the contemporary cultural atmosphere of disappointment both with the state and with protest movements, with what the philosopher Yoshimoto Takaaki called “communal illusion.” The story is a critique of a discursive space near and dear to Suzuki’s heart – the world of shōjo narratives (narratives aimed at girls and young women), constructed as an insular space that precludes real engagement with the reality of having to live in a world in which men do exist.

THE 'TRILHA DOS HOLANDESES' LOCATED BETWEEN THE PATHS OF THE ITAMARACÁ ISLAND (PE): ARCHEOLOGY AND FLUVIAL-MARITIME LANDSCAPE

This article analyzes the ‘Trilha dos Holandeses’, a tourist route on the North Coast of Pernambuco, based on mechanisms available in Landscape Archeology. The approach contributes to the debate on the occupation and appropriation of the insular space, life dynamics and relationship between local social agents and the environment that surrounds them, on the Island of Itamaracá, where the trail is located. The Island was an important place in the Brazilian colonial scene in the first decades of the 16th Century, where urban centers, fortifications and specific port logistics were established. The tourist route currently known as the ‘Trilha dos Holandeses’ refers to the route by the sea that connected Vila de Nossa Senhora da Conceição to Forte Orange. The Trail is used today by fishermen and natives of Itamaracá to articulate the places of interest between the Santa Cruz Channel and the oceanic face of the Island. Considering the historical relevance of the route and its preserved environment, the trail also attracts tourists visiting Itamaracá. In our proposal, the ‘Trilha dos Holandeses’ was approached from the perspective of the fluvial-maritime Cultural Landscape, which adds to Landscape studies the variant of wetlands as central elements in archaeological interpretation.

Laboratory Islands: Renaissance(s), Regression and Re-creation in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor

This article aims to explore the way R. L. Stevenson and H. G. Wells use the insular space to go back to more timeless ways of writing and thus to revive insular romance in works such as The Ebb-Tide or The Island of Doctor Moreau. If by the turn of the 19th century, starting anew and being reborn on a desert island had become increasingly difficult, the island still offered the possibility of a form of literary re-birth or ‘renaissance’, by regressing to more ancient forms of story-telling while simultaneously innovating in terms of literary form and genre. This paper therefore aims to analyse the ambivalence of this insular ‘renaissance’, and the way it relies on pre-existing tropes and motifs while adapting to spatial and cultural changes in the insular context, in order to renew the adventure genre and offer an alternative to literary Realism at the turn of the 19th century. It moreover explores the motif of the island as laboratory, be it a scientific, a political or a literary one, and the various forms of revivals it leads to in the two authors’ works.

Ecologías queer caribeñas y capitalismo del desastre en La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) de Rita Indiana

This article analyzes Rita Indiana’s novel La mucama de Omicunlé (Dominican Republic, 2015) from the perspective of queer ecologies. This approach seeks to dismantle normative conceptions of sexuality and nature through discourses and practices that articulate the relationships between human and non-human bodies from a fundamentally non-evolutionary, non-reproductive and multi-species perspective. La mucama de Omicunlé offers a unique opportunity to explore this approach by presenting an eco-political conspiracy plot -involving transgender characters, Afro-Caribbean rituals, magical animals, and time travel- to save the Caribbean Sea from a maritime disaster in the Dominican Republic. All this is framed in the context of the Caribbean, where the historical exploitation of nature intersects with the potentiality of this insular space to question the logics of disaster capitalism and imagine dissident and alternative ways of experiencing the body, sexuality, and the defense of the environment.

The Greek Archipelago: A Unique Representative Case-Study of Differential Legal Status and of Double Insularity

Greece’s insular space results into the birth of a unique case of double insularity in Europe where smaller islands act as satellites of bigger ones and depend upon them much more than on the mainland. Adoption of laws, public policies, the organization of public administration and the issue of administrative acts take into account this condition. The implementation of the principle of insularity is analyzed and clarified through two case-studies, law 4361/2016 on the “Regulation of issues concerning the transfers of soldiers, personnel care and other provisions” as well as law 4551/2018 on the “Implementation mechanism, state supervision, general conditions for the implementation of the transport equivalent. Insularity should not be considered as a reason for providing unjustifiable rights and privileges, but as a principle which should be taken into consideration and respected by the legislator and the administration in order to overcome the vulnerability of the islanders and counterbalance for the harsh conditions suffered due to geographic isolation.

Contrasting Patterns of Movement across Life Stages in an Insular Iguana Population

West Indian rock iguanas (genus Cyclura) represent the most endangered group of lizards in the world, with most taxa restricted to few or single islands. In addition to distribution and availability of resources, factors influencing optimal use of insular space in these large vertebrates may include a combination of social, ontogenetic, and long-term demographic factors. Life stage-specific dispersal and habitat use patterns have previously been characterized in Cyclura, but assessments across the lifespan are lacking. This study evaluates shifting patterns of movement in a single taxon, Cyclura nubila caymanensis. We used mark–recapture and radio tracking simultaneously to assess age- and sex-dependent variation in spatial ecology. Evidence for prolonged site fidelity among adults was consistent with territoriality-modulating space use in this long-lived taxon. Over 5–10 yr, some females were never resighted or recaptured outside of an 80-m perimeter. A notable exception was that gravid females migrated 1.17 ± 0.91 km to utilize coastal areas during the nesting season. In contrast, neonates dispersed farther (2.32 ± 2.26 km) and their trajectories were often nonlinear. Radio-tracked brother–sister pairs exhibited no tendency to disperse together during their first 4 wk, settling into final known locations at pairwise distances of 2.16 ± 1.74 km. Annual net displacement remained high over the first 1–3 yr of life. Our data are consistent with studies of related taxa wherein individual spatial requirements vary with population density and island size. Notably, panmixis of small island iguana populations appears largely driven by pre-reproductive movements.

Repurposing peroxisomes for microbial synthesis for biomolecules.

Microbial synthesis represents an alternative approach for the sustainable production of chemicals, fuels, and medicines. However, construction of biosynthetic pathways always suffers from side reactions, toxicity of intermediates, or low efficiency of substrate channeling. Subcellular compartmentalization may contribute to a more efficient production of target products by reducing side reactions and toxic effects within a compact insular space. The peroxisome, a type of organelle that is involved in catabolism of fatty acids and reactive oxygen species, has attracted a great deal of attention in the construction of eukaryotic cell factories with little impact on essential cellular function. In this chapter, we will systematically review recent advances in peroxisomal compartmentalization for microbial production of valuable biomolecules. Additionally, detailed experimental designs and protocols are also described. We hope a comprehensive understanding of peroxisomes will promote their application in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology.

Menuju Urbanisasi Pulau Kecil: Produksi Ruang Abstrak dan Perampasan

<p class="ISI-Paragraf"><span lang="EN-US">Agrarian conflict in Pari Island of Seribu Islands, Jakarta has been undergoing for more than twenty years. The conflict involves main parties, in which the locals are diametrically opposed to local government-backed tourist corporations. This inductive qualitative study explores the historical information of the conflict and constructs a theoretical proposition at the mezzo level concerning the cause of this conflict by using an analytical tool from Lefebvre's concept of "production of space" and "accumulation by dispossession" by Harvey. The purpose of this study is to obtain a theoretical explanation at the intermediate level on the relation between abstract space production, dispossession and rural urbanization in favor of the tourism industry. The result shows, the production of abstract spaces, dispossession and urbanization located in a linear path for the production of capital space that turn social space into a space of capital accumulation, transforms agrarian resources into commodities and creates landless free labor for the future modern tourist industry. This study also shows that imbalanced contestation of spatial conflicts in Pari Island potentially marginalize local communities, furthermore, converting insular space into exclusively private-based industries is inappropriate because corporation has geographically expansive tendencies. Thus, policy makers are advised to support the life of differential spaces so that the diversity and particularity that exist in Pari Island can live together. It is this action that will overcome the damage caused by the production of abstract spaces and dispossession in the past and become the solution to the agrarian conflict in Pari Island.</span></p>

Quando a violência colonial ecoa nas folhas da floresta e nas páginas literárias: 'Mayombe', de Pepetela

Partindo das relações entre literatura e espaço, a proposta deste artigo é analisar a representação da natureza no romance Mayombe, de Pepetela, escrito na década de setenta do século XX, quando Angola era ainda colônia de Portugal. Destaca-se na obra a relação entre a floresta como espaço insular, de trincheira e escudo, em contraposição ao espaço colonial, representado na narrativa pela presença dos tugas, soldados portugueses a serviço de Salazar em Angola.---DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/abriluff.2018n20a479

Multiplier effects under a disaggregate economic base model

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the multiplier effects of economic activities in the local economy of Greek non-metropolitan prefectures at NUTS3 level according to the Eurostat classification.Design/methodology/approachA disaggregate economic base model using OLS regression with clustered standard errors is implemented in 49 non-metropolitan prefectures and 17 economic activities for 2000 and 2012. The specific model indicates a clear picture of multiplier effects of economic activities among the prefectures as it has a similar logic to the input-output analysis while bearing in mind the spatial effects among prefectures. The specific model has not applied for testing base multipliers in the Greek economy according to the academic literature.FindingsNon-traditional export-oriented activities play a significant role in the economic growth of the non-metropolitan prefectures. Their multiplier effects are higher than the traditional basic activities. Especially, some of these activities indicate strong shifts on specific local activities, which tend to be the significant multiplier effects on the overall local economy. Of course, the existence of agglomeration economies plays a considerable role in non-metropolitan prefectures with a significant population and non-metropolitan prefectures which are in insular space or belong to the perimetric and interior mountainous space, which are sparsely populated.Originality/valueThe specific model applies at the NUTS3 level, according to the Eurostat classification. Also, the model indicates that the multiplier effects come from non-traditional export activities, such as, information-communication, arts entertainment, health services, professional support services and real estate in the overall local economy. Finally, the spatial correlation influences the sectoral multipliers.

Mali hrvatski otoci – radno-rezidencijalni prostor i/ili prostor odmora i rekreacije

The paper discusses modern geographic processes on Croatian small inhabited islands. For centuries, Croatian small islands have been continuously inhabited area characterized by different social and economic activities. However, in the last several decades, the islands have experienced a severe depopulation, and on the other hand, the interest for occasional use of that attractive insular space for recreational purposes increased. Consequently, the basic insular functions have changed, which, among other things, contributes to changes of insular landscape and to the changed role of small islands in regional socio-economic systems.

Residential Tourism and Economic Migration: Both Sides of the Same Population Movement on the Greek Islands of Cyclades in the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

From the mid 1960s till now, a smaller population movement has materialized in the Mediterranean basin, involving western nationals who wish to stay on an island for a longer period. These population groups, originating mainly from western Europe and secondly from North America, want to share their yearly stay between their home country and one or several desirable places for a long term; this phenomenon was called ‘residential tourism’. Also, during the 1990s and after, a new movement of foreigners began to take place in Greece; a large number of economic migrants came in the beginning from the countries of the previous eastern socialist Europe and after from Asian and African war zones, aiming to find work in hard conditions. As an outcome, the insular space of the Aegean Sea and especially the Cyclades complex received a significant part of this double migratory flow. Aims of the paper are first to examine the new forms of population movements in Cyclades and secondly to focus the search in the most touristic of them, that is in Mykonos, Santorini and Paros.

The Coastal Shipping Network in Greek Insular Space: Reorganising it Towards a “Hub and Spoke” System Using Matrices of Flows and Connectivity Matrices

This paper is based on the analysis of interinsular relations that have been shaped according to the existing coastal shipping network in the Greek insular space. It tries to contribute to the effort that was overwhelmed in the past few years for a more systematic investigation of the differentiation of the existing linear model of the coastal shipping network, with its modification into a “hub and spoke” model. The methods of analysis are based on the use of matrices of flows (coastal shipping origin-destination) and connectivity matrices, in which the direct connections are initially taken into consideration followed by the indirect ones between the islands. The insular area of the Kyklades prefecture in the Aegean Sea is the case study. The possible cohesive territorial units in the insular space of Kyklades, as well as the attainable nodal ports that may function in these units, are defined.

Regional Development Strategy in Insular Space

The formulation of a specific regional development strategy for insular areas has attracted strong interest in recent years. Despite efforts so far, no specific strategy for the development of insular space exists. This is the focus point of the present paper, which is based on a survey of policy measures for the Greek insular regions, covering the framework of regional and territorial planning since 2000. The paper tries to search for a particular insular development strategy, with the definition of the sector-based and territorial priorities, the formulation of strategic objectives, and the setting of guidelines for interventions.

Archipelagoes: Insular Fictions from Chivalric Romance to the Novel (review)

Reviewed by: Archipelagoes: Insular Fictions from Chivalric Romance to the Novel Daniel Nemser Keywords Medieval, Fiction, Novel, Chivalry, Romance, Isolario, Cartography, Maps, Space, Island, Ínsula, Insularity, Amadís, Cervantes, Quijote, Barataria, Colonialism Simone Pinet. Archipelagoes: Insular Fictions from Chivalric Romance to the Novel. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2011. 272 pp. Simone Pinet’s new book offers an innovative take on the relationship between space and fiction by mapping the uses of islands in medieval and early [End Page 247] modern literature and cartography. Her interest lies primarily in two genres, the book of chivalry and the isolario or book of islands, which, she argues, follow parallel historical trajectories: “they emerge, develop, and fade into history at almost exactly the same time” (xi). Beyond tracing representations of islands over time, Pinet argues convincingly that insular space constitutes a sort of bridge that arises in response to a crisis regarding the representation of truth and enables the transition to modern forms of fiction. Inaugurated in the late fifteenth century in what she calls an “insular turn,” this island form is eventually abstracted and transformed into metaphor by the beginning of the seventeenth century with the emergence of modern literary and cartographic forms—the novel and the atlas. Pinet’s medievalist roots are evident in the enjoyment with which she engages in close readings of the Amadís de Gaula, but Archipelagoes crosses both disciplinary and chronological boundaries. Drawing on the work of theorists of space like Michel de Certeau and especially Henri Lefebvre, she strategically privileges space over time in order to destabilize the premodern/modern divide, complicating standard histories of the novel (which often begin, tellingly, with an insular fiction by Daniel Defoe). For Pinet, the rise of the island in the late medieval period is already tied to an “uncommonly ‘modern”’ treatment of space (xxviii). The first two chapters offer historical introductions to the emergence of the island in medieval literature and cartography. Tracing the circulation of medieval romance from the British Arthurian texts to the Iberian Peninsula through translation and appropriation, chapter one examines the trajectory sketched out concisely in its title: “Forest to Island.” Romance is characterized by adventure, which for its part is tied to particular spatial forms. Leaving the court, the locus of civilization, the knight necessarily embarks on a quest that takes him into the space of unpredictability, savagery, and, most importantly, the marvelous. What changes between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, according to Pinet, is the location of the marvelous, which shifts from the dense and flourishing forests of the Arthurian cycle to the open yet threatening seascape, where coastlines and eventually insular spaces begin to materialize in the worlds generated in its Iberian counterparts. Tied to changing material and ecological conditions, the taming of the forest pushes the search for adventure out to sea. Chapter two, “Islands and Maps,” turns to the history of cartography, which, Pinet argues, “has a direct relationship with the development of the romance” (30). Medieval cartography evinces a clear relationship between map and language, image and narration. The argument is not that maps can or should be read as texts—this is no longer a controversial point—but that the history of cartography can and should be read alongside and indeed as part of the history of fiction. The emergence of the isolario in the fifteenth century coincides with the “insular turn” in chivalric romance laid out in the previous chapter. As island books became increasingly popular, new technologies related to mapping and printing were incorporated into and helped consolidate the genre. By collecting multiple islands under a single cover and situating them in spatial and textual relation to each other, the isolario facilitates totalizing representations of [End Page 248] insular space while at the same time enabling the imaginative work of travel from island to island, experience to experience. The following two chapters focus on two canonical works of Spanish literature proper. This is where the most detailed textual analysis takes place, and Pinet’s treatment of the Amadís de Gaula is especially illuminating. In chapter three, “Adventure and Archipelago,” Pinet zooms in on three insular episodes that appear in the Amadís, the first...

Géographie et imaginaire insulaire au Moyen Âge, d’Isidore de Séville à Jean de Mandeville

In medieval geography – not a science at this time, but rather a collection of geographical data mostly borrowed from Antiquity –, the island appears as a peculiar feature of the mappa mundi, a geographical object equally central and peripheral, ancient and new, unique and endlessly reproducible, and both a testimony of history and a receptacle of fantasy. The first part of this paper provides an overview of the way insular space is depicted in a variety of texts representative of geographical knowledge in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, like encyclopedias and travel narratives, with a brief account of medieval maps and special reference to the marvels of the East. The second part focusses on Jean de Mandeville’s Livre (1356), which enjoyed an extraordinary success up until the end of the Middle Ages, and even further. At the same time travel narratives and encyclopaedia, Mandeville’s text is especially interesting for the way it puts old geographical knowledge into new perspectives, a process where (oriental) islands play an important role.

Of Hubs and Hinterlands: Cyprus as an Insular Space of Overlapping Diasporas

This paper uses the metaphor of diasporic hubs and hinterlands to document and analyse the various diasporic formations that overlap and encounter each other on the divided island of Cyprus. After a review of the various ways that islands interface with migration processes and some essential historical and statistical background on Cyprus and its population, the paper considers a number of migrations/diasporas that are based on or affect the island. They include the emigration from the diasporic hub of Cyprus during the 1950s-1970s; return migration, both of the original emigrants and their descendants; the British military/colonial settlement of Cyprus; retirees and ‘lifestyle migrants’; and various categories of recent immigrants, for whom Cyprus is a diasporic hinterland. We draw both similarities and differences between migratory dynamics in the northern, Turkish Cypriot part of the island and the southern, Greek Cypriot part. In the final part of the paper we describe recent fieldwork on various spaces of inter-diasporic encounter in Cyprus.

Notes on Shame and Failure: Portrait/s of Queer Puerto Ricans

Notes on Shame and Failure: Portrait/s of Queer Puerto Ricans Irune del Río Gabiola (bio) As constitutive of Puerto Rican national identity, shame and failure have structured cultural narratives of the insular geography. Ingrained in a history of colonialism and subjugation, Puerto Rico has traditionally been narrated as a vulnerable and emasculated nation due precisely to the island’s inability for independence, autonomy and self-sufficiency. This national conceptualization can be traced throughout the works of 19th- and 20th-century intellectuals such as Salvador Brau, Antonio Pedreira or René Marqués, among others, who articulate the contours of the island as geographically inefficient and morally deprived. Insularismo: ensayos de interpretación puertorriqueña (Pedreira) and El puertorriqueño dócil y otros ensayos (Marqués) are but two examples of how depictions of the history of the island have emphasized insufficiencies, justifying therefore the current cultural and economic inferiority and reflecting a dysfunctional reality. In addition to regionally determined conditions that isolate the insular space and that reinforce an absence of work ethics, race has played a putative role in contributing to negative and defective representations of Puerto Rican culture. Once conceived as the root of shame, the figure of the jíbaro gradually transcended racial impurity, and backwardness. While these primordial elements derived from centuries of slavery, and while colonial imaginations under the Spanish regime still existed, the stigma of the jíbaro was displaced as [End Page 31] the Afro-Puertorrican collective became the embodiment of shame and failure. Along with groups embodying racial marginality, sexual minorities and migrants also became targets of social, cultural and economic exclusion. In overcoming traditional narratives invested in negativity, my purpose in this essay is to explore how subaltern bodies reappropriate conventional discourses of shame and failure effectively challenging homogeneous narratives of nation formation. Consequently, these bodies convey a wide range of queer/racial constellations that are part and parcel of puertorriqueñidad in a transnational and diasporic scenario. In so doing, I will examine how potential articulations of shame and failure are successfully deployed throughout the film Brincando el charco produced by Frances Negrón-Muntaner in 1994 and how reap-propriating shame and failure facilitates alternative experiences of national identity. In her 1999 article on the film “When I was a Puerto Rican Lesbian,” Negrón-Muntaner emphasizes her desire to portray more issues than the materialization of a possible lesbian romance in the diaspora as an effect of family and national rejection. Her project, in addition to being political, encompasses a myriad of marginal bodies through which Claudia—the main protagonist—identifies herself: To constitute a specifically lesbian Puerto Rican location, the film goes through the bodies of others: heterosexual black Puerto Rican women, African Americans, gay Puerto Rican men. More important, the processes of traveling toward or reaching the other sets a group of lesbian identifications in motion and makes a specifically Puerto Rican queer location possible. (513) By incorporating historical losses and cultural representations at the limits of hegemonic paradigms, she carries on the task of filming, photographing and interviewing Puerto Rican diasporic subjects that have liminaly and painfully constituted puertorriqueñidad as subalterns. In this way, Claudia creates a postmodern archive that highlights disruptions, shame, failure and re/foundations of identity at the core of transnational reconfigurations that inevitably underscore the impossibility of representing a whole and unique vision of history. Her engagement in a romance that moves beyond the exclusivity of the couple by emphasizing its relation to other individuals, re/signifies family, community and most importantly the intricacies of history making. In this sense, shame and failure as tropes of identity can be used “to re-evaluate how we are positioned in relation to the past and to rethink how we wish to live in proximity to others” and to revisit national projects undoing hegemonic discourses (Probyn xiv). In order to better comprehend the interventions and contributions of these concepts, I will carefully delve into theoretical studies done by scholars such as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Elspeth Probyn and Judith Halberstam on shame and failure to later examine how intellectuals from Puerto Rico have resignified them within a local...