Publications by Adam Grydehoj
Folk, Knowledge, Place, 2024
Studies of culture, history, literature, and art can provide insight into our multiple senses of ... more 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 natural phenomena can teach us about how people spatialise and make homes in the world. Culture, lifeworlds, and place can be mutually constitutive, and knowledge is situated. In this paper, the coeditors-in-chief of 'Folk, Knowledge, Place' journal introduce ourselves and show how our collective work has demonstrated the need for this journal. We then discuss theoretical frameworks; introduce our approach to researching in-between between disciplines, places, and theories; and present how the journal is published.
International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 2024
Islands have come to be seen as a distinct object of disaster risk and climate change policy and ... more 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 perspective toward the SFDRR, discussing obstacles to the framework's implementation in island contexts. Focus is placed on two interrelated sets of issues: (1) problematic aspects of the concepts of "development" as it is applied to islands (particularly in the SIDS category); and (2) international cooperation, militarism, and geopolitics. The study found that although island societies can benefit from the attention brought to them by the SFDRR, the framework engages in rhetoric that may limit island possibilities and potentials while distracting from more fundamental changes that should be made by other state and non-state actors.
Folk, Knowledge, Place, 2024
This paper explores ethical pitfalls and potential harms that arise in autoethnography. I use evo... more 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 the basis of these reflections, I discuss problems concerning the impossibility of acquiring free consent and the potential for autoethnography to produce and reproduce harms. I analyse these problems as deriving from the fact that in autoethnography, the researcher and the research subject are the same person. I give suggestions for ways of mitigating harm and conclude by advancing the need for better appreciation of ethical treatment of the autoethnographic subject.
Folk, Knowledge, Place, 2024
This paper asks how researchers can fruitfully and respectfully approach traditions of the sacred... more 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-centred and relational approach to religion, belief, and the supernatural while understanding the sacred in terms of excess. The paper argues that reflexive, autoethnographic openness to experiences with the sacred can help researchers understand how people are influenced by the sacred and how this influence is productive of culture, society, and place. Through the autoethnographic study at the heart of this paper, the author experiences Mazu (who transcends folklore, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism) as a complex and multifaceted figure, combining a young woman, a tutelary deity, and the imperial Tianhou (Queen of Heaven). The author's interactions with Mazu prompt thoughts about home and belonging, highlighting subjectivity and divine agency in the experience of the sacred.
Shima, 2023
Islands are associated with both high levels of autonomous status and sovereign status on the one... more 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. Jeju is a self-governing province and subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ). Its autonomy is rooted in contested understandings of Jeju natives as an Indigenous people, distinct from the people of the Korean Peninsula. In practice, however, Jeju's autonomy is used as a tool for containing a special economic zone (SEZ) aimed at attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to South Korea as a whole. By taking an island studies approach, this paper shows how Jeju's ostensible Indigenous autonomy has been compromised by the island's use as an exceptional space crafted in conscious relation to the mainland. Key governance mechanisms on Jeju do not prioritise Indigenous rights. Studies of island political and economic development require careful analysis of how diverse political and economic processes are influenced by islandness itself.
Island Studies Journal, 2024
As greater attention has been paid to island research in China, interactions between Chinese and ... more 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 China' perspective, informed by selected Chinese traditions of thinking about islands and the sea, that captures the role islands have played and continue to play in Chinese culture. Drawing upon Fei Xiaotong's reflexive concept of 'cultural self-consciousness', we consider the cultural history of island China, including conceptual tensions between the binaries of continent/island and center/periphery, conceptions of land dwellers and water dwellers, the role of islands as hubs of cultural transmission, and the formation of maritime societies across East and Southeast Asia. We also argue that this cultural history ought to influence island governance in China today.
Area, 2023
Despite considerable research into special economic zones (SEZs) and Island Studies, islands and ... more 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 small islands, and many island economies function similarly to SEZs. Defining SEZs as ‘bounded spaces of economic and regulatory exception’, this paper considers deregulated industrial zones and exclusively branded smart cities and eco-cities, as well as island SEZs designed for external benefit and for local benefit. The study shows that spatial processes of containment and exclusion are supported by islands and are especially useful for crafting SEZs, which may specialise in industries such as financial services, manufacturing, gaming, port services and high-end tourism. Nevertheless, SEZ processes often create negative social, economic and environmental impacts. Island SEZs developed for external interest often seek to contain harm within islands or to exclude unfavourable factors, resulting in a spatial mismatch of harms and benefits. Island SEZs developed for local interest struggle to externalise harms, creating problems for island populations. The paper argues for the value of understanding islands and SEZs together, without exceptionalising them.
Island Studies Journal, 2023
This editorial conclusion looks back on how Island Studies Journal has developed from its start i... more 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 numerous loosely connected movements. There is no longer a clearly identifiable 'mainstream' island studies and no longer a canon of crucial island studies researchers. Island studies journals and scholars are now coming from and writing from a great diversity of locations and positions. The plurality of island studies means there is room in the field for everyone.
Island Studies Journal, 2023
This paper discusses tensions in journal editing and management, particularly for non-fee chargin... more 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 or article processing charges (APCs), every published paper presents additional costs. Whereas commercially published journals depend upon substantial free academic labour, unfunded or underfunded diamond open access journals depend upon both substantial free academic labour and free non-academic labour. This encourages editors to be selective about the kinds of submissions on which they spend their time. The importance of maintaining a journal's prestige, as measured through inclusion in bibliometric indices, incentivises further selectivity. Different kinds of papers are suitable for different kinds of journals. Even publications like Island Studies Journal that are radically accessible to authors and readers in diverse financial circumstances must make difficult choices when deciding what material to publish.
Learned Publishing, 2023
Calls to decolonise academia are increasing, yet progress has been halting, including in academic... more 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 crosstabulation analysis of the 175 articles published in Island Studies Journal between January 2017 and October 2022, attending to characteristics of authors, articles, regions, branches of science, and impact. We find that coloniality and the West/non-West divide remain prevalent in the journal, with differences in the kinds of research scholars from different regions can get published and the kinds of impact their articles make. Western scholarly norms are reproduced and enforced even in a journal that seeks to support antiracism and decolonization. We discuss the editorial tensions involved in seeking to simultaneously increase opportunities for individual intersectionally marginalized scholars while challenging colonial power structures.
Political Geography, 2022
The Pearl River Delta in South China is today associated with one of the world's largest megaregi... more 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, starting in precolonial times in which the Chinese population saw the area as composed of islands and waterways, moving through the period when colonial powers saw the area as a pathway up from the colonial island enclaves of Hong Kong and Macao and into China's interior, and ending in the Reform and Opening Up era when the modern Chinese state has implemented a succession of planning-oriented conceptions of the region. As the area has moved conceptually from a world of islands to a delta and now to the Greater Bay Area, perceptions about what the area means have changed as well. From a position in urban island studies and critical reflexivity, this paper troubles taken-for-granted colonial, technocratic, and governmental visions and regionalisations, focusing on how physical and cultural geographies develop in tandem. The notion of the interstitial island is used to help understand how the Pearl River Delta's island geography has influenced the area's conceptual development.
Island Studies Journal, 2022
Although the field of island studies has from the start regarded itself as a defender of islands ... more 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? The paper discusses problems such as tokenism and forced inclusions, denial and circumscription of expertise, and onto-epistemological discrimination and hegemony within island studies. Ultimately, the paper advances the need for critical reflexivity and decolonial methodology within island studies, for pluralistic approaches to inclusivity and recognition of epistemic differences.
Okinawan Journal of Island Studies, 2021
Island Studies Journal, 2021
Greenland is a strongly autonomous subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ) within the Kingdom of D... more 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 political cleavages that do not follow left-right divides. Even though Greenland possesses a strongly multiparty system, supported by elections involving party-list proportional representation within a single multimember constituency, a single political party, Siumut, has led the government for all but a brief period since the advent of Greenlandic autonomy in 1979. By considering Greenland's political ecosystem, spatially and personally conditioned aspects of voter behaviour, and coalition-building processes, paying particular attention to the 24 April 2018 parliamentary elections, we argue that it is inappropriate to study Greenland as a monolithic political unit or to draw oversimplified analogies with party politics from large state Western liberal democracies. Instead, Greenlandic politics must be understood in relation to the island territory's particular historical, geographical, and societal characteristics as well as its electoral system.
Journal of Marine and Island Cultures, 2020
Islands and archipelagos are exceptionally dependent on the nature of their transport infrastruct... more 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 xed links such as bridges and tunnels on the one hand and waterborne transport such as ferries on the other. The present paper uses the case of Zhoushan Archipelago (Zhejiang Province, China) to challenge this perception of xed links and waterborne transport as inherently con ictual by showing how these distinct modes of cross-sea transport have complemented one another and fundamentally altered archipelagic mobilities. We show that even transformative transport infrastructures do not necessarily simply replace existing infrastructures but may instead add to the complexity of the local transport network. In Zhoushan Archipelago, a vast network of new and future inter-island and island-mainland road and rail bridges and tunnels are altering local industry and society as well as the relationship between the archipelago and the mainland, yet ferries remain important for transport between islands and between certain islands and the mainland. We argue that it is fruitful to consider the potential complementarity of different kinds of cross-sea transport links.
Political Geography, 2021
Island peoples around the world remain entangled in colonial processes. Western and metropolitan ... more 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 threat and warnings of economic, environmental, demographic, and military disaster to maintain and deepen colonial influence in former colonies, with special focus on four island states and territories: Guåhan/Guam in Oceania, Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland in the Arctic, Okinawa in East Asia, and Jamaica in the Caribbean. We undertake this investigation as a means of practicing decolonial political geography, collaborating as a group of scholars from around the world and drawing upon diverse epistemologies and experiences to inform collaborative research and writing. Due to the complexities we have confronted in our efforts to think outside coloniality, this paper foregrounds our decolonial methodology and process, even as we respect our empirical findings.
BA Project, The Evergreen State College, 2006
Island Studies Journal, 2020
This paper analyses the ancient Maritime Silk Road through a relational island studies approach. ... more 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 China's Guangdong Province and the city of Guangzhou, we envision a millennia-long 'Silk Road Archipelago' encompassing island cities and island territories stretching across East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and East Africa. Bearing in mind the complex movements of peoples, places, and processes involved, we conceptualise the ancient Maritime Silk Road as an uncentred network of archipelagic relation. This conceptualisation of the ancient Maritime Silk Road as a vast archipelago can have relevance for our understanding of China's present-day promotion of a 21 st-Century Maritime Silk Road as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. We ultimately argue against forcing the Maritime Silk Road concept within a binary perspective of essentialised East-West conflict or hierarchical relations and instead argue for the value of a nuanced understanding of relationality.
Island Studies Journal, 2020
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a project conceptualized and developed by the Chinese state, ... more 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 sustainable development within which issues related to climate change sit. A great many small island states and territories are participating in the BRI, particularly in its constituent 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. However, the BRI has not yet placed sufficient focus on climate change adaptation or issues specific to small islands. Furthermore, the BRI's conceptual basis in rhetoric of mutual dependence and a community of common destiny have not always been evident in the individual activities that have been carried out within the BRI. If the BRI's goals are to be taken seriously, it must do more to focus on the needs and perspectives of island communities, particularly with regard to climate change adaptation. This paper presents a framework for action to strengthen the BRI's approach to islands and climate change adaptation in terms of information sharing, scientific and technological cooperation, financial support, and capacity building within a global governance framework.
Island Studies Journal, 2020
The concept behind the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; formerly 'One Belt, One Road') began to tak... more 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 states, territories, and cities-from the South Pacific to the Arctic, from East Africa to the Caribbean, from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Islands and archipelagos are particularly prominent in the BRI's constituent 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) and Polar Silk Road or Ice Silk Road projects, but little scholarly attention has been paid to how the BRI relates to islands per se. This special section of Island Studies Journal includes nine papers on islands and the BRI, concerning such diverse topics as geopolitics, international law and territorial disputes, sustainability and climate change adaptation, international relations of autonomous island territories, development of outer island communities, tourism and trade, and relational understandings of archipelagic networks. Taken together, these papers present both opportunities and risks, challenges and ways forward for the BRI and how this project may impact both China and island and archipelago states and territories.
Uploads
Publications by Adam Grydehoj