The historical geography of islands Introduction: rethinking islands

The introduction to this special issue of five essays on the historical geography of islands considers the growing interdisciplinary interest in the material and metaphorical condition of islands. It explores how the physical and literal attributes of islands have a range of understandings such as the catalytic role of islands in shaping the modern disciplines of social anthropology and evolutionary biology. Thereafter, the Falkland Islands are used to illustrate how the complex interplay of physical and metaphorical meanings have profound implications for territorial nationalism in this case the South West Atlantic. Long viewed as an abstract territorial space, the history and geography of the Falklands reveals how islands should never be seen as simple or straightforward. The final section of this introduction details the five contributions and highlights how each author not only explores the geographical and cultural diversity of islands but also traces some of the implications for human understandings of these remarkable environments.     

The uncertain state of islands: national identity and the discourse of islands in nineteenth-century Britain and Greece

This paper explores some of the ways in which the island was mapped into the British and Greek national imaginaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From at least the seventeenth century the island, like the body, served as a model for the organisation of knowledge. The island functioned as an ideal body politic, in which political and cultural boundaries were congruent and readily defensible from invasion. In politically and geographically fragmented states the island became an important topos for resolving the problematic relations between nation and state, and between local knowledge and national unity. During the nineteenth century, national cultures were increasingly construed as autonomous, self-sustaining island spaces set apart from other communities beyond. From the second half of the century attention was also paid to those authentic ‘islands’ located within the nation-state. In this expanded topographical definition, the ‘island’ came to signify an identifiably different, contained and stable habitat. A relationship was sustained between these distinct spaces within the nation-state and the island as it was represented in biogeographical and evolutionary writings as a site for observing preserved life forms and diversification. Regional studies, for example, celebrated the survival of an indigenous national culture in geographically confined pockets. Emerging disciplines, such as folklore, sought to protect these spaces from the onslaught of a cosmopolitan modernity that threatened to overwhelm them. The island in this sense was a space in which ‘native’ customs might be preserved and, at the same time, a space in which potentially destructive, atavistic forces might be controlled and ultimately domesticated. It is here that the island emerges as an ambivalent, problematic place: at once a refuge and a prison, a place of innocent childhood adventure and of beastly aggression. Focusing on Britain and Greece as comparative case studies, the paper explores how this concern for internal ‘islands’ fed into and was reciprocally influenced by colonial encounters with ‘exotic’ island cultures.     

像鸟儿在西藏天空自由滑翔

最好的飞行场地,肯定要有很好的气流条件、绝美的风景,以及具有一定挑战性的飞行路线,这才能最大的体现滑翔伞飞行的魅力。西藏就属于这样的地方。滑翔伞是世界上最轻便的飞行器,凭借气流,滑翔伞可以盘高飞远。目前滑翔伞飞行直线距离世界纪录为588.27公里,盘升高度世界纪录为8157米。有着世界屋脊之称的西藏,对滑翔伞飞行爱好者来讲自然有着非凡的魅力。而美丽的圣湖——羊卓雍措(以下简称羊湖),则是在西藏滑翔的首选之地。     

1903年12月17日 人类第一次飞上天空

<正>题记:"我要飞得更高,狂风一样舞蹈挣脱怀抱;我要飞得更高,翅膀卷起风暴心生呼啸",当第一架飞机成功启航飞向天空,"我要飞得更高"便不再是梦,而我们外出旅游也因此变得更加轻松便捷。     

The sky is the limit: reconstructing physical geography from an aerial perspective

In an era of rapid geographical data acquisition, interpretations of remote sensing products are an integral part of many undergraduate geography degree schemes but there are fewer opportunities for collection and processing of primary remote sensing data. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide a relatively inexpensive opportunity to introduce the principles and practice of airborne remote sensing into field courses, enabling students to learn about image acquisition, data processing and interpretation of derived products. Two case studies illustrate how a low-cost “DJI Phantom Vision+” UAV can be used by students to acquire images that can be processed using Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry software. Results from a student questionnaire and analysis of assessed student reports showed that using UAVs enhanced student engagement and equipped them with data processing skills. The derivation of bespoke orthophotos and Digital Elevation Models has the potential to provide students with opportunities to gain insight into various remote sensing data quality issues, although additional training is required to maximize this potential. Recognition of the successes and limitations of this teaching intervention provides scope for improving future UAV exercises. UAVs are enabling both a reconstruction of how we measure the Earth’s surface and a reconstruction of how students do fieldwork.     

The beginning of ideology: Consciousness and society in the French reformation

David Lewis presented Convention as an alternative to the conventionalism characteristic of early-twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Rudolf Carnap is well known for suggesting the arbitrariness of any particular linguistic convention for engaging in scientific inquiry. Analytic truths are self-consistent, and are not checked against empirical facts to ascertain their veracity. In keeping with the logical positivists before him, Lewis concludes that linguistic communication is conventional. However, despite his firm allegiance to conventions underlying not just languages but also social customs, he pioneered the view that convening need not require any active agreement to participate. Lewis proposed that conventions arise from “an exchange of manifestations of a propensity to conform to a regularity” (87–8).

In reasserting the conventional quality of languages and other practices resting on mutual expectations, Lewis comfortably works within the analytic tradition. Yet he also deviates from his predecessors because his conventionalist approach is comprehensively grounded in instrumentalism. Lewis adopts an extension of David Hume's desire-belief psychology articulated in rational choice theory. He develops his philosophy of convention relying on the highly formal mid-twentieth-century expected utility and game theories. This attempt to account for language and social customs wholly in terms of instrumental rationality has the implication of reducing normativity to preference satisfaction. Lewis’ approach continues in the trend of undermining normative political philosophy because institutions and practices arise spontaneously, without the deliberate involvement of agents. Perhaps Lewis’ Convention is best seen as a resurgent form of analytic philosophy, characterized by “a style of argument, hostility to [ambitious] metaphysics, focus on language, and the dominance of logic and formalization” that solves the dilemma of “combining the analytic inheritance…with normative concerns” by reducing normativity to individuals’ preference fulfillment consistent with the axioms of rational choice.