Flows and boundaries: small island discourses and the challenge of sustainability, community and local environments

ABSTRACT Islands (also islets, isles)—paradoxical spaces: absolute entities surrounded by water but not large enough to be a continent, territories, territorial; relational spaces archipelagos, (inter)dependent, identifiable; relative spaces bounded but porous; isolated, connected, colonized, postcolonial; redolent of the performative imaginary; vulnerable to linguistic, cultural, environmental change; robust and able to absorb and modify; placed in regions, (part of) nation states and global life; paradisiacal, utopian and dystopian, tourist meccas, ecological refugia; frames within which interdisciplinary scholarship and dialogue can be constituted and deployed … The Context Accompanied by a commentary and numerous poems by island authors, this Feature Issue advances an exploration of sustainability, community and local environments in Australia’s smallest and only island state, Tasmania. Here, sustainability refers to a contingent and contextual form of praxis in which integration, equity, precaution, participation, the maintenance of diversity and continual improvement are foundational principles. It is conceived as crucial to quality of life in communities (be they groups of people in place or aligned by interest) and to the well-being of local environments.