Latest from the Blog
Based on Epeli Hau’ofa vision in “Our sea of islands”, SIDS possess infinite power. But why are they still not wealthy yet?
In the famous article “Our Sea of Islands”, Epeli Hau’ofa solidly critiqued Western colonialism in the 19th Century for confining the Pacific Islands in the notion of isolated individual dots in a far sea, and that fatal description about these geographies and their people then became a ubiquitous stereotype in Western culture for centuries. This […]
LISTENING FOR THE DEAD BELLS – MARIAN BRUCE
This book came to my attention when Professor Laurie brought it in one of her lecture classes last semester. I was tempted to read it because of its scary yet attractive title referring to the “death” and the “island.” At that time, we discussed an island’s theme as a mysterious space makes inspirations of a […]
Covid-19: A Shock for Human Beings, But A Grace Period For Small Island Development States’ Tourism Innovations
The term “Small Island Development States” or SIDS refers to those islands operated on own autonomous institutions in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans (UNESCO). This group is reputable for beautiful sceneries, islands lure in mainlanders’ eye and dedication to standing up on the global climate change alerts by determinedly aligning […]
Music at The Manse – An Island’s Old Flavour
The Island’s Old Flavour When I first came to the island last summer, it flourished with the most beautiful island’s lure that one mainlander like myself could expect, an island paradise. There are stunning beaches, magnificent landscape views of hills and farms, lovely colonial-style old towns, and a vacation-like chilling atmosphere all around. I had […]
A WALK ON THE EDGE
There is for virtually everyone a deep association with and consciousness of the places where we were born and grew up, where we live now, or where we have had particularly moving experiences. This association seems to constitute a vital source of both individual and cultural identity and security, a point of departure from which […]
The stories of resilience from seven communities in the Indonesian archipelago
Islands are commonly characterized as small, bounded, and isolated in people’s perceptions because of their physical shapes and spirit. These opinions are continuously creating an error illusion of islands being merely vulnerable objects in confrontation with any Earth’s events in the economy, society, and environment. For instance, people are susceptible to the hypothesis that an […]
The Illustration of “Small Is Beautiful” with The Amish Culture
While exploring the Islandness imagination of smallness and isolation, I think about a famous book from Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Matter, published in 1973. At the same time, I also discovered an ethnic group, call “the Amish”, whose culture represents full traits of Islandness and can […]
ISLAND STUDIES’ASPIRATION AS A CONTEMPORARY ART
Introduction In 2009, I graduated from Hospitality and Tourism school in Bangkok and started a career in this field. For a decade, I concentrated on immersing myself in the business of fostering travelers’ needs and their experience. The first steps started from the ordinary thinking of serving a customer with great smiles and delivering good […]
A JOURNEY TO FIND ISLANDNESS (Part 1 Farmer Market)
My cool name is Ken Atlantic, and I am an international student taking the program Master of Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island. In the first class of Introduction Themes and Perspective of Islands, we learn about a phenomenon word: ‘Islandness”. This word is an expression about islands’ characteristics, unlike what I […]
A Scholar’s Brave Exploration in Samoa, 1928
Islandness? The study of islands is generally a new horizon to many people across varied disciplinaries and often categorized with some lazy thoughts of smallness, boundedness or just being relaxed to say it as an “insularity” land. In people’s mind, those such features are not so different from perceptible appearance of circular drawing surrounded by, […]
What is Islandness ?
After all, for me, Islandness is not a destination or something that could be found. It is the journey I immersed in, starting with excitement and uncertainty, feeling lost and fearful, then recovering with hopes. It is embedded in my DNA, flowing through blood nerves. Islandness is the kind of happiness happening at the moment I consciously walk on the island’s edge and unconsciously realize it.
ken atlantic, a journey to find islandness, 2021
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