Geography of Islands

ISBN-13: 9781857288650 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 248 str.

Stephen Royle

Opis

Islands have always fascinated people. They often seem remote and mysterious, set between the continents on which most people live. Indeed, many people choose islands for their perfect holiday idyll. In practice, however, the everyday social and economic reality is often very different. This work firstly examines the differing ways islands are formed. Despite the uniqueness of such islands in terms of shape, size, flora and fauna, and also their economic and developmental profiles, they all share certain characteristics and constraints imposed by their insularity. These present islands everywhere with a range of common problems. The author considers how their small scale, isolation, peripherality and often a lack of resources, has affected islands, in the present day and their past. It considers and discusses population issues, communications and services, island politics and new ways of making a living, especially tourism, found within contemporary island geography.

Spis treści

1 Islands: dreams and realities 2 Islands: their formation and nature 3 Insularity: processes and effects 4 Islands in the past 5 Islands: people and migration 6 Islands: communications and services 7 Politics and small islands 8 Making a living: island economies in the contemporary period 9 Islands of dreams: tourism, the universal panacea for island problems? 10 Conclusion: St Helena wins again

O autorze

Stephen A.Royle is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has researched on islands around the world, originally inspired by a holiday visit to Dursey Island, County Cork, Ireland.