The lure of the island : a spatial analysis of power relations

An earlier draft of this paper was presented as the keynote address at the 8th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies (ECRM), Valletta, Malta, June 2009.Islands – especially small ones – are now, unwittingly, the objects of what may be the most lavish, global and consistent branding exercise in human history. This paper draws on a post-structuralist perspective to propose an understanding of ‘‘the island lure’’ by disentangling and unpacking four, inter-related, constituent components of ‘islandness’. These components are themselves borrowed and adapted from a spatial analysis of power and power relations, and especially from Henri Lefebvre’s treatise on spaces of production. In its ontological approach, the paper offers a different critique of the representation of islands and island life.peer-reviewe