Turning the Tide: Climate Change, Social Change, and Islandness

Turning the Tide: Climate Change, Social Change, and Islandness is a new collection of essays published by Island Studies Press. The collection looks at the intersection of climate change and social change on islands. Authors from around the world (Aruba, Tokyo, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Malta, and PEI) contribute chapters on food security, local and Indigenous knowledge, policy, natural heritage management, and artistic practices as they relate to climate change, social change, and islandness.   

This interdisciplinary approach foregrounds island storytellers as they convey worldviews, knowledge, and cultural values, beliefs, and emotions that are often missing from climate change discourses. How are the effects of climate change and catastrophic weather experienced and narrated by islanders? What stories need to be told? How do local, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge practices facilitate the capacity to improvise, innovate, and adapt to volatile weather events? How do social relations on climate-stressed islands continue to flourish? How do governance structures and issues of sovereignty support and/or inhibit climate and social justice? 

This groundbreaking collection is co-edited by Jean Mitchell, professor in Anthropology and the UNESCO Chair in Island Studies and Sustainability at UPEI; Laurie Brinklow, poet and assistant professor in Island Studies at UPEI; Eric Mijts, a researcher, educator, and manager at the University of Aruba who focuses on sustainable development in small island states; and Anouk Mertens, the former project manager of the EU-funded SISSTEM Project, who has a particular interest in the intersection between sustainability and islandness.

Look for in-person and online events in the coming months. In the meantime, copies are available at local bookstores. For more info, contact Bren Simmers at Island Studies Press at 902-566-0386 or ispstaff@upei.ca.