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Reviewed by:
  • Extreme Heritage Management: The Practices and Policies of Densely Populated Islands
  • Hélène Ducros
Baldacchino, Godfrey, ed. 2012. Extreme Heritage Management: The Practices and Policies of Densely Populated Islands. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books.

In the collective imaginary, islands are places of idyllic living. In reality, they constitute small-scale complex sociohistorical and ecological systems under constant pressure. In Extreme Heritage Management, Godfrey Baldacchino and colleagues contribute to debunking the myth of “paradise island.” This collection of articles results from the international and interdisciplinary conference (entitled Sharing the Land: Heritage Management in Island Jurisdictions) organized by the Institute of Island Studies, focused on land use conflicts in insular spaces. While others before have looked at islands as useful microcosms for observing risk factors based on the finiteness of resources, the key factor in the analysis presented here is that of population density.

The contributors to this volume seek to understand the extent to which population density exacerbates the difficult relationship between heritage, environmental planning, and human geography. To provide solutions to the tensions surrounding land use in island spaces, they rely on ten case studies and a thematic approach. The theoretical basis, well laid out in Baldacchino’s preface, lies in the legacy of Henri Lefebvre, Bruno Latour, and Stanley Aronowitz, among others. Conflicts about land are more than about use; they are about values, ideologies, and (re)production and (re)presentation of space. Islands selected for review in the volume are geographically diverse, located in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Mediterranean: Prince Edward Island, Malta, Guernsey, Jersey, Corsica, Favignana, Hawai’i, Majura Atoll, The Bahamas, and San Andrés. These cases are also diverse in their economic, environmental, historical, and archeological contexts, which makes for a rather complete overview of island conditions, fragility factors, and processes.

The book is effective in rendering a full picture of the risks that insular milieus face, from the consequences of global warming and sea level rise in biodiversity hotspots to the effects of migratory flows and development pressure to cater to changing economic orientation and growing tourism or secondary home industries. The connected themes addressed in the case studies include the issues of land tenure, land use, and land privatization; tourism and commercial development vs. environmental or cultural concerns; exclusion, gating agents, social divisiveness and control; place identity, alterity and indigeneity; global integration, dependency and local agency; effects of colonial legacies; role of third-party supranational, international, or regional organizations and heritage instruments; waste disposal and resource management; agricultural land conversion and endangered rural heritage landscapes; tangible and intangible heritage interpretation, representation, and protection; governance, enforcement, and resistance; income gap, unemployment, poverty, and access to [End Page 135] resources; and overall quality of life and sense of place. Each case study further details several localized examples to illustrate how these themes translate on the ground and what situations have resulted.

There are numerous facets of the book that merit consideration. The methods used are as diverse as the results they yield are alarming. Karen Lips applies landscape visualization techniques in Prince Edward Island to identify how hedgerows, viewscapes, and farm and cottage clusters provide clues to understanding the effects of twenty-first century development and guide policy aimed at reclaiming, protecting, and strengthening place character. Others highlight the tension in Malta between preserving historic or natural areas and development exigencies, by exploring enforcement and appeal records and the actual processes of environmental management in golf course development, landfill, historic buildings, salt marshes, and flood relief planning. Researchers analyze legal frameworks governing land use and the historic and natural environment in Guernsey to highlight the effects of planning laws on conflicts over historic renovation, golf course development on biodiversity-rich wetland, and Roman settlement protection. Likewise, analysis of legal processes and planning policies in Jersey explains the successes and failures of conservation efforts. The Corsican case uses tourism and building statistics to expose local concerns that are ignored in the decision-making process over land use and heritage classification, while cartographic analysis of Favignana shows the ways inhabitants re-appropriate local spaces and protect symbolic spaces from outsiders’ intrusion through selective mapping. Attention to systems of knowledge, land steward-ship, and heritage...

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