SEMINAR - Islands, Enclaves and Violence: Sociospatial Perspectives on Resource Conflict in Island Melanesia

Set against the backdrop of past, contemporary and possible future mining-related violence on large islands in the western Pacific, this paper explores how theoretical work on sociospatial relations might sharpen our understanding of the political economic impacts of extractive resource enclaves in Island Melanesia. Taking up Jessop et al's (2008) challenge of recognising the €œpolymorphy€ of sociospatial relations, I interrogate the conceptualisation of Island Melanesia's mining enclaves as islands within islands. While mining enclaves can be seen as salient manifestations of the €œspatial fixes€ that attend globalisation's dialectic of de- and re-territorialisation (Brenner 1999), they are far from being €œstarkly disconnected€(Fergusson 2005) from the socio-ecological contexts into which they are inserted. The profound sociospatial and political economic effects of enclave economies have been described for €œmainland€ contexts, for example in Michael Watts' work on €œgovernable spaces€ and €œeconomies of violence€ in Nigeria. I suggest that islands, or more specifically the condition of €œislandness€, provide powerful arenas for the sociospatial struggles that attend enclave economies. Particular attention is paid to the coproduction of territory and scale that is salient in islands, making them especially € perhaps exceptionally € potent spaces for processes, ideologies and strategies that both produce and deploy islands in political economic struggles. I also highlight the potential for islands to become containers for internal sociospatial tensions and contradictions that are animated by extractive enclaves € sometimes producing violent contestation € and that can contribute to the island scale becoming €œungovernable. It is hoped that the paper might advance recent efforts to bring the island studies literature into closer conversation with political and economic geography (Mountz 2014).