engleski

The Croatian islands Vis and Cres as paradigms of Mediterranean island studies

The Mediterranean is one of the three main parts of the world (the other being the Scandinavian and American part) where at the end of the 20th century island studies developed – the so called niso(no)logy, a multidisciplinary science with islands in its focus. From that time the growth of academic writing on islands has increased. Many Western mainlanders’ concepts about islands – such as isolation, peripherality, insularity, small size, small society, dependence, fragility, paradise, archaic, conservative, remote, uninhabited etc. –can be qualified as uncritical and as taking for granted powerful yet colonial images. In this contribution two Croatian islands – Vis and Cres – are being considered as the paradigms of Mediterranean island studies. It is mostly done on the basis of the testimonies of Western mainlander, Italian theologian, naturalist and famous explorer and traveler abbot Alberto Fortis from Padua in Italy who, at the end of the 18th century, visited the Eastern part of the Adriatic Sea. On the basis of Fortis' colonial mental geography/ethnography of the islands Vis and Cres, imaginative mapping of ourselves and others, the author of the article gives the answers to some crucial contemporary island studies concepts as reflected when (re)thinking the (Mediterranean) islands. Besides the well known examples of the islands like Trobriand, Samoa or Andaman islands known to have paved the way for the birth of cultural anthropology, the Croatian island of Cres is revealed as the one to have grounded the Adriatic foundation to European ethnology/cultural anthropology presented here as the newly introduced science in 18th century Europe.

Island studies ; Mediterranean islands ; Island/Mainland ; Adriatic ; Mental geography/ethnography ; Peripherality

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