Software is receding and rescaling island space, assembling islands in new configurations of territoriality and governance. Paying attention to software-supported mobility, sovereignty and place-making offers a key terrain for thinking about the contemporary rescaling of Caribbean states, island territories, and the imaginary ‘offshore’ economies within them. Travel and leisure destinations, especially in the Caribbean, are being disembedded from national territories and repackaged as unique natural enclaves connected to global metropolitan transport, media, and data flows. Through a discussion of Zaha Hadid's masterplan for a new resort on Dellis Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands, the author explores how state space, informational space, and tourist space are converging in new fantasies of mobility, accessibility, and island paradise. The new software- supported spatialities, theorized as urban or metropolitan, are actually affecting remote Caribbean islands and other dispersed enclaves as much as (though in different ways than) ‘advanced’ urban regions. Indeed, as Caribbean states and territories adjust to complex new infrastructures and architectures of mobility, the deformations and refoldings of space described here may precociously prefigure processes of postcolonial urbanism that are restructuring private property, cyberspatial property, and state territory in other parts of the world.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AdeyP, 2004, “Secured and sorted mobilities: Examples from the airport”Surveillance and Society1500–519
2.
AdeyP, 2008, “Airports, mobility and the calculative architecture of affective control”Geoforum39438–451
BaldacchinoG, 2006, “Islands, island studies, island studies journal”Island Studies Journal1(1) 3–18
5.
BetskyA, 1998, “Beyond 89 degrees”, Introduction in Zaha Hadid: The Complete Buildings and Projects (Thames and Hudson, London) pp 6–15
6.
BogdanichW, 2007, “Free trade zones ease passage of counterfeit drugs to U.S.”The New York Times 17 December, pages A1, A10
7.
BrennerN, 2004New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Reseating of Statehood. (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
8.
BrennerNTheodoreN (Eds), 2002Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe (Blackwell, Oxford)
9.
BrownD, 2004, “Inbetweenity: Marginalisation, migration and poverty among Haitians in the Turks and Caicos Islands”, in Beyond the Blood, the Beach and the Banana: New Perspectives in Caribbean Studies Ed. CourtmanS (Ian Randle, Kingston, Jamaica) pp 135–152
10.
CameronAPalanR, 2004The Imagined Economies of Globalization (Sage, London)
11.
CantorM, 2008, “The radar week ender. Treasure islands: Palatial private-island resorts take over Turks and Caicos' uninhabited territories and redefine haute hospitality”Miami Magazine, January/February, pp 100–102
12.
CrangM, 2000, “Urban morphology and the shaping of the transmissable city”City4303–314
13.
de JongLKruijtD (Eds), 2006Extended Statehood in the Caribbean (Rozenberg Publishers, Amsterdam)
DuvalD, 2004Tourism in the Caribbean: Trends, Development, Prospects (Routledge, London)
16.
EdwardM, 2006, “Simulating the Caribbean: An analysis of the computer game Tropico”, in The Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference PapersVolume 7, Ed. CourtmanS, http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/papers
17.
FaureM, 2007, “Paradis design”L'Equipe Sport and Style (June)
18.
FergusonJ, 2006Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
19.
FergusonYJonesBarry R J, 2002Political Space: Frontiers of Change and Governance in a Globalizing World. (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY)
20.
FosterH, 2006, “New fields of architecture: Hal Foster on Zaha Hadid”Artforum (September) pp 325–331
21.
FranklinSLuryCStaceyJ, 2000Global Nature, Global Culture (Sage, London)
22.
FreemanC, 2000High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
23.
FullerM (Ed.), 2008Software Studies: A Lexicon (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
24.
GannonT (Ed.), 2006Zaha Hadid, BMW Central Building: Source Books in Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, New York)
25.
GillisJ, 2004Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World (Palgrave Macmillan, New York)
GroveR, 1995Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
29.
HaldrupMLarsenJ, 2006, “Following flows: Geographies of tourism performances”, paper presented to ‘Mobilities, Technologies and Travel’ Workshop, Roskilde University, http://www.ruc.dk/inst3/geo/Tpato/Articles/
30.
HannamKShellerMUrryJ, 2006, “Mobilities, immobilities, and moorings”Mobilities1(1) 1–22
31.
HoeteA, 2003, “Zaha Hadid: Automobility and architecture”, in Reader on the Aesthetics of Mobility Ed. HoeteA (Black Dog, London) pp 136–149
32.
IovineJ, 2006, “The islands that have it—all are about to get quite a bit more”The New York Times House and Home: Currents: Architecture, 14 September
33.
JunemoM, 2004, “Let's build a palm island: Playfulness in complex times”, in Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play Places in Play Eds ShellerMUrryJ (Routledge, London) pp 181–191
34.
KanterJRivlinG, 2007, “Ruling lets Antigua be pirate to punish U.S. in trade fight”The New York Times 22 December, Business, page 3
35.
KoolhaasRMauB, 1994S, M, L, XL (010 Publishers, Rotterdam)
36.
KraussCCreswellJSavageC, 2009, “Questions rise as a billionaire's island realm comes apart”The New York Times 21 February, pages A1, A13
37.
KurlanskyM, 2002Salt: A World History (Walker, New York)
38.
LaceyM, 2007, “New routes and new risk, as more Haitians flee”The New York Times 19 May
39.
LefebvreH, 2003 [1978], “Space and the State”, in State/Space: A Reader Eds BrennerNJessopBJonesMMacleodG (Blackwell, Malden, MA) pp 84–100
40.
McDowellSSteinbergPTomaselloT, 2008Managing the Infosphere: Governance, Technology, and Cultural Practice in Motion (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA)
41.
MaurerB, 1995, “Complex subjects: Offshore finance, complexity theory, and the dispersion of the modern”Socialist Review25113–145
42.
MaurerB, 2002, “A fish story: Rethinking globalization on Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands”, in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader Eds IndaJ XRosaldoR (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 100–135
43.
MaurerB, 2004, “Cyberspatial properties: Taxing questions about proprietary regimes”, in Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy Eds VerderyKHumphreyC (Berg, Oxford) pp 297–318
44.
MillerDSlaterD, 2000The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (Berg, Oxford)
45.
NovakM, 1991, “Liquid architectures in cyberspace”, in Cyberspace: First Steps Ed. BenediktM (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) pp 225–254
46.
NovakM, 1997, “Transmitting architecture: The transphysical city”, in Digital Delirium Eds KrokerAKrokerM (St Martin's Press, New York) pp 260–271
47.
OlwigK F, 2007, “Islands as places of being and belonging”Geographical Review97260–274
48.
PalanR, 1998, “Trying to have your cake and eating it: How and why the state system has created offshore”International Studies Quarterly42625–643
49.
PalanR, 2002, “Tax havens and the commercialization of state sovereignty”International Organization56(1) 151–176
50.
PattulloP, 1996Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean (Cassell, London)
51.
PrinceM, 1998 [1831] The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herselfrevised edition with an introduction by FergusonM (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI)
52.
RobertsS, 1994, “Fictitious capital, fictitious spaces: The geography of offshore financial flows”, in Money Power Space Eds CorbridgeSMartinRThriftN (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 91–115
53.
SchumacherP, 2004Digital Hadid: Landscapes in Motion (Birkhäuser, Basel)
54.
ShellerM, 2003Consuming the Caribbean (Routledge, London)
55.
ShellerM, 2004a, “Demobilising and remobilising the Caribbean”, in Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play Eds ShellerMUrryJ (Routledge, London) pp 13–21
56.
ShellerM, 2004b, “Natural hedonism: The invention of the Caribbean as tropical playground”, in Tourism in the Caribbean: Trends, Developments, Prospects Ed. DuvalD (Routledge, London) pp 23–38
57.
ShellerM, 2007a, “Virtual islands: Mobilities, connectivity and the new Caribbean spatialities”Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism24 (October) 16–33
58.
ShellerM, 2007b, “Re-touching the ‘untouched island’: Post-military tourism in Vieques, Puerto Rico”Téoros: Revue de recherche en tourisme26(1) 21–28
59.
ShellerMUrryJ (Eds), 2004Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play (Routledge, London)
60.
ShellerMUrryJ (Eds), 2006aMobile Technologies of the City (Routledge, London)
61.
ShellerMUrryJ, 2006b, “The new mobilities paradigm”Environment and Planning A theme issue on ‘Mobilities and Materialities’ Eds UrryJShellerM38207–226
62.
SkinnerE, 1998, “The Caribbean data processors”, in Global Productions: Labor in the Making of ‘Information Society’ Eds SussmanGLentJ (Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ) pp 57–90
63.
ThompsonK A, 2003, “Passage through the islands of shallow water: An exploration of migration in contemporary Bahamian art”, in Marginal Migrations: The Circulation of Cultures within the Caribbean. Ed. PuriS (Macmillan, London) pp 109–140
64.
ThriftN, 2001, “The machine in the ghost: Software writing cities”, presented to Hegemonies Conference, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University; copy available from the author, Vice-Chancellor's office, University of Warwick, Coventry
65.
TitleyG, 2004, “All sights reserved: All-inclusive resorts and the imagined Caribbean”, in Beyond the Blood, the Beach and the Banana: New Perspectives in Caribbean Studies Ed. CourtmanS (Ian Randle, Kingston, Jamaica) pp 205–220
66.
UrryJ, 2007Mobilities (Sage, London)
67.
WarfB, 2005 [1995], “Telecommunications and the changing geographies of knowledge transmission in the Late 20th century”, in The Urban Geography Reader Eds FyfeSKennyJ (Routledge, London) pp 353–363
68.
WoodDGrahamS, 2006, “Permeable boundaries in the software-sorted society: Surveillance and the differentiation of mobility”, in Mobile Technologies of the City Eds ShellerMUrryJ (Routledge, London) pp 177–191
