Philippine Archipelago

Les Philippines présentent un profil linguistique doublement déterminé par une entité territoriale distinctive, l’archipel, et une histoire coloniale atypique, espagnole puis américaine. La topographie découpée de l’archipel a favorisé l’émergence de nombreux groupes ethnolinguistiques et détermine des appartenances plurielles. Les contacts prolongés avec l’Occident ont complexifié les répertoires linguistiques des Philippins en faisant surgir des langues hybrides dans les centres urbains : le chavacano dans les villes de garnison espagnoles et le taglish dans les métropoles américanisées portent chacun les traces d’une mondialisation qui rattache ce pays d’Asie du Sud-Est à la fois au monde hispanisant des grandes découvertes et à celui anglophone de notre village global. Malgré la promotion du filipino comme langue nationale après l’indépendance, le positionnement de l’Etat philippin comme exportateur de main d’œuvre depuis les années 1970 puis l'avènement de l'industrie de la sous-traitance au début des années 2000 ont conduit à sanctuariser la place de l’anglais dans le système éducatif en vue de produire des « travailleurs du monde philippins ».

Often described as “resilient,” the Philippines has weathered storm after storm in its archipelago of roughly seven thousand islands. Every year, as lives are devastated by the almost quarterly onslaught of natural disasters, the solutions to sustaining the Philippine environment may not be in its people’s “resilience,” but in a paradigm shift that can be ignited through the ecological literacy of Philippine ecopoetry. Using selected ecopoems from the first anthology of Philippine ecopoetry entitled “Sustaining the Archipelago,” this paper will interrogate how these ecopoems are defining and redefining what an archipelago is in local literature through the concept of “living limestones.” Here, the archipelagic landscape of the Philippines will be mapped out through its poetry, and will be used in the attempt to answer the following questions: First, what is life in an archipelago? Second, what is the ecological literacy of the archipelago’s ecopoetry? Third, what can living in an archipelago teach the world about sustainability? In doing so, ecopoetry contributes to democratizing literature not only for human beings, but for all species here and everywhere else.

The general dynamic model of oceanic island biogeography (GDM) has added a new dimension to theoretical island biogeography in recognizing that geological processes are key drivers of the evolutionary processes of diversification and extinction within remote islands. It provides a dynamic and essentially non-equilibrium framework generating novel predictions for emergent diversity properties of oceanic islands and archipelagos. Its publication in 2008 coincided with, and spurred on, renewed attention to the dynamics of remote islands. We review progress, both in testing the GDM's predictions and in developing and enhancing ecological–evolutionary understanding of oceanic island systems through the lens of the GDM. In particular, we focus on four main themes: (i) macroecological tests using a space-for-time rationale; (ii) extensions of theory to islands following different patterns of ontogeny; (iii) the implications of GDM dynamics for lineage diversification and trait evolution; and (iv) the potential for downscaling GDM dynamics to local-scale ecological patterns and processes within islands. We also consider the implications of the GDM for understanding patterns of non-native species diversity. We demonstrate the vitality of the field of island biogeography by identifying a range of potentially productive lines for future research.

The general dynamic model of oceanic island biogeography (GDM) has added a new dimension to theoretical island biogeography in recognizing that geological processes are key drivers of the evolutionary processes of diversification and extinction within remote islands. It provides a dynamic and essentially non-equilibrium framework generating novel predictions for emergent diversity properties of oceanic islands and archipelagos. Its publication in 2008 coincided with, and spurred on, renewed attention to the dynamics of remote islands. We review progress, both in testing the GDM's predictions and in developing and enhancing ecological-evolutionary understanding of oceanic island systems through the lens of the GDM. In particular, we focus on four main themes: (i) macroecological tests using a space-for-time rationale; (ii) extensions of theory to islands following different patterns of ontogeny; (iii) the implications of GDM dynamics for lineage diversification and trait evolutio...