SIDS and LIDS: Sociological Islands

The common element of the governance systems of small and large island developing states (SIDS and LIDS) operate within collections of similar sized communities that are arrangements of social goods and living beings at specific places. Thus, space and place are associated in governance. Spacing is an act of synthesis described as the positioning of human beings, social goods, and cultural signs for the purpose of forming spatial sociological arrangements. Space is therefore a set of sociological islands, with or without being bounded by water.

Sociological Islands are an outcome of the interplay of human action at a community level, where the relatively small size of the grassroots component can benefit from local actions. These initiatives are directly connected to the local environmental issues and the people living in need. These grassroots groups are the first responders of SIDS and LIDS to an environmental crisis and critical witnesses to which solutions are a better fit to the local context.

This act of community synthesis describes the ability of people to perceive, imagine, and remember the spatial placing of human beings and social goods around them as being coherent and reliable. The reproduction of sociological islands occurs through repetition in everyday routine and they are held together by cultural notions of class and gender. People no longer experience space as being all enveloping, but rather they are socialized in space islands that can be linked to multi level top down governance in various ways.

According to the perceived criteria of good leadership, a multi-level leadership system, strongly recognising and empowering grassroots leaders, was developed within the Vanuatu-Networked Governance System. This example of multi-level leadership is mainly enabled by the set of networks bridging across levels. More particularly, to remain effective, grassroots leadership needs to evolve within a flexible, non-binding and informal system in order to prevent the politicisation and fear of commitment of potential grassroots leaders. The set of networks, and their role as flexible venues to link grassroots leaders with authorities, is the main asset for SIDS and LIDS to build an effective governance system. It allows the different groups of grassroots leaders across the different communities to have access to all resources and knowledge developed by international, regional, national and local stakeholders often involved in SIDS and LIDS development, without binding engagement.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305572705_Grassroots_Leadershi…