A Rocky Paradox: International law, Island Studies and the socio-cultural significance of pinnacles and sea stacks (with reference to the Faroe Islands, Channel Islands and Balls Pyramid)

Island Studies, as it has developed over the last 3-4 decades, has been primarily addressed to research and theorisation concerning inhabited, formerly inhabited and/or inhabitable islands. There are several types of terrestrial formations that have fallen outside its evolving purview, including sandbanks, reefs and rocks. The latter have not so much been formally excluded as eschewed, in parallel with international legal definitions of islands and of their differences from other geomorphological forms. The United Nations 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), in particular, carefully seeks to distinguish rocks from islands. But there is something of a paradox here in that various types of rocks have proved significant environmental, socio-economic and/or cultural assets to nations that include them (or seek recognition of their claims for their inclusion) within their maritime borders. This article attempts to highlight aspects of rocks relevant to Island Studies, and to human societies more generally, with regard to two forms, pinnacles and sea stacks, drawing on examples from the Faroe Islands, the (English) Channel Islands and Balls Pyramid in the southwestern Pacific. In doing so, it elaborates their socio-cultural and environmental significance to the regional and national societies whose borders they fall within and, thereby, identifies their validity as objects of analysis within Island Studies and within geography more broadly.