Amplifying Environmental Politics: Ocean Noise

Ritts, Max

doi:10.1111/anti.12341

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 55 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Physical oceanographers determined that coastal currents can block the release of low-oxygen waters from fjords (Thomson et al, 2017). Ritts (2017) reported on the relationship between human-induced ocean noise and politics.…”

Section: Coastal Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canada’s Internet-Connected Ocean

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over fifteen years ago, Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) began with the world’s first large-scale, interactive, real-time portal into the ocean, bringing continuous, real-time data to the surface for applications in scientific research, societal benefits, and supporting Canada’s ocean industry. This marked the dawn of the Internet-connected ocean, enabling a more fulsome understanding of the ocean through ocean intelligence. These open data have improved our ability to monitor and understand our changing ocean offshore all three coasts of Canada, thanks to diversity of sensor systems to monitor earthquakes and tsunamis, deep sea biodiversity, whales, hydrothermal vents, neutrinos, ocean noise, ocean acidification, forensics experiments, and the impact of climate change, including sea ice thinning in the Arctic. This pioneering approach began in the late 1990s, when scientists began developing a new way of doing ocean science that was no longer limited by weather and ship-time. They imagined a permanent presence in the ocean of sensors to allow a continuous flow of ocean data via the Internet. This big science began to take shape early this century, when a partnership between United States and Canadian institutions was established. ONC evolved out of this international collaboration with seed funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, while in the United States, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) was funded. ONC works closely with OOI on that span the countries’ west coast border. Recently similar observing initiatives in Europe have begun, led by EMSO, which now has a close collaboration with ONC as an Associate Member.

show abstract

Section: Coastal Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canada’s Internet-Connected Ocean

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Part of this tendency to work against alternatives lies with algorithmic propensities to create circularities in which “reality has become the realm of possibility” (Rouvroy & Berns, 2013, p. xix). As Beer argues, “algorithms repeat patterns and thus close down interactions to those that fit existing patterns” (2017, p. 7).…”

Section: Thinking Algorithmicallymentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking algorithmically: The making of hegemonic knowledge in climate governance

Machen

Nost

2021

Trans Inst British Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Algorithms – instructions for acting on data, executed by code – are increasingly being enrolled into climate policy governance via the prediction of policy outcomes, the evaluation of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, and the design of practitioner actions. Yet the political implications of these technological changes in environmental governance are only just beginning to be theorised. In this paper, we examine one particular facet of this emerging politics: the relationship between thinking algorithmically and hegemonic power. Drawing from Laclau and Mouffe’s theorisation of hegemony we argue that algorithmic forms of reasoning lend themselves towards producing hegemonising knowledge regimes, with important implications for a democratic politics of climate change. Recognising that algorithms stand for wider socio‐technical assemblages that structure and create knowledge, we call for greater attention to the reliance on algorithms within climate governance – less for the algorithms themselves than for their particular epistemic commitments that create algorithmic ways of thinking, with associated claims to power. Through a critical review of scholarship at the intersection of critical digital studies and environmental governance, we first identify three key epistemic commitments involved in thinking algorithmically: induction, abstraction, and optimisation. We then examine the correspondence between these key features of algorithmic thinking and the conditions that Laclau and Mouffe propose form the grounds for hegemony: objectivity, universality, and necessity. Better understanding what “thinking algorithmically” entails, and the forms of knowing and acting that it affords and excludes, is vital, we argue, to begin naming the political implications and transformative potential of new forms of climate governance.

show abstract

“…7 Together, whale communicative capacities are increasingly being stated as evidence of cetacean culture and personhood (Whitehead and Rendell, 2015). Earlier in this chapter we considered anthropogenic ocean noise pollution as a significant source of cetacean stress the relevance of which deepens when we consider the centrality of acoustic communication networks (Dunlop, 2016;Ritts, 2017;Williams et al 2014); and extend to threats to whale culture and personhood. Evidence for a worldwide decline in whale vocalization since the 1960s has amassed in recent years, and is correlated with increases in anthropogenic ocean noise (McDonald et al 2009;Gavrilov et al 2011;.…”

Section: Tree Talk and Whale Songmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this “fluid, three-dimensional habitat, often lacking in light, sound is an essential component of a whale’s perceptual system, their hearing to map their environment and their social world […] giv[ing] the animals a detailed picture of their surroundings” (Whitehead and Rendell, 2014, p. 60). Beyond mapping and navigation, whales use elaborate, complex and dynamic vocalizations to communicate with other whales (Ritts, 2017). The function and purpose of these more complex forms of acoustic contact include expressions of association, belonging, courtship, group distinction, individuality; and even as contributions to interspecific co-operation, whereby whales will engage in activities such as nursing, warning or protecting another species (Fox et al , 2017; Leung et al , 2010; Pitman et al , 2017).…”

Section: Tree Talk and Whale Songmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indigenizing the Anthropocene? Specifying and situating multi-species encounters

Adams

2019

IJSSP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to articulate a meaningful response to recent calls to “indigenize” and “decolonize” the Anthropocene in the social sciences and humanities; and in doing so to challenge and extend dominant conceptualisations of the Anthropocene offered to date within a posthuman and more-than-human intellectual context. Design/methodology/approach The paper develops a radical material and relational ontology, purposefully drawing on an indigenous knowledge framework, as it is specifically exemplified in Maori approaches to anthropogenic impacts on species and multi-species entanglements. The paper takes as its focus particular species of whales, trees and humans and their entanglements. It also draws on, critically engages with, and partially integrates posthuman and more-than-human theory addressing the Anthropocene. Findings The findings of this study are that we will benefit from approaching the Anthropocene from situated and specific ontologies rooted in place, which can frame multi-species encounters in novel and productive ways. Research limitations/implications The paper calls for a more expansive and critical version of social science in which the relations between human and more-than-human becomes much more of a central concern; but in doing so it must recognize the importance of multiple histories, knowledge systems and narratives, the marginalization of many of which can be seen as a symptom of ecological crisis. The paper also proposes adopting Zoe Todd’s suggested tools to further indigenize the Anthropocene – though there remains much more scope to do so both theoretically and methodologically. Practical implications The paper argues that Anthropocene narratives must incorporate deeper colonial histories and their legacies; that related research must pay greater attention to reciprocity and relatedness, as advocated by posthuman scholarship in developing methodologies and research agendas; and that non-human life should remain firmly in focus to avoid reproducing human exceptionalism. Social implications In societies where populations are coming to terms in different ways with living through an era of environmental breakdown, it is vital to seek out forms of knowledge and progressive collaboration that resonate with place and with which progressive science and humanities research can learn and collaborate; to highlight narratives which “give life and dimension to the strategies – oppositional, affirmative, and yes, often desperate and fractured – that emerge from those who bear the brunt of the planet’s ecological crises” (Nixon, 2011, p. 23). Originality/value The paper is original in approaching the specific and situated application of indigenous ontologies in some of their grounded everyday social complexity, with the potential value of opening up the Anthropocene imaginary to a more radical and ethical relational ontology.

show abstract

Amplifying Environmental Politics: Ocean Noise

Cited by 13 publications

References 55 publications

Canada’s Internet-Connected Ocean

Canada’s Internet-Connected Ocean

Thinking algorithmically: The making of hegemonic knowledge in climate governance

Indigenizing the Anthropocene? Specifying and situating multi-species encounters

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About