Future Promises for Contemporary Social and Cultural Geographies of the Sea

Abstract

Seventy per cent of the Earth’s surface is sea. Yet, until recently social and cultural geographers have failed to pay much attention to this aspect of the world in which we live, with the most notable contributions deriving from historical perspectives. This study examines the work characterising this area of research before outlining possible reasons for the failure of consistent and comprehensive examination of the seas and ships for social and cultural geographers who take a more contemporary focus. The sea has been typically understood as inferior to and marginal from the land and invisible in modern consciousness, yet it is nonetheless a vital space and one that is integral to the workings of the world as we currently know it. This study travels through the ways in which modern‐day examinations of the maritime world are developing before outlining future promises that are surfacing for more contemporary social and cultural geographies of the sea. The study offers an overview of the relationship between social and cultural geography and the sea, contending by way of a conclusion for a greater volume of contemporary work considering maritime spaces to expand and deepen geographic understandings of the watery world.

From ‘Landsman’ to ‘Seaman’? Colonial discipline, organisation and resistance in the Royal Indian Navy, 1946

“…Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Introduction number of scholars producing work on life aboard ships from a number of perspectives, The lived experiences of people who work at from the nature of political resistance (Ahuja sea have become a matter of interest to 2008; Balachandran 2008; Featherstone 2009) geographers in recent years (Peters 2010).…”

It’s not just a Blue Economy moment…

“…However, my question to Winder and Le Heron is, with the exception of the lives and livelihoods of fishers (Urquhurt and Acott, 2012), what research base has social and critical geography to reframe the debate around the Blue Economy? Research by Human Geographers (Steinberg, 2001;Peters 2010) has already noted that while representing 70% of the earth's surface, the marine or ocean or 'Blue' resource has mostly been ignored by social and cultural geographers. This lack of engagement with the marine is even starker when compared to the rich critical debates offered by Human Geographers in other natural resource sectors including agriculture, mining, forestry and energy.…”

Putting Lifeworlds at Sea: Studying Meaning-Making in Marine Research

“…Over at least the last three decades, coastal and historic geography, maritime anthropology, sociology and cartography have made significant conceptual and epistemological inroads to grounding and understanding the diversity of marine spaces and "peoples of the sea, " distinguished by everyday processes of sense-making and daily practices of cohabiting fluid waterworlds (see Acheson, 1981;Astuti, 1995;Steinberg, 2001;Cordell, 2007;van Ginkel, 2007;Peters, 2010). Seas and coastlines were therefore more than mere resource bases and sites of socioeconomic extraction, value and exchange.…”

“…Johansson et al (2008, p. 2) see this as a concrete form of bridling, which does not make the pretense of abandoning all pre-assumptions, but instead embraces the possibility of "slowing down the process of understanding in order to see the phenomena in a new way, " often integrating multisensory subjectivities and relationalities. For example Peters (2010) in problematizing scholarly representations of the sea as a mere metaphorical image of life on shore, draws attention to the very linear act of objectifying the sea through dynamics of voyaging, trade, empire-building and territorialization. Therefore, in (re)centering fluidities beyond spatially bounded terms, Anderson and Peters (2014, p. 5) calls for the imperative need to enliven scholarly engagements with diverse marine epistemologies that see (water)worlds as being in "flux, changeable, processual and in a constant state of becoming.…”