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Sea changes: How ocean activism reshapes the way we see borders, sovereignty and power
Journal
The Sociological Review Magazine
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2022-08-09
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
This article asks what it means to act politically at sea. Since the beginnings of modern seafaring, the ocean has not only been a key site of conquest, war and trade but also of political struggle and resistance from below. We may think here, for instance, of enslaved people’s resistance during the Middle Passage (Rediker, 2022), of Pacific islanders’ fight against the West’s nuclear testing in their waters (Swan, 2022), of dockers strikes and maritime workers alliances (Kirkby, 2017), or of Greenpeace’s famous anti-whaling campaigns (Lester, 2011). Yet, despite this rich history of practice, ocean activism – and, indeed, the ocean itself (Hannigan, 2017; Armstrong, 2022) – has been largely overlooked and remains under-theorised by sociologists and social science scholars.
The article argues that ocean activism has a lot to teach us about what it means to act politically beyond the borders of nation-states. Of course, sociologists and scholars of transnational civil society have long been interested in transnational mobilisations, not least since the emergence of the alter-globalisation movement at the turn of the century (della Porta, 2006; Castells, 2012; Isin, 2012; Flesher Fominaya, 2014). However, little is known, for instance, about the role of the global fisherman’s movement in the fight against neoliberal globalisation (Dalla Costa and Chilese, 2014). More generally, respective scholarship has turned a blind eye to civil society acting outside of the borders of nation-states, namely in the international territory of the sea, which the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCOS) defines as “common heritage of mankind”.
In the article, I discuss how activism at sea is different from activism on land and why it matters. My argument sits within a wider “‘oceanic turn’” (Brown and Peters, 2019, p.1), which challenges the social sciences’ “landward (or terrestrial) bias” (Peters et al., 2018, p.2) or “terracentric normative ideal” (p.2). As Hung and Lien have demonstrated, sea-bound scholarship creates an opening to revisit the meaning of key political and sociological concepts such as borders, governance and (state-)power beyond modernity’s primacy of the “land-based Westphalian concept of nation-state sovereignty” (2022, p.3). In this context, recent scholarship has already begun to highlight the sea as a crucial geopolitical site shaped by socio-economic (Steinberg, 2001; Campling and Colás, 2021), socio-legal (Mawani, 2018; Braverman and Johnson, 2020) and neo-colonial processes (Mainwaring and Debono, 2021).
Bringing respective scholarship in conversation with a new research project on sea-bound civil society, the article highlights some of the challenges as well political opportunities of ocean activism. I discuss, in particular, the legal challenges coming with acting in political territory beyond national jurisdiction, which are faced, for instance, by civic sea rescue actors in the Mediterranean (Tazzioli, 2018), as well as new imaginations and political opportunities arising through the use of (digital) media and AI technologies at sea.
The article argues that ocean activism has a lot to teach us about what it means to act politically beyond the borders of nation-states. Of course, sociologists and scholars of transnational civil society have long been interested in transnational mobilisations, not least since the emergence of the alter-globalisation movement at the turn of the century (della Porta, 2006; Castells, 2012; Isin, 2012; Flesher Fominaya, 2014). However, little is known, for instance, about the role of the global fisherman’s movement in the fight against neoliberal globalisation (Dalla Costa and Chilese, 2014). More generally, respective scholarship has turned a blind eye to civil society acting outside of the borders of nation-states, namely in the international territory of the sea, which the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCOS) defines as “common heritage of mankind”.
In the article, I discuss how activism at sea is different from activism on land and why it matters. My argument sits within a wider “‘oceanic turn’” (Brown and Peters, 2019, p.1), which challenges the social sciences’ “landward (or terrestrial) bias” (Peters et al., 2018, p.2) or “terracentric normative ideal” (p.2). As Hung and Lien have demonstrated, sea-bound scholarship creates an opening to revisit the meaning of key political and sociological concepts such as borders, governance and (state-)power beyond modernity’s primacy of the “land-based Westphalian concept of nation-state sovereignty” (2022, p.3). In this context, recent scholarship has already begun to highlight the sea as a crucial geopolitical site shaped by socio-economic (Steinberg, 2001; Campling and Colás, 2021), socio-legal (Mawani, 2018; Braverman and Johnson, 2020) and neo-colonial processes (Mainwaring and Debono, 2021).
Bringing respective scholarship in conversation with a new research project on sea-bound civil society, the article highlights some of the challenges as well political opportunities of ocean activism. I discuss, in particular, the legal challenges coming with acting in political territory beyond national jurisdiction, which are faced, for instance, by civic sea rescue actors in the Mediterranean (Tazzioli, 2018), as well as new imaginations and political opportunities arising through the use of (digital) media and AI technologies at sea.
Language
English
Refereed
Yes
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
267109