Paper short abstract:

Fighting for rights that were never ceded & returning to a home that was never lost. These apt descriptions of Indigenous people's encounters with colonisation and land/sea rights in Australia are explored through an account of one group's fight for sea country and their saltwater lives.

Paper long abstract:

Journeying has long been synonymous with sea travel and ocean voyages, romanticised in classical literature which brought to life the evocative stories of those beyond the limits of earthly writing. Yet, journeys across oceans and arrivals upon unknown shores also reveal emotionally fraught encounters with separation, diaspora and longing to return. Longing remains a powerful encounter in the lives of coastal and saltwater peoples whose rights are contested, and those for whom oceans became barriers between home and afar. Unlike the experiences of diaspora and those peoples dispatched and transferred afar by sea, Indigenous Australians have been alienated from their territories, without ever leaving them. For Yanyuwa, a saltwater people of northern Australia, their alienation from sea country transcends physical estrangement, and takes hold as a deep wounding, achieved through a relentless colonial campaign to deny people's rights and knowledge and the moral ecologies that entwine them with their maritime world. Land and sea tenure arrangements in the settler colonial space of Australia have demanded of Indigenous peoples a protracted fight for rights. This paper tracks Yanyuwa experiences of such a battle. As li-Anthawirriyarra, people of the sea, Yanyuwa have rejected attempts to alienate them from the salty world that distinguishes and defines them. Discussion will reflect on how people have retained a saltwater identity in times of rapid change, the conditions in which they sought restitution, tracked through the paradox of returning to something that was never ceded and never lost, but to which the pathways of connection were blocked by colonial presence.

Paper short abstract:

What are the economic, social and environmental impacts of the global visibility of Nazaré's Praia do Norte big waves? What changes are already visible? What changes are desirable and undesirable? Something is changing in Nazaré: what, how and to what extent only now are we beginning to understand.

Paper long abstract:

November 1, 2011, on a wild and unknown beach of Portugal, a man surfed a wave with almost 24 meters high in about 24 seconds ...

A few days later, these images were watched all over the world. Praia do Norte of Nazaré and Garrett McNamara would reach global notoriety almost immediately: was this the biggest wave ever surfed? A few weeks later came the confirmation by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Since then, Praia do Norte became one of the main stages in the entire world for this unique spectacle offered by big waves surfers. That sea, so feared and so fierce, became a source of pride - and revenue. Now, the bigger the better! But is bigger truly better?

What are the economic, social and environmental impacts of this sudden global visibility of Nazaré's Praia do Norte giant waves? What changes are already visible? What changes are desirable - and undesirable? Something is changing in Nazaré: what, how and to what extent only now are we beginning to understand...

Nazaré thus faces a major challenge: how to take advantage of new opportunities generated by the global reputation of Praia do Norte giant waves, wisely combining economic progress with the improvement of the population's quality of life, while protecting the environment?

In this presentation, these and other questions will be addressed, having as basis the recent web documentary "Riding the Nazaré Wave", about the economic, social and environmental impacts of Praia do Norte, Nazaré global reputation: http://cavalgaraondanazare.ulusofona.pt/intro_en.html

Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork onboard cargo-ships with mixed national crews, the paper considers the co-shaping of these multicultural communities and the sea as a political and social space. It also discusses how seafarers navigate the complex intersecting categories of difference in the social world onboard.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork onboard cargo-ships with mixed national crews. It is concerned with the co-shaping of maritime multicultural communities onboard ships and the sea as a particular, and particularly ambiguous, political and social space.

The notion of the sea as a "fluid canvas", as per the panel abstract, is reminiscent of notions of the sea as a space for potentiality, for social mobility, and for transcending the social limits and boundaries that exist for humans ashore. At the same time however, the sea is also a space of exceptionality and vulnerability, which allows for disproportionate power of some people over other people's lives.

Shipboard communities are complex miniature societies that contain many contradictions. On the one hand they are unusually homogeneous, consisting of mostly male individuals in working age. On the other hand they are unusually diverse in terms of the cultural, national, socioeconomic background of crewmembers. This diversity intersects with categories of difference particular to the onboard social structure and hierarchy.

This paper discusses how people in such small-scale global communities navigate the complex intersecting categories of difference in the social environment onboard. I explore how crewmembers of different ethnicities and generations draw on specific narratives of national collective memories of maritime connections and histories in order to claim authenticity as sailors, and how these claims often undermine the authenticity, skill and even masculinity of shipmates of other ethnicities, thus reproducing political and economic relationships that reflect global inequalities beyond the locality of the ship.

Paper short abstract:

This study explores, through interviews, how life stories help make sense of place, professions and relationships in coastal communities, in a context of changing rights and obligations, due to the new marine and land policies of Natura 2000.

Paper long abstract:

This study explores, through interviews, how life stories help make sense of place, professions and relationships in coastal communities, in a context of changing rights and obligations, due to the new marine and land policies of Natura 2000. Interviews asking for Life stories are a way to safeguard the cultural elements of fishing communities (e.g. informal practices, local knowledge, traditions, vocabulary), and not just a way of recovering strictly professional fishing actions. Getting people to revive their memories about past fishing activities and conviviality in place is thus also an attempt to maintain the unique identity of these places as fishing communities. And it can also be a means to bring to the fore peoples' concerns and perspectives about the undergoing transformations of the community, consequently helping their adaptation to a changing environment. We focus on memories and sense-making processes of fishers and seafood collectors and their families from three Natura coastal territories of the Southern Portuguese coast: a) Arrifana (n=4); b) Carrapateira (n=5), and c) Vila Nova de Milfontes (n=3). We systematize their memories of lived experiences, valuing present cultural expressions, and exploring possible insights about how communities foresee their future in the coast and that of the marine heritage. These memories reveal the importance of the process of continuity for the identity of a place and its communities.

Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts a historical analysis of how long durations of human-animal-thing entanglements in labour processes in molluscan fisheries (for pearl and chank) in the Gulf of Mannar (India) re-produce representations of identity hierarchy, and value in contemporary fisheries.

Paper long abstract:

Economic, social or environmental histories of molluscan products such as pearl, cowries or conchs from across the world rarely incorporate effects produced in the life-world of divers within analytical frames of valuation except as labour (slave, wage, exploited, skilled or otherwise) located at a disadvantaged periphery. Likewise, within contemporary narratives regarding the management, use or conservation of molluscs, there is little attention paid to the knowledge, techniques, technologies and devices wielded by divers to obtain greater control and power in these fisheries. This paper draws from historiographic ideas and practice that engage with a sociology of knowledge and 'the agency of things' as a means to understanding the relational politics over molluscan fisheries in the Indian side of the Gulf of Mannar.

The paper examines a wide range of historical accounts of pearl fisheries (both academic and popular), official administrative reports and detailed interviews with present-day divers and other actors in the Gulf of Mannar region. From these, I trace how practices in human-animal-thing entanglements embedded in labour processes of molluscan fisheries persist over long durations to re-produce identity, hierarchy, and value in contemporary fisheries.

Through specific illustrations of interactions between the sets of actors (human and non-human), I attempt a reading of the influence of these long durations of repeated structurations in the production of contemporary controversy over the use of hookah diving for the collection of chank shells off the Thoothukudi coast the only active fishing site among the world's ancient molluscan fisheries environments.

Paper short abstract:

this paper traces the social, cultural and economic landscape of the Khalasis, the indigenous ship building community. It highlights the need to safeguard their knowledge system.

Paper long abstract:

Beypore, a port town in South India, has putative legacies of maritime activities. Beypore had maritime relations with Mesopotamia and was an important link on the maritime silk route. Undoubtedly, this region domesticated world cultures—including Arab and Portuguese—via sea routes and produced cosmopolitanism in its maritime cultural heritage. Meanwhile, this port town was also known for its superior indigenous ship building technology and craftsmanship.

Drawing from social history and ethnographic research on Beypore, this paper traces the social, cultural and economic landscape of the Khalasis, the indigenous ship building community. As a community, the life of Khalasis was centered around the activity of shipbuilding. With the dominance of modern technology in shipbuilding the community began to lose its stronghold on the activity. By 1960s shipbuilding at Beypore was almost a lost art. With the rise of globalization and commercialization, this art shipbuilding got a revival in the tourism industry. In this context, this study delineates how Khalasis evolved through historically-situated changes, and still maintained the organic relationship with the ocean and its ecology. Foregrounding the concerns of intangible maritime cultural heritage, the study also explores the various ways through which this highly specialized knowledge circulated within the community, especially in the absence of any written text. This study thus highlights the need to safeguard this knowledge system that is circulated in the form of verses and memorized by the craftsman.