Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork in Beirut, Lebanon, on a campaign for 'oceanic literacy' by a nascent environmental NGO, this paper asks how should anthropology take into consideration the connection between city and the sea, and what does it imply for our conceptualization of the politics of urban space.

Paper long abstract:

This paper ethnographically traces a campaign for 'oceanic literacy' by a nascent environmental NGO in Beirut, and examines how this pursuit of making the sea knowable for the Lebanese public partakes in an attempt at refiguring the relationship between land and sea.

I argue that in order to reconceptualize politics of urban space, it is essential to consider the relationship between city and the sea and how our interlocutors engage with this connection. In Lebanon, the sea has risen to the forefront of political imagination in recent years. Spurred on by developments in ill governance, such as the 2015 trash crisis and the resulting coastal pollution and environmental concern among residents, worries about the state of the sea have become a staple summertime discussion among residents of Beirut. Simultaneously to these sea-related health and environmental concerns, a tangential discussion on privatization of coastal spaces has clarified for many a sense of disconnection from the Mediterranean.

By comparing the campaign of the NGO with other local marine politics related to privatization of the coastline, I show how engagement with the sea is a modality of a critique of governance. I argue that ways of relating to the sea become tied in to an understanding of the sectarian-neoliberal state as the root-cause for separating the city from the sea. Finally, I put forward a suggestion for the conceptualization of space: in a place like Beirut, the urban can only be understood in it's connection and disconnection with the sea.