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Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses the possible synergies between the Rights of Nature and posthumanist STS by exploring the concept of Ocean rights, which has been developed by Rights of Nature advocates, in relation to posthumanist theories on non-human agency in STS.

Paper long abstract:

Is there a possible exchange between posthumanist STS and the Rights of Nature that can reimagine the future of the ocean in the Anthropocene? The work to secure Ocean Rights, and the proposal of a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights (UDOR) is part of the work to secure rights for nature through Rights of Nature laws. As of spring 2024, Rights of Nature provisions and laws have been adopted in more than 20 countries. However, the implementation of Rights of Nature laws is challenging to legal systems and systems of governance that are deeply enmeshed in anthropocentric perspectives. Moreover, securing rights for the ocean requires novel ways of articulating rights of nature laws as the ocean spans beyond and across national jurisdiction. Theoretical and comparative analysis of Earth jurisprudence principles that draw on theories other than jurisprudential are necessary to realize the political and social representation of non-humans. Hence, this presentation considers theories in STS on how to distribute agency to non-humans and how to account for the representation of the non-humans in relation to Ocean rights /the Rights of Nature with the aim of contributing to both fields. Approximately 25 min presentation.

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Paper short abstract:

Articulating and navigating the ambivalence of hope and loss are key to fostering resilience and creating lively futures. This talk explores relevance practices in social scientific research about oceans and forests, and tentatively asks if these shape scholarly discussions about hope and loss.

Paper long abstract:

Articulating and navigating the ambivalence of hope and loss are key to critically examining socio-environmental destruction whilst fostering resilience and creating lively futures. Our talk explores how historical conditions shape relevance practices in social scientific research about oceans and forests; and tentatively asks how the same conditions might impact scholarly discussions about hope and loss.

Contemporary science policies give momentum to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, prompting scientists to engage with diverse disciplines and societal actors. Drawing on conference observations, interviews and document analysis, we compare how research is oriented to diverse actors’ matters in two interdisciplinary social scientific fields: marine social sciences (MSS) and forest policy research (FPR), which explore how people use, value and relate to maritime worlds and forests, respectively. MSS scholars study interactions and power differentials between diverse maritime actors, and actively debate whose matters MSS scholarship should orient to. In contrast, FPR scholars primarily orient their research to forest managers and forest policy makers and leave such orientations largely implicit. We argue that fields’ socio-historical developmental trajectories account for these differences, such as the fields’ relative autonomy and dominant scholarly approaches which shape reflexivity.

Building on these findings, we tentatively reflect on whether fields’ socio-historical developmental trajectories might also shape mobilisations of hope and loss. Discussions about these emotions permeated the last MSS conference - thematised around navigating ‘blue fear’ and anxieties in the Anthropocene - but seem less prevalent in FPR.

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Paper short abstract:

This talk zooms in on radical changes in how deep seas were perceived historically. Shifts in perceptions—visible on sea maps—were driven by new investigations into the depths of the oceans, which themselves were carried out in the hope for economic and military fortunes.

Paper long abstract:

Open seas have long been outside of the scope of strategic and scientific interests. Notwithstanding their heavy use for transport, before 1650 there were no serious attempts to investigate what was underneath their surfaces. Anything that sank was simply gone forever. Even the surfaces themselves were perceived as strange spaces. They were not claimable like lands. They first lacked geographical boundaries but, second, also posed a technical problem. To enforce borders, one needs cartography. But although maps of the oceans surely existed, it was technically impossible to find one’s actual position on such a map, let alone compare said position to hypothetical borders.

This talk focuses on how and why seas and oceans became an object of study in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on maps and published treatises, I show how developments of depth technologies relied on the local knowledge of fisherfolk, pearl divers, and sailors. Hope and loss were central. Sailors’ depth measurements, for example, were aimed to find safe places to land or anchor, and to avoid the danger of wrecking on underwater rocks or banks. Over the eighteenth century, however, depth measures did get tied up with highly politicized claims of ownership. Here strategic hopes and losses popped up: as I will show, oceans depths were explored in the hope to find and claim the riches of the seas’ volume and their bottom. Even though the material technologies needed to explore depths were utopian, their imagined future drove further investigations of the ocean’s depths.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the emergence of octopuses’ consciousness as an object of scientific and philosophical inquiry. By exploring cephalopods science from nineteenth-century anatomy to contemporary neurology, it traces the conceptualization of ocean critters as having peculiar minds.

Paper long abstract:

In 2023, the United Nations launched a campaign urging member countries to ratify the High Seas Alliances treaty for ocean conservation. The campaign's poster features a large octopus, whose ink transforms into the ink with which UN countries sign the treaty. Octopuses, however, are not under significant risk of extinction. So, why select an animal that is not endangered to symbolize the treaty? This paper explains how the creatures which were vilified by nineteenth-century novelists turned into a symbol for alternative minds for twenty-first century policymakers.

Cephalopods (squids, cuttlefish, nautilus, and octopuses), where a subject of systematic study by European anatomists as early as the 1830s. With research aquariums still undeveloped, English readers had to consult tales by sea travellers to learn about cephalopods in action. These stories depicted violent encounters where giant cephalopods twisted their sleek arms around the human body, pulling it down to the depths of the ocean.

However, the perception of octopuses transformed throughout the twentieth century. Experimentation with living octopuses, pioneered by J. Z. Young, revealed their large neuronal structure and rapid tissue regeneration, making them excellent models for studying the nervous system. Explorations in neurobiology and behavioral studies provided new perspectives on the distinctive mental abilities of octopuses. By the onset of the twenty-first century, philosophers of mind tapped into the growing body of scientific evidence regarding octopuses' specialized intelligence and communication skills, making the octopus into a model animal that prompts a reevaluation of concepts related to consciousness and mind.

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Paper short abstract:

The contribution discusses divergent visions of oceanic futures by scrutinizing different actors' anticipatory practices. It aims to speculate on the confluence or divergence of images of the future.

Paper long abstract:

The proliferating economization of the ocean (Asdal & Huse, 2023) also manifests itself in contested futures. While mediating concepts such as "the sustainable blue economy" can only seemingly overcome the contradictions posed by the interplay between technoscientific visions directed towards blue innovation, policy plans for marine protection and expectations of coastal communities, oceanic futures diverge. Through anticipatory practices, or "techniques of futuring" (Oomen et al., 2021), oceanic futures take shape. Some of the resulting sociotechnical imaginaries or ecological visions are disseminated and may become socially performative (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015; Pfotenhauer & Jasanoff, 2017). Others may be marginalized.

In our contribution, we scrutinize the contested landscape of oceanic futures. By relating the anticipatory practices of activists, policymakers, artists, volunteers, and scientists, we outline how visions are mobilized to act on the ocean and its materialities. Therefore, we analyze diverse empirical material. First, we consider interviews with young adults engaged in initiatives that aim to foster the connection between humans and water. Second, we draw from a selection of cultural sources, books, games, movies and more that portray and enact human-water relationships, all obtained through horizon scanning research. We look forward to discussing how hopes and fears are articulated in visions, how they frame pasts, presents, and futures, and where potential frictions come to the fore. Furthermore, we are intrigued to discuss the interplay between envisioned socio-technical innovations and the more-than-human assemblages that enable them, from algae over jellyfish to ocean currents.

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Paper short abstract:

While deep sea mining (DSM) has been promised as the solution to the transition to clean energy, many unknowns remain about deep sea environments and DSM impacts on them. This article investigates how narratives of deep sea researchers become dominated by futures wherein DSM is seen as inevitable.

Paper long abstract:

The fields in Ocean Science are being called on to find solutions to grand societal challenges. What happens when potential solutions to these issues create tensions with other concerns, e.g., environmental conservation? Solutions to grand societal challenges are not uniformly agreed upon and may counteract each other. One such example is deep sea mining (DSM), which promises to supply the rare earth elements necessary for the energy transition, but whose harvesting methods threaten to damage a vast, potentially climate-relevant, but understudied environment. However, particularly within the scientific communities, most narratives around DSM regard deep sea mining as inevitable choosing to focus rather on mitigation and/ or “sustainable exploitation”. Arguments around whether and how to engage fail to imagine other future outcomes (e.g., ones in which DSM is no longer inevitable). Through the case of DSM and the deep sea researchers that (dis)engage with this incipient industry, this paper will examine how researchers, called upon to be societally relevant, both navigate the tensions arising from potentially conflicting understandings of what it means to do societally and environmental relevant research and how they draw from certain, potentially contradictory, logics to produce coherent narratives around why to engaging with DSM. Using the concept of ambivalence (see Singleton & Michael, 1993), the talk will unpack their narratives to explore the presence of inevitability within them with the hope to better understand how certain imaginations of DSM futures come dominate and what this means for both deep sea research and environmental conservation.

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Paper short abstract:

This contribution explores how deep sea science futures are brought into being by ocean researchers in the context of the development of a European science policy brief, which will outline a future for research on the deep sea and ocean health.

Paper long abstract:

Early 2023 the Working Group on Deep Sea and Ocean Health kicked off their attempt to write a ‘Future Science Brief.’ The working group is initiated by the European Marine Board and consists of selected ocean scientists from different European marine research institutions. The Working Group is asked to take stock on present knowledge of the deep sea, identify knowledge gaps and propose future steps for sustainable ocean science and governance for the deep sea. Through ethnographic observations, interviews with working group members and a document analysis, we attend to how certain kinds of futures, e.g., environmental, societal or articulated, as being desirable or unattractive in the making of this policy brief, and how particular roles and values are being ascribed to ocean science, including by ocean scientists themselves, for this future making project. Our contribution also reflects on how this future is situated in a larger socio-ecological, political, and material context of deep sea exploration and potential extraction in which scientists, governments and industry are tightly interacting.

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Paper short abstract:

The relationship with the ocean as a source of life and threat among relocated communities in Fiji tells a story of dynamism and transformation worth to be documented

Paper long abstract:

While somewhere in the global North governors can still afford to deny the effects of climate change, in small island developing states the urgency of climate change became a tangible reality more than a decade ago when the coastal community of Vunidogoloa in Fiji was the first one to relocate due to the damages caused by sea level rise. Soon after, many other villages were enlisted as in need of relocation by the Fijian government. Today, more than 82 communities are on the move from the seashore to higher ground threatened by the nowadays periodical intrusion of sea water into the land, a clear manifestation of global climate change. Frequent floods and erosion do not only affect the livelihood of local communities, pushing them further inland in search of cultivable land to sustain their needs and changing the space management of the village area, but also the social and the cultural of indigenous communities that must inevitably come to terms with the challenges brought by the ocean and adapt their knowledge and strategies of survival accordingly.

While the ocean still sustains the livelihoods of coastal villages and articulates the ancestral ties between indigenous people and their environements, it has become the source of new concerns and fears in a multi-faceted and dynamic relationship. Communities come to the sea for fishing and mobility, and the sea comes to land jeopardizing cultivations and the geography of Fijian villages. Climate change induced relocations are challenging the traditional lifestyle of iTaukei people, transforming their sense of belonging, their perceptions of past and future, and their aspirations. This paper will look at how relocating communities engage creatively with the ocean as the place in which the problem lies next to the solution and will reflect on what other people and islands can learn from each other in times of climate change and transformation.

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Paper short abstract:

Attempting to repair ecosystems or maintain planetary inhabitability in the face of climate crises, the ocean's material capacity of absorbing CO2 is mobilised as hope-giving matter of concern for being utilized as a carbon sink via technoscientific practices of cultivating and sinking macroalgae.

Paper long abstract:

Under the impression of the ongoing loss of livelihoods, extinction of species and destruction of entire ecosystems the longing for hope is strong. To that end, the ocean as a projective empty and wide space provides a canvas and is being mobilised for various – at times speculative – technoscientific attempts to enabling livable futures.

My approach focusses less on the ocean as providing resources, but on (imaginations of) its capacity of reducing the harmful greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. These capacities are tried to be fostered by enhanced cultivation of macroalgae to absorb carbon dioxide from the surrounding water via photosynthesis and to finally sequestering carbon dioxide by sinking biomass in the deep sea. Herewith comes the implicit hope and explicit goal of healing damaged ecosystems by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide through so called “negative emission technologies”. A side effect links to economic processes of carbon accounting and trading that does play a crucial role in oceanic future making.

This is a wonderful example of how materialities like the seawater, lifeforms such as algae, solar radiation, and chemical substances such as carbon dioxide are being (re)negotiated for enabling hopeful oceanic and planetary futures. Especially at the intersection of technoscientific (knowledge) practices and ecological crises which are at play, oceanic future making can be investigated fruitfully.

E-mail address: graul@em.uni-frankfurt.de , Format: Traditional presentation.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper involves immersing in the haptic nature of sailing, where social researchers engage in an oceanic perspective. Sailing transforms into a profound experience, and with the crew's acute attentiveness, it embraces sustainable degrowth and advocates for ocean sustainability.

Paper long abstract:

Stop, look and listen! Drawing inspiration from Ingold's Perception of the Environment (2000), this paper focuses on exploring the haptic nature of social research experiences aboard sailing vessels. Researchers and fellow crew members alike step into an environment where keen attention to the nuances of movement guides subsequent actions, including adjusting sails and managing lines.

Researchers, engaged in their daily practices, are persistently attuned and responsive to both their movements and the dynamics within their surroundings (Serres 2008). The crew's profound attentiveness at sea, equips them with observational prowess, enabling decisions that embrace "pure possibility" (Nelson, 2012). This engagement in the art of seafaring leads to solutions that safeguard the future of oceans, aligning with De Beukelaer's (2023) use of the term “ship earth” to emphasize the finitude of resources available on the planet once metaphorically comparing it with the climate crisis and the necessity of reshaping the world with skills of cooperation owned aboard by making, restoring and creating physical and relational human potentialities.

The ship, as an essential piece of equipment facilitating life at sea, involves a process of personal interrelationship with the environment, effectively bringing knowledge from the offshore world ashore or experiencing the materiality of the ocean (Steinberg 2022, Blum 2010). In eco-shipping initiatives that are rooted in a profound cultural shift towards reduced consumption and localized production, sailing emerges as a powerful transformative experience as it embraces the concept of sustainable degrowth in response to the prevailing forces of global capitalism (Ertör and Hadjimichael 2020).

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Paper short abstract:

This talk delves into feelings of hope and despair when it comes to alien marine species and shifting marine ecologies in the Mediterranean Sea. Through ‘cruel environmentalism,’ I describe my interlocutors’ apocalyptic mindset and analyze why eating alien fish can be seen as hopeful acts.

Paper long abstract:

In the last five years, alien lionfish, pufferfish, rabbitfish and sea urchins have proliferated in southern Crete. They are part of the 600 alien marine species that have entered the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. Vibrant imperial debris and afterlives of global shipping, the tropical fishes are transforming ecologies across the sea. In this presentation, I delve into feelings of hope and despair when it comes to these processes. I conceptualize my interlocutors’ apocalyptic mindset and its concomitant ethics (which alarmingly is reflected in current biodiversity agendas) as a form of ‘cruel environmentalism’ to zoom into two rather different forms of cruelty. First, this mindset relies on necropolitics, advocating the killing of migrant species to save native ecologies. In this case, the solution to goes via the belly and 'invasivorism', i.e. the devouring of invasive species. Awareness campaigns inform consumers to “eat responsibly” by putting aliens on the menu. Marine biologists underline that endemic fishes need to cultivate a taste for alien inhabitants, turning invasivorism into a multispecies ‘responsibility.’ Second, this environmentalism is a form of ‘cruel optimism’ because of its futility. At its core, Laurent Berland (2011) explains, a psychological or emotional attachment is cruel when your desire (or the object of your desire) turns into an obstacle for your flourishing. The seascapes my interlocutors yearn for and seek to protect are not only landscapes of the past, they are idealized frozen memories of ecologies that only existed for a sliver of time (Kirsey 2015).

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Paper short abstract:

This proposal discusses the implications of the hegemony of modern science in the conception and implementation of Ocean Literacy. It thus demonstrates how its colonial legacy produces hierarchies of knowledge and points out some challenges and possible paths for overcoming.

Paper long abstract:

The complexity of the current planetary civilizational crisis (Morin and Kern, 1995), and more specifically, the deterioration of human and non-human life conditions in the coastal-marine zone, have challenged science and public policymakers. In this context, the promotion of Ocean Literacy has become an important strategy for the construction of sustainable values, perceptions, and lifestyles.

A sensitive and challenging point within the framework of the Decade of Ocean Science, and of Ocean Literacy, has been the openness to dialogue with indigenous and traditional peoples and their knowledge systems. With the aim of contributing to this debate, the present proposal problematizes the hegemony of modern science in promoting Ocean Literacy, in light of the current debate on decoloniality and interculturality.

The central argument aims to demonstrate that even in the face of significant efforts to promote the ocean literacy, we will still perpetuate the "colonial inhabiting of the world" (Ferdinand, 2019) if we do not address structurally the modern scientific paradigm and its hierarchical structure of knowledge. This paradigm has shaped, for centuries, the practices of research and teaching institutions, and, in turn, has been decisive in marine sciences and their educational approaches for ocean conservation and sustainable development .

It is hoped, therefore, to contribute to the elaboration and dissemination of transdisciplinary scientific approaches, that promote the cognitive justice and are sensitivity to ecological issues and the multiple violences and polarizations caused by the historical process of colonization.

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Paper short abstract:

A surge of restoration initiatives aims to bring oyster reefs back from the brink of extinction, shaping new kinds of marine nature for an uncertain future. Through the lens of care, I explore how restoration enacts in-/exclusions in knowing and caring for oysters across the Northern Atlantic.

Paper long abstract:

A surge of marine restoration initiatives promises to bring reefs back from the brink of extinction. Yet, in current times of ecological precarity, there is no ‘natural condition’ to go back to. Instead, restoration shapes new kinds of marine nature for an uncertain future. Applying the feminist lens of ‘care' I re-conceptualize the politics involved in reef restoration. Despite its moral association of ‘doing good’, care is political. It is underpinned by different assumptions of what is a good and healthy reef, and what knowledge should guide intervention. How do such politics of care shape the conditions for including different kinds of knowledge and values in marine restoration? Addressing this question, I explore how restoration enacts specific inclusions and exclusions in knowing and caring for marine reef-building creatures. While corals receive growing attention in marine STS, this paper shifts focus to reefs in the temperate zone. Here, a proliferation of projects enacts oyster reefs as a rising matter of concern and care in the restoration of marine biodiversity. I draw from multi-sited research, connecting case studies in the United States, Netherlands and United Kingdom. Here, oysters are uniquely entangled with transatlantic cultural history, colonization and industrialization. An ethnographic focus on oyster care practices sheds light on the current re-imagining and re-shaping of human-nature connections in (post)industrial degraded marine environments in the North.