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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.

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).