Over the last decade anthropology has turned to bodies of water as social, cultural, and economic spaces, a move that Helmreich (2023) names the “Oceanic churn”. Oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, yet a terracentric approach still pervades much of anthropological research. How can we move beyond terracentrism to embrace oceanic perspectives that challenge our theoretical frameworks, epistemologies, and ontologies?
The goal of BIOrdinary Ocean Day is to learn from anthropologists focusing their research on oceans, seascapes and rivers, with an emphasis on the multifaceted life-forms and projects unfolding in these spaces. The day’s speakers investigate climate-change induced transformations of more-than-human marine ecologies, fluid dispossessions emerging out of aquaculture scalability, and the trajectories of mobile sea creature and their involvements in shifting biodiversities. The aquacentric perspectives that we explore raise questions that unsettle land-based concepts and epistemologies. The unboundedness of the sea, for example, forces us to rethink ideas of territory and current property regimes, and ask instead
how the ocean creates visions of both limitless capitalist expansion and future multispecies commons (Lien 2023). Similarly, heat and mobility become important topics. While the ocean acts as a vital buffer for land-dwellers against the impacts of climate change, an aquacentric perspective reveals how oceans are places of mass migration, as sea creatures become some
of the first climate refugees.
By engaging with fluid scales, sea times, and fishy mobilities, the BIOrdinary Ocean Day seeks to unmoor anthropology and explore how stuff – inhabitants, concepts and methods – appear from the perspective of the sea and river. The day consist of seven presentations or provocations followed by longer, open discussions about topics and themes raised by the presenters.
Session 1: Ownership, sovereignty & property
Chair: Karin Ahlberg, BIOrdinary, Stockholm University
Fluid Scalability; Frontiers and Commons in Salmon Waterworlds Marianne Lien, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
King of the Golden Pool: Sovereignty, Monsoon Time, and Riparian Lives on the Mekong Andrew Johnson, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University
12.30-13.45
LUNCH
13.45-15.45
Session 2: Violent Eating & Nourishing Care
Chair: Camelia Dewan, , Oslo/Uppsala University
Why People Care, and Why People Don’t Care about the Deep Sea Robert Blaisak, Resilience Center, Stockholm University
Hungry Crabs: More-Than-Human Mobility in the Strait of Sicily Emma Cyr, BIOrdinary, Stockholm University
Cruel Environmentalism and Invasivore Optimism: Eating Aliens in the Mediterranean as the Solution to Species Influx Karin Ahlberg, BIOrdinary, Stockholm University
15.45-16.15
FIKA
16.15-17.30
Session 3: Oceanpolis & Ocean Policing
Chair: Bengt G. Karlsson, BIOrdinary, Stockholm University.
The Microbiopolitics of Keeping Lobsters Alive: Rethinking Water in Maine’s Lobster Industry Jon Henrik Remme, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
Oysteropolis - Exploring the Political in More Than Human Worlds Ivana Macek, BIOrdinary, Stockholm University
The Ecography Lab at the department is engaged in an ongoing research project focusing on environmental and multispecies anthropology, with the aim of combining ecology and ethnography into one ecographic method and way on anlysis.
BIOrdinary Ocean Day Program (205 Kb)
