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.

Please join us!

Contact Karin Ahlberg for more information.

BIOrdinary Ocean Day Program (205 Kb)