Paper short abstract:

Based on research in sites of maritime governance and onboard cargo ships, the paper explores the intersection of maritime labour, maritime infrastructure and the marine environment. As concepts such as "blue growth" are mobilized to create value, the everyday labour of maritime workers is devalued.

Paper long abstract:

The sea is at the center of many anxieties and hopes for the future. Global warming, rising sea levels, increase in extreme weather events are all fears of a future that seems to be already here. At the same time, the sea and the maritime industries are key sites of action and potential for making the future world a livable place. Drawing on ethnographic research in institutions of maritime governance, such as the International Maritime Organization, Coast Guards and Maritime Industry Authorities, as well as with seafarers working onboard cargo-ships, this paper explores the productive and destructive potential that can be found at the intersections of maritime labour, maritime infrastructures and the marine environment. Combining political ecology and political economy frameworks, the paper considers the ways in which ships and maritime labour are at the forefront of technological developments that impact the environment in significant ways. As new, more environmentally friendly shipping technologies and practices are discussed and negotiated in international forums such as the IMO, and as new policies are formulated, the everyday realities of the workers who are immediately affected by these changes and practices are usually of less concern. At the same time, when things go wrong, it is usually these workers who are in the firing line, and have to carry the burden of responsibility. With concepts such as "blue growth" mobilized to create "value" in the industry, they also devalue and depoliticize the everyday work and destruction of workers' lives that such growth depends on.

Paper short abstract:

The interlinkings between cruise tourism and cruise shipbuilding in Venice and Monfalcone, two cities located in the northern Adriatic, are the point of focus of my ethnographic research. It engages with the social and cultural conditions of mobility and transport.

Paper long abstract:

Cruise ships leave their imprint in infrastructures and the urban environment of destinations. Infrastructures can be approached as materialised ideas of social and political order. They produce "the ambient conditions of everyday life" (Larkin 2013: 336) and are a fundamentally relational concept (cf. Leigh Star 1999). I intend to follow the relations between organisational structures and social interactions using the examples of Venice and Monfalcone in the northern Adriatic.

Venice developed into an important homeport where most passengers embark since cruise ships have been increasingly reaching European port cities. With growing arrivals of big ships, not only has the number of tourists, but also criticism and protest concerning ecological, social and cultural resources risen. However, tourism and its effects are only a part of the cruise sector. Besides cruise tourism, cruise shipbuilding plays a crucial role for the city`s economy, as a shipyard of Fincantieri, Europe`s largest shipbuilder, is located in Marghera, the industrial area on the mainland of Venice. 130 km north of Venice, a second Fincantieri shipyard is located in Monfalcone. While popular media discourses focus on Venice and the effects of cruise tourism for the city and its lagoon, the employment of workers from the global south dominates societal and political debates in Monfalcone.

In my talk, I want to trace the interconnections between cruise tourism and shipbuilding, which reflects not only in debates concerning infrastructures in both cities, but also in both opposing and overlapping attitudes and needs of environmental activists and industrial workers.

Paper short abstract:

Seafarers' labour is governed by important international norms. How do they stand in relation to the massive de-regulation of the shipping industry? This contribution focuses on labour inspectors and (inter)national organizations in charge of maintaining and enforcing maritime labour standards.

Paper long abstract:

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that there must exist a "genuine link" between a vessel and the country whose flag it is flying. Thereafter employment matters on board merchant vessels have been primarily regulated by the law of the flag state. While this was meant to clarify jurisdiction over ships and improve working conditions of seafarers, it has been the engine of a multi-layered de-regulation in the shipping industry. The legal nature of the link between labour performed at sea and flag states is indeed notoriously obscure and contributes to the spread of so-called flags of convenience, as well as labour rights abuses. Today, more than 70% of the worldwide commercial fleet is registered under a flag of convenience.

Against (or in spite of) this backdrop, modern seafarers are incredibly busy with an endless paper trail of certificates, documents of compliance and record books. A number of inspectors, certifiers and auditors regularly go on board in order to issue certificates and check compliance with international norms on matters such as construction, navigational rules, and environmental protection. In recent years, minimum labour standards have been yet included to this existing regime of inspection. Based on current ethnographic fieldwork in London, Hamburg and Panama City, my contribution presents the work of inspectors upholding seafarers' labour rights and certifying their working conditions. It engages with anthropological debates concerning the economic re-regulation and is an attempt to think those in relation with the juridification of maritime labour.

Paper short abstract:

In my presentation, I will discuss the effects of disciplinary practices within the authoritarian organisational structure of global merchant ships on the daily lifes of seafarers. In the postcolonial space these ships constitute, such practices often intersect with racialised boundary-work.

Paper long abstract:

In my doctoral research, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I explored processes of occupational boundary-work among seafarers on global merchant ships. In this presentation, I will focus on the significance of everyday practices of discipline and the effects these practices have on seafarers' everyday life. The workplace organisation on these ships resembles a quasi-military disciplinary regime, which these practices serve to maintain. Simultaneously, the hierarchical structure widely parallels the ethnic segmentation of the crew. (White) Europeans hold most of the senior positions while the junior officers and ratings mostly originate from labour supply countries of the global South. Thus, the ship constitutes a postcolonial space where global North-South relations project into the well-defined space on the micro-level of interpersonal relations among crewmembers. Therefore, it is often not apparent from the individual empirical cases whether the observed practices are instances of boundary-work in terms of 'race' or formal rank. The authoritarian practice of discipline contradicts, on the one hand, the practical demands of the labour process on seafarers to take the initiative and solve problems independently, and on the other hand the ideology of the 'new spirit of capitalism'. In my presentation, I will explore the effects these, often racialised, disciplinary practices have on everyday life on board. First, seafarers reported an omnipresent 'fear of authority' which also became evident in everyday interactions. Second, the authoritarian structure tended to transgress into the sphere of leisure relations. Despite contrary intentions, the seafarers reproduced relations of power, domination and subordination within their private interactions.

Paper short abstract:

This paper, by drawing on different cases of defunct and working shipyards, looks at what cranes facilitate: at inoperative shipyard sites in Sweden, they are aesthetic elements and reminders of past glories, while inside functioning yards in Korea, they have on occasion become sites of resistance.

Paper long abstract:

De-industrialization, amidst the hectic calculations made about property that is being freed up for new projects, often simultaneously begets the flourishing of a particular kind of "industrial style"; that is, a curious recent trend in architecture and design that incorporates (and thereby re-commoditizes) factory remnants, industrial rubble and infrastructural elements into items of new aesthetic worth. In Europe and elsewhere, industrial spaces adjacent to the sea, such as old shipyards, are exceptionally attractive to urban developers: In such a fashion, abandoned shipping containers are now meant to inspire creative types, corroded steel becomes an appealing sight for start-up folks, and cranes are turned into defining features of a landscape now valued as "interesting" by those with plenty of money in their pockets. This paper, by juxtaposing different cases of value-making at both functioning and defunct shipyards in Europe and Asia, looks at the relational work facilitated by cranes in these different settings: at inoperative shipyard sites in Sweden, for istance, cranes can be a nostalgic reminder of past glories, and their disappearance is on occasion mourned, while at functioning yards in South Korea, shipbuilding cranes have sometimes been magnified into sites of resistance for the working populations around it. Zooming in on the Kockums Crane, which in the early 2000s made its way from Malmo, Sweden to Ulsan, South Korea after a rush-sale, I will explore the various economic and symbolic conversions a crane can undergo once it starts to move.

Paper short abstract:

The oil and gas industry has shaped Aberdeen and its Harbour. As reserves near peak production radical transformations are undergoing to revitalise local socio-economical geographies. The communities of Torry, formerly employed in the fishing industry, are at the forefront of this transformation.

Paper long abstract:

Aberdeen Harbour's history spans 900 years, but its current appearance is largely the result of its reconfiguration - started in the 1960s - by the oil and gas industry. Today, with North Sea reserves nearing peak production, the Harbour has become a hub for renewable energies and economic diversification. At the heart of these efforts is Aberdeen Harbour Expansion, operational in 2021.

This paper is the result of a lengthy acquaintance with the local communities of Torry (an economically deprived neighbourhood situated at the forefront of the Harbour development). In Torry, a rich legacy of memories testifies to a history of radical transformations and value-making in local socio-economical geographies: initially, from fishing and ship-building industries; today, from extractivism to decommissioning and a growing cruise sector.

As an anthropologist grounded in the study of migration and rurality in post-Soviet contexts, I bring an attention to the production of space, cognizant of the difficulties posed by retrospective interpretations (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 113). That is, our understanding of environments, whether 'natural' or built, entertains puzzling relations with their past and present use that can ultimately conceal history. The construction of maritime infrastructures can be thus framed by the realization that they combine, in intricate and often enigmatic ways, social memories and future imaginaries (Havey, Knox 2015: 6). I offer an ethnographical analysis that is brazenly incipient ; it represents a transition from previous work and is geared towards the resistances of rock, the clanging of machinery and engineering imaginaries.

Paper short abstract:

In Portugal despite the claim for a "new blue economy" fishers have difficulties envisioning the future of the activity. Based on ethnographic research I will focus on how fishers see and engage with fisheries regulation and in what way this affects their work and their perspectives of the future.

Paper long abstract:

In Portugal despite the maritime vocation rhetoric which claims for a "new blue economy", fisheries are in decline and are only evoked as a traditional feature, with touristic purposes.

The national policies and regulations, integrated into a Common Fisheries Policy, are introducing structural changes. Besides, with the growing tourist industry, there is a dispute over seashore territories. This is echoes of the wider context that offers different challenges for fisheries, related to the consequences of degradation of resources and market-based management.

There is tension between regulations and fishers' perceptions and practices, due to the feeling that policies only focus on resource preservation which limits the fishers' work and puts them in the hands of the market. Facing multi-scale changes, which have social impacts, fishers have difficulty envisioning the future of their activity and, consequently, they don't incentive their children to pursue this job. The idea of Portuguese fisheries decay is historical although it is gaining other meanings and used as an instrument to evidence problems. In daily lives communities do resist by not recognizing the legitimacy of those who set the rules, breaking them or adapting their work to face new challenges.

Based on ethnographic research in two Portuguese fishing communities (Setúbal e Olhão) this paper will focus on how fishers see and engage with fisheries regulations and with the State entities and in what way that affects directly their work and their perspectives of the future.

Paper short abstract:

This paper tracks sociotechnical imaginaries in formation, specifically as they relate to algae biomass and open-ocean farming. The paper investigates imaginative works that seek to intervene in the formation of these worlds.

Paper long abstract:

In the late 1960s, American scientists and engineers envisioned building a biofuels-based economy for the United States, one supported by vast open-ocean farms cultivating _Macrocystis pyrifera_, or giant kelp, an extremely productive macroalgae that forms "forests" along temperate reefs in the Pacific. These endeavors diminished in the 1980s, corresponding to the deregulation of U.S. natural gas markets. Recently, however, the U.S. Department of Energy has invested around $30 million in algae biomass research with the hopes of cultivating enough seaweed, in coming decades, to significantly reduce fossil fuel use and emissions. The successful application of these technologies would transform the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone into an intensive mariculture operation. What roles do imaginative works and acts play in giving these technological and infrastructural forms their shape?

To answer this question, this paper turns to the art world, specifically to the work of artist Peter Fend, to think through the stabilization of a sociotechnical imaginary of open-ocean farming. I report on participant observation with Fend who has been working with the mariculture concept for more than four decades. I also discuss Fend's ocean farming visions in relation to the science fiction novel _Deep Range_ (1957) by Arthur C. Clarke, which imagines a world in which plankton farming and whale ranching have scaled to meet the needs of a growing planet. I track how terrestrial notions of pastoralism and agriculture re-articulate in imagined seas.