Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean PDF Download

Author: Kimberley Peters
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317000153
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

View

Book Description
Our world is a water world. Seventy percent of our planet consists of ocean. However, geography has traditionally overlooked this vital component of the earth's composition. The word 'geography' directly translates as 'earth writing' and in line with this definition the discipline has preoccupied itself with the study of terrestrial spaces of society and nature. This book challenges human geography's preoccupation with the terrestrial, investigating the terra incognita of the seas and oceans. Linking to new theoretical debates shaping the geographic discipline (such as affect, assemblage, emotion, hybridity and the more-than-human), this volume unlocks new knowledge concerning the human geographies of ocean space. The book casts adrift stable, bounded and fixed conceptions of space and advances geographical understanding based on the world as 'becoming', changing, mobile and processional. This ontology supports the notion that the oceans are not simply fluid in a literal way, but also in a conceptual sense, suggesting that the seas have their own fluid natures - their own capacities and agencies - which are co-fabricated with social and cultural life. This book features twelve chapters, authored by key academics contributing to this growing field of research. The book is divided into three sections, including an Introduction by the editors and a foreword by Prof. Philip E. Steinberg, the leading scholar in the field of maritime geographies. The first section of the book considers the ways in which different watery spaces from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea have been conceptualized, theorized and ’known’ through metaphors, voyages of discovery and scientific endeavour. The second section examines how oceans are experienced; through various activities including driving on water, kayaking in water and diving under water. The final section explores the relations between human life and the nature of the sea as a material, mobile and more-than-human spa

Author: Dr Jon Anderson
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472403770
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

View

Book Description
Our world is a water world. Seventy percent of our planet consists of ocean. However, geography has traditionally overlooked this vital component of the earth's composition. The word 'geography' directly translates as 'earth writing' and in line with this definition the discipline has preoccupied itself with the study of terrestrial spaces of society and nature. This book challenges human geography's preoccupation with the terrestrial, investigating the terra incognita of the seas and oceans. Linking to new theoretical debates shaping the geographic discipline (such as affect, assemblage, emotion, hybridity and the more-than-human), this volume unlocks new knowledge concerning the human geographies of ocean space. The book casts adrift stable, bounded and fixed conceptions of space and advances geographical understanding based on the world as 'becoming', changing, mobile and processional. This ontology supports the notion that the oceans are not simply fluid in a literal way, but also in a conceptual sense, suggesting that the seas have their own fluid natures - their own capacities and agencies - which are co-fabricated with social and cultural life. This book features twelve chapters, authored by key academics contributing to this growing field of research. The book is divided into three sections, including an Introduction by the editors and a foreword by Prof. Philip E. Steinberg, the leading scholar in the field of maritime geographies. The first section of the book considers the ways in which different watery spaces from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea have been conceptualized, theorized and ‘known’ through metaphors, voyages of discovery and scientific endeavour. The second section examines how oceans are experienced; through various activities including driving on water, kayaking in water and diving under water. The final section explores the relations between human life and the nature of the sea as a material, mobile and more-than-human space, examining the influences of the ocean on the migratory practices of fishermen in Senegal, to the more-than-human geographies of the contemporary scallop industry, the historical journeys of steam ship companies and the pirate radio enterprise. Oceans are fundamental to the workings of the world as we know it. Critical human activities take place at sea, including trade, tourism, migration, scientific exploration and resource exploitation. The water world is therefore significantly entwined with our everyday lives. This book offers a novel and important contribution to an ever-emerging cross-disciplinary subject matter.

Author: Kimberley Peters
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351619667
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 591

View

Book Description
Invisible as the seas and oceans may be for so many of us, life as we know it is almost always connected to, and constituted by, activities and occurrences that take place in, on and under our oceans. The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space provides a first port of call for scholars engaging in the ‘oceanic turn’ in the social sciences, offering a comprehensive summary of existing trends in making sense of our water worlds, alongside new, agenda-setting insights into the relationships between society and the ‘seas around us’. Accordingly, this ambitious text not only attends to a growing interest in our oceans, past and present; it is also situated in a broader spatial turn across the social sciences that seeks to account for how space and place are imbricated in socio-cultural and political life. Through six clearly structured and wide-ranging sections, The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space examines and interrogates how the oceans are environmental, historical, social, cultural, political, legal and economic spaces, and also zones where national and international security comes into question. With a foreword and introduction authored by some of the leading scholars researching and writing about ocean spaces, alongside 31 further, carefully crafted chapters from established as well as early career academics, this book provides both an accessible guide to the subject and a cutting-edge collection of critical ideas and questions shaping the social sciences today. This handbook brings together the key debates defining the ‘field’ in one volume, appealing to a wide, cross-disciplinary social science and humanities audience. Moreover, drawing on a range of international examples, from a global collective of authors, this book promises to be the benchmark publication for those interested in ocean spaces, past and present. Indeed, as the seas and oceans continue to capture world-wide attention, and the social sciences continue their seaward ‘turn’, The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space will provide an invaluable resource that reveals how our world is a water world.

Author: Rainer F. Buschmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 577

View

Book Description
This single-volume resource explores the five major oceans of the world, addressing current issues such as sea rise and climate change and explaining the significance of the oceans from historical, geographic, and cultural perspectives. The World's Oceans: Geography, History, and Environment is a one-stop resource that describes in-depth the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern Oceans and identifies their importance, today and throughout history. Essays address the subject areas of oceans and seas in world culture, fishing and shipping industries through history, ocean exploration, and climate change and oceans. The book also presents dozens of entries covering a breadth of topics on human culture, the environment, history, and current issues as they relate to the oceans and ocean life. Sample entries provide detailed information on topics such as the Bermuda Triangle, Coral Reefs, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Ice Melt, Myths and Legends, Piracy, and Whaling. Contributions to the work come from top researchers in the fields of history and maritime studies, including Paul D'Arcy, John Gillis, Tom Hoogervorst, Michael North, and Lincoln Paine. The volume highlights the numerous ways in which Earth's oceans have influenced culture and society, from the earliest seafaring civilizations to the future of the planet.

Author: Mike Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429685424
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

View

Book Description
The seas and oceans are currently taking centre stage in academic study and public consciousness. From the plastics littering our seas, to the role of climate change on ocean currents from unequal access of marine resources to the treacherous experiences of seafarers who keep our global economy afloat; now is a crucial time to examine how we live with the sea. This ambitious book brings together an interdisciplinary and international cohort of contributors from within and?beyond?academia. It offers a range and diversity of insights unlike previous collections. An ‘oceanic turn’ is taking place, with a burgeoning of academic work that takes seriously the place of seas and oceans in understanding socio-cultural and political life, past and present. Yet, there is a significant gap concerning the ways in which we engage with seas and oceans, with a will to enliven action and evoke change. This book explores these challenges, offering insights from spatial planning, architectural design, geography, educational studies, anthropology and cultural studies. An examination through these lenses can help us to better understand human relationships with the seas and oceans, and promote an ethic of care for the future.

Author: Mike Brown
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040023347
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 251

View

Book Description
This book explores the educational dimension of people’s engagement with the ocean. Across formal, informal, and nonformal learning contexts, it examines how experiences of the ocean and ‘blue spaces’ help us to understand ourselves, others, and our place within the natural environment, and the place of the ocean in our sociocultural and political life. Drawing on creative projects from around the world, the book introduces topics as diverse as ocean sailing, migrants’ experiences of learning to surf, experiencing seascapes through sounds, and the importance of fostering connections with the sea. It provides examples of innovative teaching and learning practices, and the pedagogical possibilities that engagement with the ocean offers to outdoor studies scholars and practitioners in terms of education, and the enhancement of our well-being and the environment. This is fascinating reading for advanced students, researchers, teachers, and educational practitioners with an interest in outdoor studies, experiential and outdoor learning, leisure and recreation studies, environmental studies, or geography.

Author: Anne-Flore Laloë
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317030559
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170

View

Book Description
Despite the fact that the vast majority of the earth’s surface is made up of oceans, there has been surprisingly little work by geographers which critically examines the ocean-space and our knowledge and perceptions of it. This book employs a broad conceptual and methodological framework to analyse specific events that have contributed to the production of geographical knowledge about the ocean. These include, but are not limited to, Christopher Columbus’ first transatlantic journey, the mapping of nonexistent islands, the establishment of transoceanic trade routes, the discovery of largescale water movements, the HMS Challenger expedition, the search for the elusive Terra Australis Incognita, the formulation of the theory of continental drift and the mapping of the seabed. Using a combination of original, empirical (archival, material and cartographic), and theoretical sources, this book uniquely brings together fascinating narratives throughout history to produce a representation and mapping of geographical oceanic knowledge. It questions how we know what we know about the oceans and how this knowledge is represented and mapped. The book then uses this representation and mapping as a way to coherently trace the evolution of oceanic spatial awareness. In recent years, particularly in historical geography, discovering and knowing the ocean-space has been a completely separate enterprise from discovering and colonising the lands beyond it. There has been such focus on studying colonised lands, yet the oceans between them have been neglected. This book gives the geographical ocean a voice to be acknowledged as a space where history, geography and indeed historical geography took place.

Author: Will Abberley
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527525538
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

View

Book Description
Underwater Worlds throws open a new area in the emerging field of “blue” environmental humanities by exploring how subaqueous environments have been imagined and represented across cultures and media. The collection pursues this theme through various disciplinary perspectives and methodologies, including history, literary and film criticism, myth studies, legal studies and the history of art. The essays suggest that, since the nineteenth century, technologies of underwater exploration have generated novel sensory experiences that have destabilized conventional modes of representation and influenced new aesthetic forms from fiction and television to virtual reality. The collection also examines how representations of underwater environments have reflected and critiqued humans’ relationships with marine ecology and life-forms. It reflects on the deeper cultural and symbolic resonances of mythical figures such as mermaids, sea monsters and the ghosts of drowned seafarers. The contributions further reveal myriad political, ideological, gendered and racial dimensions of representing underwater environments.

Author: Mat Coleman
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1785365649
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

View

Book Description
The so-called spatial turn in the social sciences means that many researchers have become much more interested in what can be called the spatialities of power, or the ways in which power as a medium for achieving goals is related to where it takes place. Most famous authors on the subject, such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, saw power as entirely equivalent to domination exercised by some over others. Though this meaning is hardly redundant, understandings of power have become more multidimensional and nuanced as a result of the spatial turn. Much recent writing in human geography, for example, has rigorously extended use of the term power beyond its typical understanding as a resource that pools up in some hands and some places to a medium of agency that has different effects depending on how it is deployed across space and how actors cooperate, or not, to give it effect. To address this objective, the book is organized thematically into four sections that cover the main areas in which much of the contemporary work on geographies of power is concentrated: bodies, economy, environment and energy, and war.

Author: James Bradley
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063390167
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

View

Book Description
"Deep Water is a major achievement....Bradley's skills both as novelist and essayist converge here to create this wise, compassionate and urgent book, characterized throughout by a clarity of prose and a bracing moral gaze that searches water, self and reader." —ROBERT MACFARLANE, bestselling author of Underland In this thrilling work—a blend of history, science, nature writing, and environmentalism—acclaimed writer James Bradley plunges into the unknown to explore the deepest recesses of the natural world. Seventy-one percent of the earth’s surface is ocean. These waters created, shaped, and continue to sustain not just human life, but all life on Planet Earth, and perhaps beyond it. They serve as the stage for our cultural history—driving human development from evolution through exploration, colonialism, and the modern era of global leisure and trade. They are also the harbingers of the future—much of life on Earth cannot survive if sea levels are too low or too high, temperatures too cold or too warm. Our oceans are vast spaces of immense wonder and beauty, and our relationship to them is innate and awe inspired. Deep Water is both a lyrically written personal meditation and an intriguing wide-ranging reported epic that reckons with our complex connection to the seas. It is a story shaped by tidal movements and deep currents, lit by the insights of philosophers, scientists, artists and other great minds. Bradley takes readers from the atomic creation of the oceans, to the wonders within, such as fish migrations guided by electromagnetic sensing. He describes the impacts of human population shifts by boat and speaks directly and uncompromisingly to the environmental catastrophe that is already impacting our lives. It is also a celebration of the ocean’s glories and the extraordinary efforts of the scientists and researchers who are unlocking its secrets. These myriad strands are woven together into a tapestry of life that captures not only our relationship with the planet, but our past, and perhaps most importantly, what lies ahead for us. A brilliant blend of Robert MacFarlane’s Underland, Susan Casey’s The Underworld, and Simon Winchester’s Pacific and The Atlantic, Deep Water taps into the essence of our planet and who we are.