Oceanic Turns and A Reconsideration of Maritime Borders: State Power and Territorialities over the Ocean

Keywords: political ecology; volume geography; wet ontology; mobility; sovereignty; frontier; ocean grabbing
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 29

Abstract

While borders traverse both land and sea, current research has mostly concentrated on issues concerning terrestrial borders. Assumptions about state governance based on the terrestrial borders have been complicated by the depth and relative unboundedness of ocean waters. Simultaneously, a new body of scholarship has shown how the seemingly boundless oceans are in actuality subject to a variety of bordering forces. Accordingly, this paper will review current research on maritime borders in geography and other related disciplines, with a specific focus on state territoriality. We divide the literature into three main themes. The first relates to land-based Westphalian ideologies, with a focus on the practice of ‘ocean-grabbing’ for resource extraction and environmental conservation. The second concerns volume geography with an emphasis on scholarship about wet ontology. The third comprises emerging discussions around the concepts of ocean frontiers and voluminous states. While geographers can make great theoretical and methodological contributions to advance the study of maritime borders, more discussions about how to integrate the study of maritime borders into the processual, mobility, and material turns are crucial in order to keep up with the rapid changes occurring in oceanic spaces. Conclusively, we propose land-ocean inter-bordering, multiple materialities, and mobile state power as three future issues to respond to the rapid-changing maritime borders.