Situating Un/Tethered visions of Marine Biomaterials within the Blue Economy Turn

Keywords: Blue Economy, Marine Biotechnology, Marine Biomaterials, Chitosan, Shrimp, Oceans
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 13

Abstract

The ‘Blue Economy’ is one of myriad emerging ‘oceanic turns’. Blue Economy ideas and actions promote coastal/marine economic development and technological innovation that has a distinctly oceanic flavour. Recently, Blue Economy ideas have captured the attention of scholars, corporate actors, NGOs and policymakers, resulting in a diverse body of scholarship and practical initiatives that place oceanic development centre-stage. However, there exists considerable ambiguity, tensions and omissions within the Blue Economy oceanic turn. The concept remains largely undefined and has been subject to critique regarding oversights on issues of sustainability and socio-environmental justice. Indeed, the Blue Economy is an amorphous and voluminous oceanic turn. It lacks defined shape and is comprised of multiple epistemological threads: some that are firmly tethered to oft-critiqued neoliberal, extractive visions of nature; and others, untethered from such hegemonic ideologies, which espouse relational visions of abundant oceanic futures that the Blue Economy can bring.

This paper examines the extraction of marine biomaterials and development of marine biotechnology as a diffuse thread of the Blue Economy turn. I focus on the extraction, processing, and applications of shrimp-derived chitosan to conceptually tease out how chitosan is being tethered to particular terrestrial spaces, techno-futurist imaginaries, and neoliberal ideologies associated with the Blue Economy; whilst simultaneously becoming untethered from the oceanic spaces and ecologies that the Blue Economy ostensibly seeks to support. I explore how diverse and conflicting visions of the Blue Economy lead to paradoxical twists, tangles and tethering of the threads making up the global circulations of marine-derived chitosan.