Ocean exploration is not inherently exploitative, regulatory, and
colonialist. Despite the historical record, discussions of oceanic space
Steinberg 99 (Philip E Steinberg- Department of Geography, Florida State University,
Tallahassee “The maritime mystique: sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in
the world ocean” Environment and Planning I): Society and Space 1999, volume 17, pages 420421- M.V.)
There is a long history of the ocean as an arena of social transformation. It is
generally acknowledged that the early seventeenth century 'Battle of the Books'
gave birth to the modern structures of international law (Colombos, 1967, page 8), and ocean
law remains an important arena for shaping the system of international
relations that structures states as well as governing relations among them
(Robles, 1996; Ruggie, 1993; Taylor, 1993; 1995). Along with contributing to some of
the social categories that have prevailed in land space, including modern
notions of masculinity (Creighton, 1995) and class solidarity (Rediker, 1987),
struggles over ocean access have also inspired oppositional movements.
They have provided an arena for challenging what Shapiro (1997) calls the "violent
cartographies" of statism. Thus Foucault points to the ship at sea as the
"heterotopia par excellence": "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up,
espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of
pirates" (Foucault, 1986, page 27). Historical examples of the role of the sea in
forging alter- native identities and social structures range from pirate bands
(Kuhn, 1997) and anarchist collectives (Sekula, 1995) to environmental movements
(Brown and May, 1991) and diaspora nations (Gilroy, 1993)/4)¶ Building upon this history
and reflecting on the recent Law of the Sea negotiations, a number of
scholars have suggested that the collective governance of the sea be used as
a model for radical notions of global citizenship and entitlements (Borgese,
1998; Pacem in Maribus, 1992; Van Dyke et al, 1993). Keith (1977), in a discussion that has
parallels to the actual case of the proposed manganese nodule mining regime, speculates that the
emergence of 'floating cities' would likely challenge the entire system of territorial states¶ (4)
Others, however, question the liberatory potential of social reorganization at sea. In contrast to
Foucault, Virilio (1986, pages 37-49) holds that the ship at sea, rather than
incorporating the ocean's heterotopic (or 'smooth') properties, colonizes
this once-resistant space. Likewise, there is an ongoing debate about the
progressivism of seventeenth and eighteenth century pirates (Osborne, 1998).
that provides the foundational political divisions for capitalist competition.
In literature too, the sea is increasingly depicted as a space of social
liberation from the oppressions of militarism, capitalism, and patriarchy
(Bcrthold, 1995), as in the novels of Oetavia Butler, Ursula LcGuin, and Joan Slonezcwskl¶
Whether these visions of the sea as a site of social change come to fruition is
not the point. As we have seen from the recent example of manganese nodule mining, the
crisis in the regulation of ocean space has intensified to the point where, for
a considerable duration, the world's powers found themselves supporting a
regime that seemed to challenge the principles of capitalist enterprise. The
broad support that this regime received suggests the depth of the regulatory
crisis, and in this context one should not underestimate the transformative
potential of struggles over oceanic space, resources, and access.¶ This context—
the structural contradiction of capitalist spatialtty—also demon- strates the superficiality (and
indeed the danger) of the three images that increasingly characterize ocean space. For the images
not only tell partial stories, They obscure material relations of exploitation experienced by those
who derive their living from the sea—seafarers, dockworkcrs, artisanal fishing communities, and
others who may be 'managed' out of existence by the regulatory strategics with which each image
is aligned. Despite their erasure from the popular imagination, these individuals
experience on a daily basis the fact that the ocean is a locus of intense
capitalist contradiction and a potential source of social change. To interpret
this contradiction and to contribute to the authoring of that social change, it
is imperative that we look beyond the prevailing ocean imagery and pierce
the maritime mystique.