The Maritime Mystique: Sustainable Development, Capital Mobility, and Nostalgia in the World Ocean

Abstract

Three images of ocean space are becoming increasingly prevalent in policy and planning circles and popular culture: The image of the ocean as an empty void to be annihilated by hypermobile capital; as a resource-rich but fragile space requiring rational management for sustainable development; and as a source of consumable spectacles. In this paper I locate the emergence of these three apparently contradictory images of the ocean within structural contradictions in the spatiality of capitalism, which, in turn, are precipitating a crisis in marine regulation. To analyze these contradictions, I begin with a historical study of industrial-era marine uses, regulations, and representations. This is followed by an analysis of the present crisis and its associated representational discourses. I conclude with a call for analyses of ocean space that probe beneath marine imagery so as to explore the regulatory crises and social conflicts that underlie marine-policy debates and that reveal the ocean's potential as a site of social transformation.