The ocean and its inhabitants sketch and stretch our understandings of law in unexpected ways. Inspired by the blue turn in the social sciences and humanities, Blue Legalities explores how regulatory frameworks and governmental infrastructures are made, reworked, and contested in the oceans. Its interdisciplinary contributors analyze topics that range from militarization and Maori cosmologies to island building in the South China Sea and underwater robotics. Throughout, Blue Legalities illuminates the vast and unusual challenges associated with regulating the turbulent materialities and lives of the sea. Offering much more than an analysis of legal frameworks, the chapters in this volume show how the more-than-human ocean is central to the construction of terrestrial institutions and modes of governance. By thinking with the more-than-human ocean, Blue Legalities questions what we think we know—and what we don’t know—about oceans, our earthly planet, and ourselves.
Contributors. Stacy Alaimo, Amy Braun, Irus Braverman, Holly Jean Buck, Jennifer L. Gaynor, Stefan Helmreich, Elizabeth R. Johnson, Stephanie Jones, Zsofia Korosy, Berit Kristoffersen, Jessica Lehman, Astrida Neimanis, Susan Reid, Alison Rieser, Katherine G. Sammler, Astrid Schrader, Kristen L. Shake, Phil Steinberg
Introduction. Blue Legalities: Governing More-Than-Human Oceans / Elizabeth R. Johnson and Irus Braverman 1
1. Solwara 1 and the Sessile Ones / Susan Reid 25
2. Held in Suspense: Mustard Gas Legalities in the Gotland Deep / Astrida Neimanis 45
3. Kauri and the Whale: Oceanic Matter and Meaning in New Zealand / Katherine G. Sammler 63
4. Edges and Flows: Exploring Legal Materialities and Biophysical Politics of Sea Ice / Philip E. Steinberg, Berit Kristoffersen, and Kristen L. Shake 85
5. Liquid Territory, Shifting Sands: Property, Sovereignty, and Space in Southeast Asia's Tristate Maritime Boundary Zone / Jennifer L. Gaynor 107
6. Wave Law / Stefan Helmreich 129
7. Robotic Life in the Deep Sea / Irus Braverman 147
8. The Technopolitics of Ocean Sensing / Jessica Lehman 165
9. The Hydra and the Leviathan: Unmanned Maritime Vehicles and the Militarized Seaspace / Elizabeth R. Johnson 183
10. Clupea Liberum: Hugo Grotius, Free Seas, and the Political Biology of Herring / Alison Rieser 201
11. Whales and the Colonization of the Pacific Ocean / Zsofia Korosy 219
12. The Sea Wolf and the Sovereign / Stephanie Jones 237
13. Marine Microbiopolitics: Haunted Microbes before the Law / Astrid Schrader 255
14. "Got Algae?": Putting Marine Life to Work for Sustainability / Amy Braun 275
15. "Climate Engineering Doesn't Stop Ocean Acidification": Addressing Harms to Ocean Life in Geoengineering Imaginaries / Holly Jean Buck 295
Afterword. Adequate Imaginaries for Anthropocene Seas / Stacy Alaimo 311
Contributors 327
Index 331
Irus Braverman is professor of law and adjunct professor of geography at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is the author of several monographs, including Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine, Zooland: The Institution of Captivity, and Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink.
