Waste in motion

Ethnographic research on the problematization of marine changes

The relationship between humans and the sea - also a central theme of the “Ship and Environment” subject area at the DSM - is in a state of flux. The sea has long been understood as a large space, as an outside and thus as an area of seemingly endless externalization of industrial production methods. It was used as a sink for much of what had to be disposed of in the 20th century (shipwrecks, world war munitions, dilute acid, radioactive waste) or what was not intended to end up there (plastic, pollutants, nitrates, oil). But the oceans are “reporting back”, e.g. through rising sea levels, flooding, algal blooms, accumulations of marine litter and changes to ecosystems. These often occur first in the Global South, often in places such as Pacific islands, which are the first to bear these externalization costs. In the 21st century, awareness of the finite nature and vulnerability of the ocean ecosystem now seems to be growing again. Events such as the UN Ocean Conferences in New York and Lisbon, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, the negotiation of ocean goals at the last G7 meetings, the Year of Science Seas and Oceans, the proclamation of the Global Ocean Decade 2021-2030 and, last but not least, the current IPCC report bear witness to this - as well as the strengthening of a new climate movement since 2018 by actors such as Fridays for Future and others.

Drawing on concepts and methods from anthropological and feminist science and technology studies (STS), maritime and environmental anthropology, this research program explores an interest in boundary objects between natures and cultures (such as the plastisphere, a synthetic habitat for microorganisms in the sea). The research is particularly interested in spatial and temporal shifts and speculative elements of marine change.

Speculative ecologies refer to the indeterminacy of changes in ecosystems and their uncertain temporality, for example when fishermen in southern Chile can expect another dangerous algal bloom. Such forms of ecological disasters, where the consequences are often only foreseeable years later, require different solution strategies and political representations. Just as the sphere of financial speculation relies on uncertain and risky derivatives and futures, the speculative is understood in a political ecology, based on concepts by Whitehead and Stengers, as an orientation of assumptions towards an uncertain horizon of expectations: How do speculative social scientific practices produce a world in which undecided futures are brought into the present?

Environmental changes have a specific temporality; how and when certain ecological changes manifest themselves often remains undetermined and speculative. Studies on waste, pollution and toxicity often deal with uncertainty, speculative knowledge production and unpredictable temporal effects. Knowledge production is therefore complicated and raises questions of responsibility and environmental justice. Terms such as “slow disasters” (Knowles) and “slow violence” (Nixon) also allow pollution to be discussed as a particular form of colonization (liboiron) of land and water. However, it remains difficult to depict slow violence, as the relationship between cause and effect often only emerges at a later point in time. For example, plastic particles can be washed up miles away on other coasts by ocean currents, pollutants accumulate intergenerationally in living organisms and the effects of pollutants only become apparent decades later. Uncertainty, unpredictability and indeterminacy of research results also lead to a problem of knowledge transfer - and provide a target for skeptics or deniers of ecological problems. In this respect, knowledge production in these areas is extremely politicized. The relevance of ethnographic research lies, among other things, in its potential to show which actors and which local and indigenous knowledge is excluded or not heard in these processes or is made invisible through powerful translation strategies.

Along these problematizations, the project will analyze previously funded research on marine change, e.g. on microplastics in the sea, the formation of the plastic sphere, the problematization of toxic algal blooms in relation to aquacultures, current research on the impact of munitions in the sea and future research on the effects of global shipping on species transport (e.g. through ballast water) and changes in ecosystems. The potential of marine organisms such as algae, plankton and bacteria is also analyzed from the perspective of an anthropology of the more-than-human.