Maritime transport is an essential dimension of globalization as ninety percent of all internationally traded goods are transported at sea. Despite all of the significant commercial and scholarly interest in the implications of globalization over the last twenty years, the oceans upon which the vast majority of the world's commerce takes place are a surprisingly understudied scientific terrain. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, scientifically grounded fieldwork, explores the sea as a socially, economically, and politically important space.
Johanna Markkula, under the supervision of Dr. Liisa Malkki from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University will explore how the sea, often seen as a natural space outside of society, is a social space that is produced by specific human practices. The project asks how maritime workers and institutions shape the global mobility of goods, labor, and capital, and what impact processes as globalization and global governance have on commercial maritime activity. With ninety percent of all internationally traded goods being transported at sea, maritime transport is a key component of globalization, and Filipinos are the by far largest national group (1/3) in today's seafaring labor force. Coastguards, for their part, are in charge of policing and governing the maritime space on behalf of nation-states. A study of their practices as workers who have to navigate the limits of the national and the non-national will provide important insights into the blurred boundaries between different forms of sovereignty. The researcher will carry out ethnographic research among merchant seafarers using a range of inductively oriented data collection techniques, including participant observation, and interviews with a range of actors and stakeholders.
