title: Nature/culture/seawater.
abstract: Seawater has occupied an ambiguous place in anthropological categories of "nature" and "culture." Seawater as nature appears as potentiality of form and uncontainable flux; it moves faster than culture - with culture frequently figured through land-based metaphors - even as culture seeks to channel water's (nature's) flow. Seawater as culture manifests as a medium of pleasure, sustenance, travel, disaster. I argue that, although seawater's qualities in early anthropology were portrayed impressionistically, today technical, scientific descriptions of water's form prevail. For example, processes of globalization - which may also be called "oceanization" - are often described as "currents," "flows," and "circulations." Examining sea-set ethnography, maritime anthropologies, and contemporary social theory, I propose that seawater has operated as a “theory machine” for generating insights about human cultural organization. I develop this argument with ethnography from the Sargasso Sea and in the Sea Islands. I conclude with a critique of appeals to water's form in social theory.
authors.affiliation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Helmreich
mesh_terms: D000883:Anthropology / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D001267:Atlantic Ocean / Q000208:ethnology; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000266:history; D003469:Culture; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D019368:Nature; D012623:Seawater; D012624:Seaweed; D012961:Sociology / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D013561:Symbolism; D014900:West Indies / Q000208:ethnology