Comparative Perspectives -An Introduction_Glørstad Glørstad and Melheim 2016.pdf (original) (raw)

A Short Introductory Note on Maritime Sociology

The topic of the sea and society is not new to sociology. Maritime spaces include oceans as well as coastal areas, spaces which are at risk nowadays. Ecological crises (overfishing, decline in biodiversity, climate change, eutrophication, ocean pollution), economic crises (de-industrialization, whaling moratorium, structural change, development of alternative industries) and cultural crises (destabilization of collective identities of seaside and island inhabitants, cultural practices of sharing, inhabitants’ knowledge, local traditions, transformations of maritime professions) cumulate in these maritime spaces. So far research on maritime issues is dominated by natural science disciplines. The protection of maritime natural sources and the need for sustainable development demands research on the ‘human factor’ and a sociological perspective on maritime spaces.

Maritime Culture: A Sociological Perspective

The aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss the multifaceted cultures within the merchant navy. It is within this multicultural context that the construction of different cultures occur. If maritime managers are to work successfully with their designated ships, and the seafarers working and living aboard these ships, they need to understand that different cultures exist within the industry. The argument put forward is that maritime management needs the necessary soft skills to develop cultural awareness and become culturally sensitive. The primary source of data was drawn from netography and qualitative methodologies. Secondary data was obtained through maritime dissertations, face-to-face interviews, maritime newspaper articles, maritime journal articles and social media. Two main conclusions emerged: firstly, in maritime scholarship there is a lack of research of the existing maritime cultures; and secondly, few maritime companies are aware of how different cultures are integrated. It is significant that healthy cultures within the merchant marine rely on management's cultural knowledge and their soft skills. The perception of culture within the shipping industry is confusing, because most seafarers and their associated maritime companies seem to concentrate on a small segment of culture, that being safety culture. However, the industry consists of several cultures, which can be divided into maritime organisational culture, ship's culture, and safety culture. In addition, there is an overarching culture, the merchant marine culture. Maritime authors mainly focus on cultural diversity and safety culture, both being the breeding grounds for physical and mental problems aboard a ship. Cultural, language

Maritime Anthropology

2021 ‘Maritime Anthropology.’ In Sage Handbook of Cultural Anthropology, edited by Lene Pedersen and Lisa Cliggett. London: SAGE., 2021

In the twenty-first century, human-caused changes are being recorded at an unprecedented scale in the oceans, radically transforming our perception of the oceans and seas. Initially seen as a space outside of society, the ocean has become a theatre of geopolitical, economic and environmental struggles that often treat the sea as ‘land’. At the same time, there is a growing consensus among scholars that terrestrial models of land-use planning are inappropriate for maritime governance. As oceans differ in function and space from terrestrial systems, the environmental and societal processes need a more holistic approach to conceptually grasp the oceans’ relevance to humanity. In this welcome scholarly move, anthropologists have more recently focused on exchanges and interactions between humans and the environment, oriented towards the ocean and marine ecology as a space of anthropogenic interference with natural processes. This chapter shows that maritime anthropology is no longer a marginal or peripheral niche, but an important vector in global connections and globalization, involving maritime‒marine and nature‒human dimensions, not only historically and in the present day, but from a future-oriented perspective as well. Keywords: maritime anthropology, marine ecology, human‒nature interactions, maritime connectivity, oceans

Setting Sail in Scandinavia: An analysis of the evidence and arguments.

This thesis concerns the discussion regarding the adoption of the sail in Scandinavia. It is the aim of this thesis to assess the prevailing theory that the sail was a late adoption and to provide an overview for others. Firstly the problems regarding the inductive method within archaeology are discussed. Secondly the evidence is presented that is used within the discourse. Aspects that may affect their validity as premises are presented. Thirdly the arguments are presented, discussed and their strength assessed. The assessment of the arguments is based on the validity of the premise and the relevance of the premise for the theory. Since archaeology is mainly a discipline based on interpretation this assessment is unavoidably subjective. A clear methodology is therefore presented for the assessment, for which clearly defined qualitative scales are used. When the author´s own subjective judgement is used then it will be made apparent. It is thus hoped that this thesis will provide an overview of the evidence and make it possible for others to assess the strength of the prevailing theory without having to rely on assumptions made by others. It is concluded that there has been a lack of discussion regarding the representativeness of the evidence, that the constructional prerequisites for a vessel to carry a sail which have excluded an earlier use are not valid and that there are no reasons to exclude the possibility that the sail was used at an earlier date than currently thought.

Maritime Mobilities in Anglophone Literature and Culture

Maritime Literature and Culture

In a time of refugee boats and rising seas, maritime mobilities and immobilities have regained critical status for the development of viable futures—social, economic, environmental, political, as well as imaginative. This introduction describes advances in maritime studies, alongside “blue cultural studies” or “oceanic humanities,” and covers a selection of recent critical perspectives in the maritime humanities that have extended, but also criticized, earlier assumptions in the field: Eurocentric, anthropocentric, and class-, race-, and gender-based. The focus is on some of the ways in which maritime studies has been informed by mobility studies, an interdisciplinary field within the humanities. Taking up cultural geography’s revision of the field to acknowledge the centrality of movement in history and society and to move beyond logistics-centered transportation studies, mobility studies investigates the production of mobilities and immobilities historically, socially, politically...