THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF OCEAN SPACE (HB 2023)

Invisible as the seas and oceans may be for so many of us, life as we know it is almost always connected to, and constituted by, activities and occurrences that take place in, on and under our oceans. The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space provides a first port of call for scholars engaging in the ‘oceanic turn’ in the social sciences, offering a comprehensive summary of existing trends in making sense of our water worlds, alongside new, agenda-setting insights into the relationships between society and the ‘seas around us’. Accordingly, this ambitious text not only attends to a growing interest in our oceans, past and present; it is also situated in a broader spatial turn across the social sciences that seeks to account for how space and place are imbricated in socio-cultural and political life.

Through six clearly structured and wide-ranging sections, The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space examines and interrogates how the oceans are environmental, historical, social, cultural, political, legal and economic spaces, and also zones where national and international security comes into question. With a foreword and introduction authored by some of the leading scholars researching and writing about ocean spaces, alongside 31 further, carefully crafted chapters from established as well as early career academics, this book provides both an accessible guide to the subject and a cutting-edge collection of critical ideas and questions shaping the social sciences today.

This handbook brings together the key debates defining the ‘field’ in one volume, appealing to a wide, cross-disciplinary social science and humanities audience. Moreover, drawing on a range of international examples, from a global collective of authors, this book promises to be the benchmark publication for those interested in ocean spaces, past and present. Indeed, as the seas and oceans continue to capture world-wide attention, and the social sciences continue their seaward ‘turn’, The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space will provide an invaluable resource that reveals how our world is a water world.

Kimberley Peters leads the Marine Governance Research Group at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), a collaboration between the University of Oldenburg and Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Germany.

Jon Anderson is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, UK.

Andrew Davies is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Liverpool, and is Co-Director of the Centre for Port and Maritime History, a collaborative Centre run by the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, UK and Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Philip Steinberg is Professor of Political Geography at Durham University, UK where he is Director of IBRU: Durham University’s Centre for Borders Research and the Durham Arctic Research Centre for Training and Interdisciplinary Collaboration (DurhamARCTIC).