Maritime Modernities: Formats of Oceanic Knowledge
Informations
- Funding country
Norway- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 1/1/2021
- End date
- 12/31/2025
- Budget
- 1,439,592 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marine Resources and the Environment (MARINFORSK) - call 2016 | Grant | - | - | 1,439,592 EUR |
Abstract
Lack of scientific knowledge and environmental awareness in the past is often blamed for the life-threatening ecological crises facing the oceans today. How can a historical approach provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of knowledge, environmental awareness and the cycle of decline in ocean health? Maritime Modernities. Formats of Oceanic Knowledge (MaMo) investigates the history of knowledge and environmental awareness in, around, and beyond the Atlantic Ocean, from the expansion of human activities at sea in the seventeenth century until today’s global initiatives to aggregate knowledge about the oceans’ resources, ecology and impact on climate. An international and interdisciplinary group of researchers explores how different forms of knowledge about the sea have been collected, organized and transported during the last 400 years, beyond and across knowledge practices and scientific disciplines, as well as public and private institutions. We investigate how maritime activities have been entangled with knowledge processes, shaping how oceans have been perceived, used, and regulated over time. The project studies historical collections of maritime material, such as logbooks, drafts and tide tables, in private and public archives, mainly in France, England, and Norway. These allow us to identify three “formats of oceanic knowledge”; records, maps and models. MaMo follows these formats through time and space, studying how they underpin the use and perception of the oceans, even today. Furthermore, we study how the three formats have enabled and impeded awareness and care for the maritime environment, even before the current environmentalist discourses. MaMo aims to historicize the understanding of the current critical state of the oceans. It also aims to offer new methodological and theoretical perspectives to scholarly fields such as maritime history, history of science and technology, history of knowledge, environmental history and “blue humanities”.