The idea of the “free sea” shaped the mindset and actions of nations in the centuries of “modernity”, leading to an unregulated exploitation of the environment (Zacharias, 2019). In other words, the ideological distinction between a “free” sea and “sovereign” (disposable) land allowed for colonial exploitation of natural resources and progressive removal of local people from the sea. However, besides the formal distinction between sea and land, and the process of territorialization of adjacent waters, a more complex social process of sea/land exchanges and conversions takes place. This process leads to semantic shifts and material and immaterial transformations that primarily involve the local maritime communities, which are removed from the waters and set ashore. In this context, the investigation of changing lifestyle of indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada and Alaska (Hastrup, 2019; Nuttall, 2019) or Southeast Asia (Stacey, 2007) is extremely interesting as it cast a light on the effect of social construction of the sea/land distinction as a strong pattern of the development of the capitalist world-system. Particularly, anthropological accounts from the oceanic societies speak of “autoch-thalassic” people besides autochthonous ones. To those “people of the sea”, such as the South Eastern Asian Moken or the Orang Laut (Sopher 1977; Belwood, Fox, Tryon 2006; Ivanoff, Lejard, Gansser 2012) the land was only the border of their fundamentally marine social existence. Accordingly, my contribution discusses ethnographic notes and qualitative data collected in a recent fieldwork investigation (January-February 2024) of collective representations of the relation with the sea among the Moken (Surin Islands) and the Urak Lawoi (Ko Lipe) of the Andaman Sea. The case studies show the process of social change “between land and sea” in a context where the “sea people” are entangled in complex dynamics involving natural parks, industrial fisheries and profit-oriented tourism entrepreneurship.
I can't Live the Sea but I cannot Live without It.
Emilio Cocco
2024-01-01
Abstract
The idea of the “free sea” shaped the mindset and actions of nations in the centuries of “modernity”, leading to an unregulated exploitation of the environment (Zacharias, 2019). In other words, the ideological distinction between a “free” sea and “sovereign” (disposable) land allowed for colonial exploitation of natural resources and progressive removal of local people from the sea. However, besides the formal distinction between sea and land, and the process of territorialization of adjacent waters, a more complex social process of sea/land exchanges and conversions takes place. This process leads to semantic shifts and material and immaterial transformations that primarily involve the local maritime communities, which are removed from the waters and set ashore. In this context, the investigation of changing lifestyle of indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada and Alaska (Hastrup, 2019; Nuttall, 2019) or Southeast Asia (Stacey, 2007) is extremely interesting as it cast a light on the effect of social construction of the sea/land distinction as a strong pattern of the development of the capitalist world-system. Particularly, anthropological accounts from the oceanic societies speak of “autoch-thalassic” people besides autochthonous ones. To those “people of the sea”, such as the South Eastern Asian Moken or the Orang Laut (Sopher 1977; Belwood, Fox, Tryon 2006; Ivanoff, Lejard, Gansser 2012) the land was only the border of their fundamentally marine social existence. Accordingly, my contribution discusses ethnographic notes and qualitative data collected in a recent fieldwork investigation (January-February 2024) of collective representations of the relation with the sea among the Moken (Surin Islands) and the Urak Lawoi (Ko Lipe) of the Andaman Sea. The case studies show the process of social change “between land and sea” in a context where the “sea people” are entangled in complex dynamics involving natural parks, industrial fisheries and profit-oriented tourism entrepreneurship.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
