I’m pleased to announce the publication of ‘Coastal Futures: Life between and at the edges of the Sea’ (University of Toronto Press), a volume co-edited by Arne Harms and me! The book appears in the Anthropological Horizons Series edited by Michael Lambek and brings together coastal ethnographers from various disciplines. In rich ethnographic chapters, contributors grapple with contemporary coastal transformations and what they mean for the future of cities, governance, and human life at shore.
The volume is particularly interested in how materialities and temporalities converge at shore. It tries to redeem the coast as a geo-ontological force-one that shapes, enables, and constrains the transformative energies of global assemblages, rather than serving as a passive backdrop to human activity. Drawing on in-depth studies of environmental protection, pilgrimage, climate modelling or coastal fortification, the chapters shows the entanglements of social life and coastal ecosystems as well as infrastructures.
‘Coastal Futures’ introduces the “brackish” as an analytic and method to ground social theory in the shifting contours of shores, where the boundaries of land and sea blur and fluidities mix. Letting the brackish soak theory allows to think about futures that are being forged and contested in dense and thriving political ecologies. As such, the book’s ethnographic insights echo beyond coastal settings - a finding the book seeks to capture through the notion of “coastalization.”
The introduction and all chapters written by early career scholars are available as fully Open Access here. The volume as a whole is available as paperback and hardback in your bookstore and hopefully soon at many university libraries.