This workshop was made possible by the generous sponsorship from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Center for Science and Society and the Department of History at Columbia University.
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Two Day Conference at the American University of Beirut. Moderated by Dr. Marwa Elshakry (Columbia University) with Dr. Yaser Abunnasr (American University of Beirut), Dr. Nikolas Kosmatopoulos (American University of Beirut), and Jina Talj (Activist with Diaries of the Ocean)
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The sea – like the concept of utopia itself – does not feature much in our current social theories, let alone our contemporary political rhetoric or social imagination. If anything, the sea seems lately to assume a villainously protagonist role in many of our present-day dystopic realities: harrowing images of the liquid refugee cemetery of the Mediterranean, depressing statistics of declining aquatic life, floating waste and toxic maritime pollution, or the impending threat of rising sea levels dominate our news from neighboring seascapes.
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The ocean is the antithesis of a frame. What is a framework? A structure that can hold or support conceptual/theoretical/empirical practice, in contrast, looking from the ocean we are ‘at sea’. For social scientists the sea offers an ecosystem rather than a framework. It is also an opportunity to think from the outside, not container societies.
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The paper focuses on shared space along the coast of Lebanon, and the ways in which legislation, master plans and property transformations have undermined the social and vernacular uses of these sites, while prioritizing investment in the tourism and service sectors.
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Thalassa/ Thalassa! was the enthusiastic cry of Cyrus’ Greek mercenaries when they glimpsed the Black Sea in their retreat in Anatolia. In the episode related by Xenophon, the sea featured as a safe way-out or a lifeline.
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My paper will explore the history and historiography of labor migration across the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the early modern and modern period (1750-1950). Much has been written on the Mediterranean as a connective space linking territories, regions, ideas and cultures, but in fact labor migration in the Mediterranean, and the various kinds of work and recruitment processes it entailed, has received relatively scant attention by historians.
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We are told that the sea is filling up with things we should not see - plastic things particularly, and the debris of old, often ruined, lives that linger, but should not. Out of sight, out of mind perhaps, but these things are not so very invisible, at least not anymore.
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I have encountered waterways in my research for some time: urban creeks and backwaters in New York, Melbourne, and Shanghai; liquid metaphors for capital flows in global supply chains; and the designation of the US-Mexico border in the middle of the Rio Grande.
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