编者的话:海洋边疆——认识论、管辖、商品化

Editorial: Ocean frontiers: epistemologies,jurisdictions, commodifications

海洋与人类之间动态和不断展开的关系,支撑着一个关于海洋正处于“危机”之中、需要对其进行新的治理和采用新的监管框架的总叙事。随着人们对海洋空间的关注大量增多,海洋的主权、领土和财产仍不明确和存在争论,对海洋治理提出了挑战(也提供了机遇)。本期特刊运用海洋边疆(ocean frontiers)概念作为探究这些问题的支点,原因是将海洋描绘为一个与人类分离的星球空间画面的情况正在减少,不过仍很常见,而且因为边疆概念为考察和展开海洋保护和开发利用这些方面提供了切入点。从本期特刊八篇文章推断,我们提出了四个相互关联的论点。首先,我们在本编者导言中对认识论的边疆、管辖上的边疆和商品化边疆这几个范畴进行了概念化,虽然海洋边疆先于这些范畴而存在,但我们发现,这些范畴也许可以理解为是在海洋管理体制中相互交叉的,它们让这个空间性质的、从社会意义上建构的海洋边疆离人类的活动范围更近,在对其进行封闭方面发挥核心作用。其次,海洋的物质性——其移动性和按容积计算的要素——影响着所有这些新出现的和相互交叉的海洋进程。再次,作者们为研究海洋提出了创新性的方法途径,揭示海洋并不是“无地点的”,而是多地点的,并且证明社会科学从方法论上看很适合用于将不断展开的海洋进程纳入人们的视野之中。最后但同样重要的是,借助这些作者的洞见,我们认为,随着海洋进程和人类与海洋的关系在一个迅猛变化的时期里展开,应继续对海洋进行交叉学科的社会(和自然)科学研究。

The dynamic and unfolding relationship between the oceans and humans underwrites a general narrative of oceans in‘crisis’and the need for new governance and regulatory frameworks to attend to it.As concerns surrounding marine space have proliferated,sovereignty,territory and property in the oceans remain imprecise and subject to controversy,presenting challenges(and opportunities)for oceans governance.This special issue employs the concept of ocean frontiers as a pivot into these concerns because of the eroding,but still frequent,portrayal of the oceans as a planetary space separate from humans and because the concept offers entry points for navigating the unfolding dimensions of ocean conservation and exploitation.Deducing from the eight contributions from the special issue,we develop four inter-related arguments.First,while ocean frontiers pre-date the epistemological,jurisdictional and commodification categories that we conceptualise in this editorial introduction,we find that these categories,which may be understood as intersecting in ocean regimes,play central roles in closing the spatial and socially-constituted ocean frontier,bringing it closer to human purview.Second,the materiality of oceans–their mobile and volumetric elements–influences all of these emerging and intersecting oceanic processes.Third,contributing authors have developed innovative methodological approaches to the study of the oceans,revealing oceans not as“siteless”,but multi-sited,and demonstrating that the social sciences are well suited methodologically to bring unfolding ocean processes into view.Last but not least,drawing from the insights set out by the contributors,we argue for ongoing interdisciplinary social(and natural)science research on the oceans as they and human-ocean relations unfold in a period of dramatic change.