Current Anthropological Research: Capitalism at Sea: Anthropology of the Blue Economy Frontier

As global interest in the "blue economy" intensifies, this course critically examines the anthropological dimensions of oceanic transformation. The blue economy - framed as a pathway to sustainable development through marine-based growth - has become a dominant paradigm shaping policy, investment, and governance across the globe. But beneath its promise lies a complex seascape of enclosure, commodification, and contestation.

This course explores how anthropologists engage with the sea as a space of extraction, sovereignty, and resistance, and how marine environments are being reconfigured through legal, economic, and epistemic regimes. Students will investigate how the blue economy intersects with broader debates on sustainability and the politics of the commons.

Thematically, the course engages with three interlocking domains: commoditisation, sovereignty, and extractivism. The reading list features monographs and articles that give theoretical and empirical foundation for developing a critique of market logic and alternative frameworks for ocean governance. Through these readings, students will develop a critical understanding of how anthropology contributes to rethinking the ocean not as a boundless expanse, but as a politically charged and socially embedded space - one increasingly shaped by the imperatives of the blue economy.

A student who has completed the course should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence.

The student will be able to:

Knowledge

• provide an overview of the topic addressed in the course, with particular reference to its history and associated theoretical and methodological debates in social anthropology

Skills

• explain the current state-of-art of research in the field of study addressed in the course
• explain the various methodological and theoretical considerations that must be taken in order to further develop the field of study

General competence

• apply key concepts and perspectives from the course and its field of study independently, in the understanding and analysis of local and global processes
• apply an understanding of the correlation and difference between empirical data, theory and analysis in text production