Over the last decades, the Pacific Ocean has been the locus of an unequaled rush for resources and territories, involving external powers, intertwined public and corporate interests, and the Pacific Island states. This rush is made of three movements aiming to: (1) exploit marine resources; (2) protect marine biodiversity and adapt to climate change; (3) control marine spaces. In this context, the fluidity of saltwater environments gives rise to specific issues of control and enforcement. As a continuation of sessions held at the ESfO 2017 and ASAO 2018 conferences, this panel will examine these reconfigurations of/in the Pacific Ocean, stressing potentially conflicting frontier processes. Frontiers are here conceived as moving and porous lines and as complex historical processes of externally-induced social change, capitalist expansion, and transformation of nature into resources. This panel will examine whether frontier dynamics are coming to an end in the Pacific Ocean, while giving voice to “the other side of the frontier” (Reynolds). It will welcome papers focusing on Pacific nations’ resistance and reappropriation in the face of past and present frontier dynamics.
Paper submissions are closed