New bookchapter on the study of maritime infrastructure
Our daily lives and the functions of modern society today depend largely on maritime activities. Maritime infrastructure – above as well as below the sea surface – supports, more than ever before, activities within e.g. trade, energy extraction, communication, and food production. Despite its growing importance, maritime infrastructure is an under-explored domain within international politics, partly due to the often-invisible nature of the infrastructure beneath the surface of the sea.
In a new bookchapter, Tobias Liebetrau from Center for Military Studies presents three ways of approaching the study of maritime infrastructure from the perspective of international politics: 1) infrastructure as an analytical object, 2) infrastructuring as an analytical strategy, and 3) infrastructural care and critique. The aim of presenting the three analytical dimensions is to lay the groundwork for further studies of maritime infrastructure as a field of research that bridges existing natural science and social science approaches. In a world of unprecedented challenges from climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasing maritime industrialization, as well as geopolitical uncertainty, attention to, and work on, maritime infrastructure is more necessary than ever before, particularly with an understanding of maritime infrastructure as a field where power, justice, and sustainability converge.
The chapter “The Infrastructural Ocean: Three Analytical Dimensions for Maritime International Relations” is included in De Gruyter Handbook of Cities, Infrastructure and International Relations and can be read here.