Current Anthropological Research: Ocean Anthropology

This course gives a comprehensive introduction to a specific area of contemporary anthropological investigation. Current research trends and recent theoretical developments are explored through critical discussions with emphasis on anthropology's evolving engagement with the selected field. The course offers a unique opportunity to be acquainted with diverse aspects - methodological, epistemological and theoretical - of the research process, aspects that lie at the very basis of anthropological analysis and practice, and of ethnographic production.

Course theme autumn 2024

The ocean is currently emerging as both a site of contemporary climate and biodiversity crisis, and as a space of hope for addressing and remedying these. While ocean science has typically been dominated by natural sciences, the social sciences and humanities have advanced their own theories and methods for studying the ocean(s).

This interdisciplinary course will provide in-depth understanding of how social scientists and humanities scholars are approaching the ocean, with a particular focus on anthropological perspectives. What does anthropology look like at sea? How are human relationships with sea creatures changing at a time of climate crisis? How can oceans be understood as social and cultural, as well as biological, spaces?

We will discuss how the ocean can be approached as a material as well as an imaginative entity. You will learn key theoretical concepts for thinking about what the ocean is and does (and for whom) from a wide array of perspectives, such as the Anthropocene, feminist, queer, and indigenous perspectives, and extractivism at sea. Particular attention will be paid to the multispecies/more-than-human dimensions of the ocean.

The course will also address methodological considerations about doing ethnographic fieldwork with and at sea, as well as exploring how we, as how social scientists and humanities scholars, can work interdisciplinarity and learn from those with different expertise, for example biologists and ecologists.

The course will also include one or two field trips in or near Bergen.  

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 in-depth knowledge 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
• assess critically 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 and critically analyze the correlation and difference between observation, empirical data, interpretation, theory and analysis in text production
• discuss the potential for applying perspectives from the course in their own research project