The Unsociability of Commercial Seafaring: Language Practice and Ideology in Maritime Technocracy

Abstract

This article explores the language practices and language ideologies of maritime technocracy and inquires into the imagined and real gaps involved in sustaining channels of sociable talk aboard cargo ships. Lacking knowledge of the routines, practices, and beliefs impacting seafarers’ productivity, shipping industry leaders turn to Christian ministries to identify infrastructural or logistical gaps in the operation of communications media networks and deficiencies in the language policies and interactional practices that animate them. These converging profitdriven and ethical projects collectively support a technocratic language ideology. It locates risks to the supply chain in presumptions of miscommunications caused by the lack of English-language use and unsociability caused by the lack of convivial talk among seafarers for channeling information about these risks. Actualized by strategies that affirm the value of face-to-face talk and online chatting rather than solitary reading, maritime technocracy standardizes the logistical coordination of media infrastructures and labor and language policies. This article draws on ethnographic research aboard cargo ships and at Christian centers to elucidate the logic of maritime technocracies in Newark and Montreal, two seaports with different governance structures highlighting the internal differences of a shipping industry facing crises due to automation, outsourcing, and neoliberal reform. [commercial seafaring, shipping industry, sociability, maritime technology, language ideology] RESUMEN Este artı́culo explora las prácticas del lenguaje e ideologı́as del lenguaje de la tecnocracia marı́tima e investiga las lagunas imaginadas y reales envueltas en el sostenimiento de canales de conversación sociable a bordo de buques de carga. Faltando conocimiento de las rutinas, prácticas, y creencias impactando la productividad de los marineros, los lı́deres de la industria naviera recurren a ministros cristianos para identificar los vacı́os infraestructurales o logı́sticos en la operación de comunicaciones de redes de medios de comunicación y deficiencias en las polı́ticas del lenguaje y las prácticas interaccionales que las animan. Estos proyectos convergentes con fines de lucro y éticos apoyan colectivamente una ideologı́a del lenguaje tecnocrático. Localiza los riesgos a la cadena de oferta en presunciones de faltas de comunicación causadas por la carencia de uso del lenguaje inglés y la no sociabilidad causada por la deficiencia de conversación convivial entre marineros para canalizar la información acerca de estos riesgos. Actualizada por estrategias que afirman el valor de las conversaciones cara a cara y chat en lı́nea en vez de la lectura solitaria, la tecnocracia marı́tima estandariza la coordinación logı́stica de las infraestructuras de los medios de comunicación y las polı́ticas de labor y lenguaje. Este artı́culo se basa en investigación etnográfica a bordo de los buques de carga y centros cristianos para elucidar la lógica de las tecnocracias marı́timas en Newark y Montreal, dos puertos de mar con diferentes estructuras de gobernanza enfatizando las diferencias internas de la industria naviera enfrentando las crisis debido a la automatización, la externalización, y la reforma neoliberal. [navegación comercial, industria naviera, sociabilidad, tecnologı́a marı́tima, ideologı́a del lenguaje] C seafaring is a solitary, knowledgeintensive, and high-risk labor practice performed by AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 00, No. 0, pp. 1–14, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. C © 2018 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aman.13161 unrelated men and a few women who are paid modest to high wages to work under extreme and often 2 American Anthropologist • Vol. 00, No. 0 • xxxx 2018 hazardous conditions aboard inhospitable ships and without the basic protections of national citizenship. Since Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific, published in 1922, ethnographic depictions of seafarers and seafaring have illuminated the cultural, political, and economic rationales underwriting maritime exchange, sovereignty claims, labor rights struggles, and resource extraction at sea (Cowen 2014; Dua 2013, Fajardo 2011; Mannov 2013; Markkula 2011; McKay 2014). By comparison, anthropologists and linguists have looked less closely at the role of linguistic practices and ideologies in organizing seafarer work routines, regimenting ship workplaces, and reinforcing or contesting maritime narratives. Indeed, the few studies that examine multilingualism aboard ships ignore the ideological mediation of communicative practices. In doing so, these studies have neglected to analyze the consequences of a recent claim made by maritime technocrats. Their assertion is that commercial seafarers today are imperiling the supply chain upon which the entire world’s economy depends with their acts of unsociability. By translating the rich phenomenological experience of solitude at sea into mere logistical and infrastructural problems of a lack of social intercourse, this technocratic discourse equates the vitality of seafarers’ talk with measurable accounts of the shipping industry’s profitability. However, the disjuncture between the monolingual “talk-focused” policies of the industry and the multilingual, mediatized reality of life on ships is arguably the real peril, exacerbated by the changing technologies and labor conditions of a new age of automation. This article explores the contradictions of language ideology in maritime technocracy. Drawing on multisited ethnographic research that elucidates how the linguistic practices and language policies of cargo ships impact the structures, policies, and histories of the shipping industry, I ask the following questions: Are seafarers’ worsening experiences of geographic and social isolation, physical and psychological vulnerability, and cultural and linguistic difference actually jeopardizing the supply chain, or have maritime technocrats invented this present-day crisis to instead deter the public’s attention from urgent problems of unsustainable consumption and labor exploitation? Second, which linguistic practices do technocratic interventions into seafarers’ lives count as being sociable or unsociable, and what is at stake in basing maritime policies on the frequency of seafarers’ verbal interactions? Finally, how do industry leaders talk about and act upon profit-driven imperatives to coordinate the logistics and infrastructures of interaction and communication aboard ships to acquire information of risks to “just-in-time” shipping schedules, and how successful are these technocratic interventions? By additionally considering the dramatic transformations in oceanic transport occurring over the last century, I seek to contextualize maritime discourses of crisis in value by examining how ship owners, port officials, and other actors collaborate in the technocratic management of commercial seafarers. Contributing to anthropological discussions of the semiotics of capitalism (Cavanaugh and Shankar 2014; Kockelman 2006; Nakassis 2012; Wilf 2016) and the politics and ethics of infrastructure (Appel 2015; Bear 2015; Larkin 2013; Starosielski 2015), this study of maritime “language ideology” (see Irvine 1989) analyzes how the technocratic valuation of communicative practices aboard cargo ships promotes the economic and moral interests of shipping industry leaders and rationalizes the logistical practices involved in the coordination of an industry-wide communications media infrastructure. I begin by describing the innovations in commercial seafaring in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries designed to promote convivial talk among seafarers and build new or bolster existing communications infrastructures through monolingual language policies and pastoral talk therapy. Turning afterward to my ethnographic fieldwork volunteering alongside a Catholic chaplain at the Mariner’s House at the Port of Montreal from June to August 2005 and two Episcopalian chaplains at the Seamen’s Church Institute at Port Newark from September 2015 to February 2016, I then discuss how these technocratic investments are increasingly becoming entangled with religious and ethical projects also promoting sociable intercourse in maritime spaces. I conclude by stressing the importance of comparing onshore and offshore governance infrastructures to theorize the relationship of language and technology in late modernity. This comparison exposes how proxy measures of global economic security, such as reading the signs of unsociability, serve to perpetuate the violence of capitalism. COMMERCIAL SEAFARING IN THE TWENTY-FIRST