Kimberley Peters

Wet Ontologies, Fluid Spaces: Giving Depth to Volume through Oceanic Thinking

This paper expands on recent attempts to destabilise the static, bordered, and linear framings that typify human geographical studies of place, territory, and time. In a world conceptualised as open, immanent, and ever-becoming, scholars have turned away from notions of fixity towards fluidity and flow, and, in so doing, have developed networked, ‘flat’ ontologies. Recent attempts have gone further, challenging the horizontalism inherent in such approaches by opening up a vertical world of volume. In this paper we contend that such approaches are still somewhat lacking. The vertical element of volume is all too often abstract and dematerialised; the emphasis on materiality that is typically used to rectify this excess of abstraction tends to reproduce a sense of matter as fixed and grounded; and the temporality that is employed to reintroduce ‘motion’ to matter has the unintended effect of signalling a periodised sense of time that minimises the chaotic underpinnings and experiences of place. We argue that the ocean is an ideal spatial foundation for addressing these challenges since it is indisputably voluminous, stubbornly material, and unmistakably undergoing continual reformation, and that a ‘wet ontology’ can reinvigorate, redirect, and reshape debates that are all too often restricted by terrestrial limits.

Manipulating material hydro-worlds: rethinking human and more-than-human relationality through offshore radio piracy

Lambert et al state that emerging geographical studies of social and cultural worlds at sea should take into account the currents, textures, and more-than-human elements of the oceans. In spite of this call there has been little work which seriously considers the physical, more-than-human geography of the sea—its very materiality—and how it comes into play with social and cultural life. This paper draws on the watery excursions of Radio Carolines pop-pirate broadcasting ships, examining the ways in which the materiality of the sea as a ‘hydro’ state (that is, motionful, deep, and dynamic), has agency; resulting in a variety of visceral affects for those at sea, and also for those listening to the stations transmissions back on dry land. The paper begins by examining the strategic locations of the pop-pirate vessels whilst at sea to manipulate the motionful impact of the ocean and how, in turn, the depth and dynamism of the sea were harnessed to create unique audio experiences for those listening. The paper then continues to explore the ways in which, even with such manipulations and harnessing, crew members sometimes had little control of their situation; resulting in disorientation and confusion as the power of the sea immersed them. Through these two sections it is contended that the specific quality of the sea opens up new relational understandings between the human and more-than-human worlds. Humans cannot assert influence back onto the materiality of the sea as they might the earth, and therefore must negotiate the force of the ocean through forms of strategy and management; manipulations of materiality and affect, forming new cocomposed relations. It is concluded that further studies, both in more-than-human geographies and within the discipline more widely, of the seas inordinate agency and wider web of extraterrestrial relations are required in order to take seriously the often forgotten 70% of the Earths surface which is ocean.

Negotiating the ‘Place’ and ‘Placement’ of Banal Tourist Souvenirs in the Home

Abstract Souvenirs have been largely ignored in geographic work on tourism. This paper adds to the body of literature concerned with ‘tourism geographies’ by considering the partial lives of one type of souvenir; those labelled ‘banal’. This paper explores the negotiations that arise when such souvenirs (material objects from the exotic, extraordinary, temporary place of tourism) are implanted in the usual, ordinary place of ‘home’. It is argued the ‘placement’ of souvenirs in the home stems from the ‘place’ the souvenir holds for owners, via their enmeshment in social relationships, processes of fetishization and questions of authenticity. This paper asserts that ‘banal’ souvenirs (tea towels, bookmarks, food and drink) however ‘ordinary’ in appearance, and alike to items usually found at home, are just as likely to be placed in significant ways as supposedly authentic, hand-crafted souvenir goods. This paper thus argues that souvenirs offer a novel frame for thinking geographically about tourism.

Unlocking carceral atmospheres: designing visual/material encounters at the prison museum

Using a variety of devices from visual displays, material objects, sensory engagements and embodied performance, museums select and narrate particular moments in history to an increasingly active audience. Thus far, focus on specific elements of museum design has eluded the altogether more pervasive, intangible and complex sensations designed, engineered, co-constituted and also arising unexpectedly from these sites: atmospheres. This article draws upon a particular museum experience – that of the prison museum – to interrogate how atmospheres are a key component of re-telling the past. Here, the authors explore the production and consumption of what they term ‘carceral atmospheres’. Focusing on two prison museums, the article explores how visitors unlock experiences of incarceration via the variety of atmospheric sensations calculated and provoked in these museum settings through visual/material manifestations and cues. The authors conclude that understanding atmospheric design is vital to gaining a deeper appreciation of how heritage sites function in the 21st century.

The Mobilities of Ships and Shipped Mobilities

In the burgeoning field of mobilities studies, the seas and all that moves in, on, across and through them, have not been embraced with the same enthusiasm as mobilities ashore. While trains (Verstraete 2002), planes (Adey 2010) and automobiles (Merriman 2007) have received sustained attention, alongside walking subjects (Middleton 2009), wired networks (Graham 2002) and mobile ideas (Law 1986); the ship (a prime figure in seaborne movement) has, for some time, been quietly bobbing in the background (Peters 2010, 1243). It is important to note that the work of the mobilities paradigm has not omitted the politics of sea-based movements entirely (see, for example, recent entries in this journal; Ashmore 2013; Stanley 2008; Straughan and Dixon 2013), but it remains true that mobilities ‘at sea’ are a vastly underexplored area, with more comprehensive incursions only just beginning to emerge (Anderson and Peters 2014; Birtchnell, Sativsky, and Urry forthcoming; Vannini 2012). This work has helped set in motion a shift towards the seas, following a more general oceanic reorientation within the humanities (see Blum 2010), bringing the rhythms and movements of people, objects, materials, ideas – all manner of things and stuff – into focus through the lens of mobilities thinking. The following special issue has been inspired by this changing tide, rising off the back of a series of events that have sought to bring the water-world and its manifold maritime mobilities into view. A thumbnail genealogy will illustrate. In 2010, the editors of this collection organised a session at the Royal Geographical Society’s annual conference with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS–IBG), entitled ‘Geographies of Ships’ which sought to explore the spaces, places, times and scales of the ship and the journeys it made possible, in the past and present. This was followed in 2011 by a ‘Maritime Roundtable’ workshop held collaboratively between Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Glasgow. Here the effort to expand an empirical and conceptual understanding of the mobilities of the ship was extended with the presentation of more specialised and focused papers

Tracking (Im)mobilities at Sea: Ships, Boats and Surveillance Strategies

Abstract This paper explores how national governments exercise regulatory power over spaces beyond their jurisdiction, when activities in those extra-territorial spaces have direct impacts within the boundaries of state concerned. Focusing explicitly on the control of shipping mobilities in the high seas and territorial sea zones, it is contended that apparatus of control, in particular, surveillance, are not only complex across spaces of alternate legal composition and between spaces of national and international law, but also across of the differing conditions and materialities of land, air and sea. Indeed, this paper argues that the immobilisation of the undesirable mobilities of ships and boats is inherently difficult at sea because of its very nature – its mobile legal boundaries, its liquidity compared to ‘landed’ fixity, and its scale and depth. Drawing on the case study of offshore radio pirates and the tender vessels which travelled ship to shore to supply them with necessary goods, it is reasoned that greater attention must be paid to mobilities at sea in view of forms of governance in this space. The sea is not like the land, or air, legally or materially, and mobilities cannot be governed, controlled and contained in the same ways therefore, as these connected spaces. Thinking seriously about the issues that arise when surveillance of mobilities is taken to sea, can help work towards better understandings for why security at sea proves so problematic and how those issues can be resolved, when the sea is the stage for contemporary geopolitical concerns in the twenty-first century.

Between crime and colony: interrogating (im)mobilities aboard the convict ship

Recent literature in carceral geography has attended to the importance of mobilities in interrogating the experience and control of spaces of imprisonment, detention and confinement. Scholars have explored the paradoxical nature of incarcerated experience as individuals oscillate between moments of fixity and motion as they are transported to/from carceral environments. This paper draws upon the convict ship – an example yet to gain attention within these emerging discussions – which is both an exemplar of this paradox and a lens through which to complicate understandings of carceral (im)mobilities. The ship is a space of macro-movement from point A to B, whilst simultaneously a site of apparent confinement for those aboard who are unable to move beyond its physical parameters. Yet, we contend that all manner of mobilities permeate the internal space of the ship. Accordingly, we challenge the binary thinking that separates moments of fixity from motion and explore the constituent parts that shape movement. In paying attention to movements in motion on the ship, we argue that studies of carceral mobility must attend to both methods of moving in the space between points A and B; as micro, embodied and intimate (im)mobilities are also played out within large-scale regimes of movement.

Doing time-travel: Performing past and present at the prison museum

[From introduction] The transformation of former prisons to sites of “dark tourism” reflects a recent trend in the use of decommissioned buildings for alternative purposes, such as museums and other heritage sites, which particularly emphasise “representations of death, disaster or atrocity for pedagogical and commercial purposes” (Walby and Piche, 2011: 452). Prisons are spaces that hold a morbid fascination for visitors who are unlikely to ever encounter such a space in their everyday lives (Strange and Kempa, 2003). Far from a traditional tourist site, the prison museum is built upon consumer desire to access the inaccessible; to glimpse a life on the ‘inside’ and all its assumed horrors from the comfort of being on the ‘outside’ (Turner, 2013) – with the choice and liberty, of course, to enter, to leave, to accept or to reject any given exhibition or display (see Hall, 1973). Prison museums cater, on the one hand, to a market of visitors seeking such tourist experiences for entertainment (Adams, 2001; Schrift, 2004). On the other hand, they function to educate visitors about penal pasts, shaping contemporary understandings through engagement with carceral histories (see, for example, Baker, 2014: 1). In this chapter we attend to the ways in which a particular prison museum – the Galleries of Justice, in Nottingham, U.K. – informs and entertains while making the past usable in the present.The file associated with this article has a special embargo of 12 months from publication with the permission of the publisher.Bargaining with reading habit is no need. Reading is not kind of something sold that you can take or not. It is a thing that will change your life to life better. It is the thing that will give you many things around the world and this universe, in the real world and here after. As what will be given by this historical geographies of prisons unlocking the usable carceral past routledge research in historical geography, how can you bargain with the thing that has many benefits for you?

Regulating the Radio Pirates: Rethinking the Control of Offshore Broadcasting Stations Through a Maritime Perspective

Offshore broadcasting pirates, transmitting radio shows from international waters back into the borders of nation-states, have been largely examined from a media-communications perspective. Drawing on pirate stations broadcasting into Britain I argue that new insights into the regulation of this phenomenon can be formed if it is considered not only as a media-communications venture, but likewise a maritime one. Following the Marine &c. Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967, Section 42 of the Broadcasting Act 1990, and the surveillance missions which ensued, I contend that these were not only aerial strategies designed to deal with an aerial problem (that of broadcasting), but also sea-based strategies, designed to deal with a maritime problem (that of broadcasting from ships and forts at sea). I thus propose re-thinking the ways in which successive British administrations regulated the radio pirates, paving the way for an alternative understanding of this phenomenon in media history.

Fixed-term and temporary: teaching fellows, tactics, and the negotiation of contingent labour in the UK higher education system

This paper autobiographically considers the role of teaching-only staff as a contingent labour force in the contemporary higher education system in the UK. The aims are twofold. First, whilst much attention has been paid to the role of the research fellow, there has been less consideration, in the UK context, of the teaching fellow as an alternate form of postdoctoral experience. Accordingly, this paper gives voice to the teaching fellow—a member of academic staff who is not allocated writing and research time as part of their contract—whose views are often marginalised in ongoing debates concerning the plays of power in the neoliberalised academy. Second, the paper raises these voices to bring into consciousness the impacts of the teaching fellow experience for the fellows themselves and the faculties they work in. It is argued that teaching fellows face challenging circumstances with regard to their career trajectories in the academy. Accordingly, this paper considers the ways in which fellows, through tactics of place-making, presence and visibility, and collaboration, negotiate the challenging structural and institutional conditions that underscore their contracts. It is contended that exploring the teaching-only workforce is vital for critically assessing the workings of the contemporary academy and questioning the unequal power relations that shape work places in a culture where contingent labour is expanding; becoming less of a fixed-term and temporary feature of the university system but, rather, a stable and enduring one.