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Book Review
| The Social Construction of the Ocean. By PHILIP E. STEINBERG. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. $59.95 (cloth); $ 22.00 (paper).
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In a relatively short book, Philip Steinberg succeeds in explaining the social and historical nature of our past and present conceptualizations of the sea, which is after all only 71% of our planet. This is no small task. Steinberg emphasizes that even the most distant ocean space is a deliberate social construction of society, not necessarily by society. In other words, intentional or otherwise, society's idealizations of the sea are central to "the institutions and structures that govern their lives" (p. 191). Conceptions of the sea affect our society, whether we're conscious of it or not. |
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Steinberg the geographer focuses on the uses and conceptions of space. In categorizing the sea he shows how ocean space serves multiple functions, such as a resource area, a transportation surface, a battleground, buffer zones or "force fields," and even as a Foucaultian "heterotopia," a space for the creation of experimentation and alternate social models. The most immediate and obvious dichotomy stems from the fact that most of the world's oceans lie outside of nations and national histories. Steinberg attempts to go beyond what he terms the "territorial trap," or the landward bias inherent within nation-state perspectives. His book, then, deals with more than simply the elucidation of maritime space. It explores the limitations of the nation-state model by setting out on the "high" seas. Maritime history and literature is the natural area for this exploration. But is there a historiography of ocean space? In America, this is a field relegated almost entirely out of the universities and into the naval and merchant marine academies. |
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