Seminar: "Insurgensea: On Ships and Social Justice", by Nikolas Kosmatopoulos

Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, will give a seminar at ICTA-UAB.    

Seminar: “Insurgensea: On Ships and Social Justice”   

Speaker: Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, American University of Beirut  
 

Date: Monday, March 18th 2024
Time: 11h
Venue: Sala Montseny (Z/022 & Z/023) ICTA-UAB and online https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89029061487?pwd=Q0tGdkZOcXY2bjhHWDdZdjRCN3pkUT09

The talk addresses the world seas as one socio-political ecosystem – emerging, essential, and insurgent. It aims to explore how ships move across and shape this space, investigating the causes and consequences of a rising insurgent politics. In the last 20 years, the world oceans and seas have witnessed the deployment of ships as means to protest various instances of injustice, protect livelihoods at risk, promote socio-political aims. I will present three broad categories of sea-based, ship-powered grassroots justice politics - three research frameworks largely disconnected at present: 1) Blue Socio-Ecologies - related to environmental-economic justice, i.e. insurgent protection of indigenous environments, livelihoods, resources; 2) Terraqueous Solidarities: related to political-humanitarian justice, i.e. insurgent humanitarianism, antimilitarism, anti-border activism; 3) Oceanic Memory: historical justice, i.e. insurgent practices of rememory and memorialization, indigenous history, reparations claims.Nikolas Kosmatopoulos is a Political anthropologist, Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, author of “Master Peace: Lebanon’s Violence and the Politics of Expertise” (forthcoming Penn U Press).