"Based on a decade of ethnographic and archival research in Peru, Life and Inequality in the Eastern Pacific reveals how dominant representations of the ocean obscure racialized disparities in the ways that different people experience the impacts of the climate crisis. In contrast, the readings offered in this book of waves and coastal development, the circulation of ocean waste, El Niño warming events, and the extraction of jumbo squid draw on experiences and ways of knowing that have been submerged by widely circulating interpretations of the Anthropocene's oceans. Life and Inequality in the Eastern Pacific presents a complex image of Peru's global seascapes as historical spaces comprised of precarious more-than-human life worlds that are tenuously arranged to expose people, non-human species, and places to unequal levels of harm. He traces how powerful actors in Peru represent the ocean through semiotic processes of translation, decontextualization, and erasure. Recognizing the significance of these processes is important for understanding not only how critical aspects of climatological and ecological crises are erased in public discourse, but also for revealing how racializing and classist discourses are inserted into discussions about climate change and environmental problems. This book also addresses expanding scholarly interest in the world's oceans as sites for thinking about social inequalities, environmental politics, and multispecies relationships"--

This unique tie-in to the major motion picture "Oceans"--presented by Disney & "National Geographic"--explores the health of the oceans, and reveals what people can do to improve the health of our seas.

After spending most of her life in the city, Linda Underhill moved to rural Allegany County, New York, in 1989 and observed a successful citizens' protest against a low-level nuclear waste dump near her home. Having always thought the environmental movement applied mainly to the wilderness, Underhill began writing to voice the essence of what her neighbors were trying to preserve in their own backyards. Her essays describe elements of the natural world: wind, water, ice, fire, trees. The title essay concerns the "unequal hours" of the changing seasons, while other essays explore a nature preserve, a garden, backyard wildlife, and a hot air balloon ride. Deliberately choosing settings close to home, she shows that one does not have to go on a wilderness voyage to appreciate the natural world. The Unequal Hours brings to our attention the sudden, intense experiences of reality that Virginia Woolf called "moments of being" by using the events of everyday life as a way to explore what the natural world means to ordinary people. Like the sudden moments of illumination in haiku, the "moments of being" Underhill describes are rooted in the ordinary, but they reveal the extraordinary.

The seas and oceans are currently taking centre stage in academic study and public consciousness. From the plastics littering our seas, to the role of climate change on ocean currents from unequal access of marine resources to the treacherous experiences of seafarers who keep our global economy afloat; now is a crucial time to examine how we live with the sea. This ambitious book brings together an interdisciplinary and international cohort of contributors from within and beyond academia. It offers a range and diversity of insights unlike previous collections. An ‘oceanic turn’ is taking place, with a burgeoning of academic work that takes seriously the place of seas and oceans in understanding socio-cultural and political life, past and present. Yet, there is a significant gap concerning the ways in which we engage with seas and oceans, with a will to enliven action and evoke change. This book explores these challenges, offering insights from spatial planning, architectural design, geography, educational studies, anthropology and cultural studies. An examination through these lenses can help us to better understand human relationships with the seas and oceans, and promote an ethic of care for the future.

Listen to the podcast with Nilufer Oral on 'Climate Change, Oceans and Gender' In Gender and the Law of the Sea a distinguished group of law of the sea and feminist scholars critically engages with one of the oldest fields of international law. While the law of the sea has been traditionally portrayed as a technical, gender-neutral set of rules, of concern to States rather than humans, authors in this volume persuasively argue that critical feminist perspectives are needed to question the underlying assumptions of ostensibly gender-neutral norms. Coming at a time when the presence of women at sea is increasing, the volume forcefully and successfully argues that legal rules are relevant to ensure gender equality and the empowerment of women at sea, in an effort to render law for the oceans more inclusive. See inside the book.