Despite the fact that the sea covers 70 per cent of the Earth's surface, and is integral to the workings of the world, it has been largely neglected or perceived as marginal in modern consciousness. This edited collection disrupts notions of the sea as 'other', as foreign and featureless, through specific, situated accounts which highlight the centrality of the sea for the individuals concerned. Bringing together academics who combine scholarly expertise with lived experiences on, in and with the sea, it examines humans' relationships with the sea. Through the use of auto-ethnographic accounting, the contributors reflect on how the sea has shaped their sense of identity, belonging and connection. They examine what it is to be engaged with the sea, and narrate their lived, sentient, corporeal experiences. The sea is a cultural seascape just as it is physical reality. The sea shapes us and we, in turn, attempt to 'shape it' as we construct various versions of it that reflect our on-going and mutable relationship with it. The use of embodied accounts, as a way of conveying lived-experiences, and the integration of relevant theoretical frames for understanding the broader cultural implications provide new opportunities to understand seascapes.
'How do we engage with the sea? How does it permeate our lives and impact how we think and feel? Bringing together a rich collection of embodied, emotional and sensuous ethnographic narratives, this book is as close as you might get to being at sea from the comfort of your armchair. Thoroughly enjoyable and an important contribution to the literature.' Kimberley Peters, Aberystwyth University, UK 'A landmark book, Seascapes captures our intimacy with the ocean by exploring how we penetrate the natural world, and vice versa. The authors draw on multiple voices, theories and perspectives, and engage with the ocean in passionate and perceptive narratives that radically recast the sea as a dynamic, living, affective and sentient place.' Douglas Booth, University of Otago, New Zealand 'Brown and Humberstone's volume, Seascapes, explores the imaginative, aesthetic and embodied experiences through which people engage with the sea. Through fascinating and diverse auto-ethnographic accounts of surfing, sailing, swimming and, above all, thinking and feeling with the sea, it illuminates the complexities of this vital human-non-human relationship.' Veronica Strang, Durham University, UK 'Throughout the oceanic descriptions were strongly woven threads of everyday and identity politics, of the human/nature relationship and of what we do as researchers. In their conclusion, Humberstone and Brown, write that 'It is our hope that this collection of narratives provides new ways to contemplate with the sea rather than on or at it' ... but I think this book does more than that - it provides a new space and approach to contemplate how we do research in other fields and spaces as well.' Leisure Studies
