An aquapelago is an assemblage of marine and
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth, as opposed to extraterrestrial.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on o ...
elements in which the
aquatic
Aquatic means relating to water; living in or near water or taking place in water; does not include groundwater, as "aquatic" implies an environment where plants and animals live.
Aquatic(s) may also refer to:
* Aquatic animal, either vertebrate ...
spaces are key to community
livelihood
A person's livelihood (derived from ''life-lode'', "way of life"; cf. OG ''lib-leit'') refers to their "means of securing the basic necessities (food, water, shelter and clothing) of life". Livelihood is defined as a set of activities essential ...
s and to communities’ senses of
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), an ...
and belonging.
''Aquapelago'' refers to the
socially constructed
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives fro ...
spaces of island, coastal, lacustrine or riverine locations, where humans have developed particularly concentrated engagements with the marine environment for their livelihoods (such as
fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment (Freshwater ecosystem, freshwater or Marine ecosystem, marine), but may also be caught from Fish stocking, stocked Body of water, ...
or gathering aquatic plants) or leisure (such as surfing or diving). A
neologism
In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...
, ''aquapelago'' denotes the manner in which
environmental psychology
Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the external world. It examines the way in which the natural environment and our built environments shape us as individuals. Environmental psycho ...
has been key to various maritime communities and causes in recent years. For example, the famous
Mabo decision on indigenous Australian
native title
Aboriginal title is a common law doctrine that the land rights of indigenous peoples to customary tenure persist after the assumption of sovereignty to that land by another colonising state. The requirements of proof for the recognition of ab ...
in 1992, successfully argued that areas of the
seabed
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as seabeds.
The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of ...
, and the aquatic resources above them, were part of traditional
Torres Strait Islander
Torres Strait Islanders ( ) are the Indigenous Melanesians, Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal peoples of the res ...
community territories and related senses of communal homelands.
Concept and etymology
The term ''aquapelago'' was introduced in 2012 in ''Shima'' online journal of research into island and maritime cultures. The term subsequently gained momentum in geography, anthropology, and cultural studies, since it addresses a conceptual and lexical gap in topical discourse on the human relationship to nature. More recently, the concept has extended in reach to creative fields such as theatre, science fiction, and music.
In its initial coinage, etymologically, the term replaces the initial two syllables of the well-known term ''
archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...
'' with ''aqua'' in order to reassert the role of marine elements in aggregations of islands that has been largely lost from contemporary usage of ''archipelago''.
The concept has been further elaborated, linking it to livelihood activities and to the
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
concept of ''shima'' (referring to islands and related distinct cultural landscapes). This concept is striking in that it conceives of combined terrestrial and aquatic spaces as, effectively, neighborhoods.
The concept of aquapelago has been envisaged as a reflection on the
Anthropocene
''Anthropocene'' is a term that has been used to refer to the period of time during which human impact on the environment, humanity has become a planetary force of change. It appears in scientific and social discourse, especially with respect to ...
and as:
Subsequent developments of the concept have analysed its applicability to topics such as ocean spaces and national rights of access to these, cultural practices in
Melanesian coastal societies and career making in island communities. The original analyses of the aquapelago have been further expanded by addressing metropolitan locales and providing a characterisation of
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
as an aquapelagic city that was subsequently critiqued and modified. While there have been critics of the concept, some who regard the term as unnecessary in that archipelagic analyses can be extended to address aquatic elements, writers from various disciplines have engaged with the concept in a positive manner, such as an exploration of the concept with regard to water ecology themed performance works in the journal ''
Women’s Studies Quarterly'' and a discussion of a geopolitical aesthetic of the subterranean in the journal ''Geopolitics''. Further, the lens of the aquapelago can act as a bridge between the fields of island studies and studies examining
seasteading
Seasteading is the creation of permanent dwellings in international waters, so-called seasteads, that are independent of established governments. No structure on the high seas has yet been created and recognized as a sovereign state. Proposed ...
.
Associated concepts
One significant development of the concept of the aquapelago has concerned the notion of there being an “aquapelagic
imaginary).” This concept has been subsequently elaborated in a theme issue of the journal ''Shima'' on
mermaid
In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
Mermaids are ...
s, mer-cultures and the aquapelagic imaginary to refer to the manner in which communities’ “engagements with their aquapelagic locales” in folk-/media-loric contexts can be understood to reflect upon and transcend “perceptions of the limits of human presence in and experience of aquatic spaces.” In an article analysing the creation of a modern mythic entity, the
Ningen, a creature rumoured to inhabit the southern
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...
, there is a discussion about the aquapelagic imaginary as a “subset" of the "social imaginary”, which can be regarded as a historically determined “enabling but not fully explicable symbolic matrix within which a people imagine and act as world-making collective agents”.
References
{{reflist
Islands