Atlas Swam: Freedom,Capital, and Floating Sovereignties in the Seasteading Vision

Abstract: Political actors have long drawn on utopian imaginaries of colonizing marine and island spaces as models for idealized libertarian commonwealths. A recent inheritor of this tradition is the seasteading movement, which seeks to “further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities [by] enabling innovations with new political and social systems” on semi‐stationary, floating platforms. Fueled by a cocktail of ideologies (techno‐optimism, libertarian secession theories, and strains of anarcho‐capitalism), seasteading is touted as the newest “frontier” in creative, entrepreneurial, and social engineering. Inherent in the project, however, are buried ideals about the nature of ocean space, the limits of sovereignty, and the liberatory role of technology and capitalism in the drive for social change and individual freedom. We explore these notions through an examination of seasteading's broader philosophical and economic underpinnings, and their deployment through multiple structural, legal, and social frameworks. Although seasteading is a highly speculative, and even fanciful project, it reflects attempts to resolve contradictions within capitalism: between, on the one hand, the need for order and planning, and, on the other hand, the desire to foster and lionize individual freedom. In the United States, this tension has most visibly entered mainstream discourse through the rise of the Tea Party movement, whose ideology combines adherence to classical liberal ideals about individual entrepreneurship with hostility toward government intervention. Although the seasteading movement, like its better known and more realizable libertarian contemporaries, proposes a solution that its leaders say will resolve this tension, our analysis reveals that it would merely rework it, and thus it unwittingly reinforces the structures it seeks to escape.     

Macrobotanical food remains from a trans-Holocene sequence at Daisy Cave (CA-SMI-261), San Miguel Island, California

Carbonized macrobotanical remains from a trans-Holocene archaeological and paleontological sequence at Daisy Cave provide important insights into the use of food plants by Paleocoastal people as well as later groups on California’s Northern Channel Islands. Small seeds are rare among the macrobotanical remains recovered in the cultural strata at Daisy Cave, which are dominated by charcoal from woody plants used as fuel. The recovery of Brodiaea-type corms from the Early and Late Holocene strata suggests, however, that geophytes were an important source of carbohydrates and calories for Channel Islanders throughout the Holocene. The proposed importance of geophytes is consistent with the abundance of Brodiaea in island vegetation communities recovering from more than a century of overgrazing, as well as the large numbers of digging stick weights found in island sites.     

Constellations of (in-)convenience: disentangling the assemblages of Canada's west coast island mobilities

Drawing from fieldwork conducted to examine the roles played by ferry mobilities in the lives of residents of ferry-dependent islands and coastal communities of British Columbia, Canada, this paper focuses on three elements of spatial mobility assemblages: motives, costs, and frictions. In doing so, this paper contributes to the growing literature on the politics of mobility constellations. Data shed light on the transformative, but contested, power of spatial mobilities. To analyze these dynamics the analysis builds upon Ingold's ideas on wayfaring to highlight how practices, representations, and experiences of ferry mobility exercise their transformative power.     

Palaeohabitat of first settlement sites 1500–1000 B.C. in Guam,Mariana islands,western Pacific

Based on computer-aided models and geoarchaeological excavations, palaeohabitat renderings can account for ancient site locations and contexts much different from today in terms of sea level, coastal dynamics, slope erosion, nearshore ecosystems, native forests, and other factors. A case study illustrates this research in Guam of the Mariana Islands of the western Pacific, with specific reference to the 1500–1000 B.C. time interval. This time interval includes the oldest known archaeological sites in the Mariana Islands, directly relevant for understanding the context of ancient Austronesian population dispersals in the larger western Pacific region. The results also help toward larger understanding of coastal adaptations in dynamic settings.     

从新《防卫计划大纲》看日本安全战略的调整方向

2010年12月17日,日本政府通过新的《防卫计划大纲》,确立了今后十年日本国家安全战略和防务政策的方向。“新大纲”首次明确指出中国的军事动向是“地区和国际社会的忧虑事项”,并做出一系列针对性的安全战略调整：将防卫对象直指中国,防卫力量构想改“基础性”为“机动性”,防卫重心由本土和北方移向“西南岛屿”,计划改革增强情报机构,酝酿构建亚太多边同盟体系等。本文就日本“新大纲”的内容变化以及针对中国的安全战略调整展开分析。     

A harbour in the country,a city in the sea: Infrastructural conduits,territorial inversions and the slippages of sovereignty in Sino-Sri Lankan development narratives

This paper adopts infrastructure as a lens through which new understandings of the inter-relationships between territory and sovereignty can be advanced. It argues that inverting the terrestrial assumption of territory can lead to “slippages” of sovereignty in which territorial sovereignty is indirectly claimed through the assertion of governance rights. For the purposes of this paper, I explore these inversions through the reclaiming of land from the ocean, and the removal of land by the ocean. Drawing on ethnographic research exploring the effects of China-backed infrastructure mega-projects in Sri Lanka, these territorial inversions are explored, respectively, through the Port City Colombo project – in which territory is claimed from the ocean through the creation of an island infrastructure – and the Hambantota International Port project – in which territory is removed by the ocean through the creation of a man-made port. Both projects reveal the ways in which infrastructure investments are implicated in the region-building ambitions of the Belt and Road Initiative, and thus provide conduits through which Chinese sovereignty can be asserted. As conduits, they foreground the realisation, but also the reimagination, of what “islandness” can mean in/to post-war Sri Lanka.     

边疆危机与行政应对——中法战争后清政府的西南治边策略探析

中法战争后中国西南边疆面临深刻的危机,清政府在加强军事防御的同时,还对边疆地区的行政区划进行积极调整,在西南沿边地区设置了三个边道。边道道员除了拥有广泛的行政司法权外,清政府还赋予其兼管海关事务、中外交涉和防卫边疆等权限,提高了边道应对边疆事务的能力和效率,有利于加强对边疆的治理。广西迁移省会的失败反映了清政府治边行政对策上的局限性,但同时也反映了边疆重臣试图通过改变行政中心以强化边防的努力,为后世提供了有益的启示。     

蜀国与西南民族

自古以来,我国西南地区民族人口众多,民族成份复杂,民族分布面广,民族活动能量强、社会影响大。三国时期,立国于西南之蜀国与西南民族的关系极为密切,对西南民族地区社会历史的影响广泛而深远。本文在阐述蜀国建立的基础上,着重论述了其境内的民族成份及诸葛亮平南中的事件,并对(?)人的族属和平南中的时间作了进一步的探研。     

Swiddening Practices in the Micronesian Past: Macrocharcoal Quantification From a Gardening Site in Pohnpei

A recent publication (Levin and Ayres 2015 Levin, M. J., and W. S. Ayres. 2015. Managed agroforests, swiddening, and the introduction of pigs in Pohnpei, Micronesia: Phytolith evidence from an anthropogenic landscape. Quaternary International. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.12.027.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) presented evidence for cyclical swiddening over a 700-year sequence at an old gardening site on Temwen Island, Pohnpei, Micronesia, using phytolith and microcharcoal evidence. Here, we corroborate this evidence by quantifying macroscopic charcoal from flotation occurring at the same site. Notably, the macrocharcoal provides evidence for burning in the immediate local area rather than the regional evidence that microcharcoal can provide. This method allows for a more robust interpretation of gardening microenvironments.