Session Name: Liminal Locations: Navigating Life at the Fringes I
Floating Populations in Asia: Researching Heritage Processes in Seascape Contexts
Monday, July 29, 2024
09:00 – 10:45 (GMT+7)
Paper Abstract: Sea nomads, boat-dwellers or floating populations are some of the expressions referencing communities living in the sea, off the islands and coasts of Southeast Asia. Crucial research has been conducted on the complex interactions of floating populations with landscapes, land communities and governments (e.g., Hoogervorst 2012); however, the effects of seascape dwelling on heritage processes remain less understood. Heritage entails the practices and manifestations of experiencing, giving meaning and using the past in the present; and heritage is commonly approached in terms of its land-based place-making significance. And yet, what is heritage for floating populations, and how is it used for place-making in the contexts of fluid and mobile seascapes? Bringing together a critical heritage lens with the mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006), this paper provides a literary overview of how floating populations in both Southeast and East Asia have been researched in academic spheres and the methodological practices used to address heritage processes in seascape contexts. Driving the research is the aim to challenge fixed geographies as the main scale for understanding social processes and to explore how, and for what, heritage is produced and used in the dynamics between landscape and seascape mobilities. The premise is that different geographical features mobilize different heritage processes, which then shape the ways people give meaning to space and inhabit it. The paper sits within a broader research project that looks at how waterscapes to landscapes migrations shape heritage with the aim to harness knowledge of the sea for climate-change solutions.
.png)