As a truly transdisciplinary field, the blue humanities studies planetary waters from sociocultural, literary, historical, aesthetic, ethical, and multiple other perspectives, and lays bare the broader social implications of hydrologic sciences. The scholars in the field methodologically engage with the multivalent meanings of salt and freshwaters and the compounded changes all waterscapes are undergoing. The world’s oceans, seas, lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, creeks, glaciers, and wetlands (i.e., marshes, swamps, fens, bogs, peatlands, estuaries, and bogs) are all in crisis today, brought about by capitalist regimes of power inhabiting the material-discursive spaces now traversed by the blue humanities. Blue humanities scholars entertain the propositions that the main problems and insecurities in aquatic ecosystems are ineluctably social and cultural; that the political systems mired within the capitalist logic are responsible for the damage inflicted on the planet’s major waterways; and that the possibilities for any hopeful change are socially and culturally situated. Since our perceptions and ideas of water bodies are culturally shaped, as many scholars affirm, the best way to change the way people behave is to change the way they think. Thus, the field provides in-depth analyses of human relations with fluid sites from both material-discursive and sociocultural perspectives and offers analytical frameworks and critical pathways for studying these relations.
Citation: Oppermann S. Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene. Cambridge University Press; 2023. (p.1)