[Coral-List] Call for papers: interdisciplinary marine topical collection

[Jones, Elis]

Dear Coral Listers
Please see below a call for papers, developed from an interdisciplinary marine workshop we recently held at the University of Exeter in the UK, which featured talks on coral reefs from several different disciplinary perspectives.
We welcome (and encourage!) submissions from natural and social scientists. Please feel free to share this with any colleagues you think might be interested.
Happy to answer questions if you have any.
Best wishes
Elis Jones
PhD Student,
Egenis Centre, University of Exeter
Erj205 at exeter.ac.uk

CALL FOR PAPERS
Title: Values at Sea: Marine Science Studies Meet Blue humanities
Journal: History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Guest editors: Elis Jones, Jose A. Cañada, and Sabina Leonelli (University of Exeter)
Across social science and humanities, attention is increasingly focused on the sea. There has been a notable rise in panels, papers and projects in recent years working on understanding the challenges that marine sciences face in a time of ecological crisis. This growing interest is no surprise: the sea is a site of immense value, supporting and shaping the global biosphere, and is under considerable threat both by global change and local pressures. Whilst marine ecosystems are pushed to the brink, scholars now often talk of the blue humanities and oceanic turns, of blue economics and accelerations, and of ocean decades. These trends necessitate a similar refocusing towards the sea in the history, philosophy, and social studies of science, fields that are ideally placed to help understand and contextualise some of the changes occurring to marine systems.
In April 2023, the guest editors of this topical collection organized a two-day workshop at the University of Exeter to bring together scholars working on this topic. Social scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, historians and marine scientists with an interest in societal processes came together to share their work and reflect on the different ways values emerge in the study, protection and nourishment of marine ecosystems. The debates during the workshop made evident that it is important to continue this discussion, opening it up to the rest of the academic community.
This work is deeply relevant to global initiatives for marine conservation as emerging management strategies engage with different forms of value generation. For example, the United Nations have declared 2021-2030 the UN decade of Ecosystem Restoration and the decade of the Ocean, motivating research on restoration strategies to ensure the future of marine ecosystems. Presentations at the workshop explored these emerging trends in connection with their historical dimension to make clear that the way forward in the study and management of marine ecosystems is very much under debate inside academic communities. Quite often, the positions that different actors adopt in these debates are mediated by political and ethical values, for example prioritising economic growth might tip the balance in favour of restoration in certain contexts. Positions that defend the intrinsic value of marine habitats might, on the other hand, defend more restrictive approaches based on the removal of local pressures.
Whether emerging techniques for conservation and restoration are viable or worthwhile, it seems clear that they generate value: they attract economic investment, they generate new knowledge about the workings of understudied ecosystems and produce new technological devices with the potential to support the flourishing of struggling ecosystems and generate new types of data. The role of new trends in the study and management of marine ecosystems in the generation of economic, scientific, political, and societal value is undeniable. This intersection between the production of scientific knowledge and the generation of value is key in comprehending the past, present and future of marine systems.
Tracking current advances in the field of marine sciences, paying attention to the management strategies they propose and connecting them with the history and conceptual underpinnings of the study of marine life, will help with the key enterprise of understanding how these initiatives are integrated in environmental politics, both globally and locally. This topical collection will bring together contributions from HPS and STS scholars working on these issues, including workshop participants as well as respondents to this Open Call, and those from other disciplines with an interest in the topic.
If you are interested in contributing to this Topical Collection, please send an abstract proposal (300 words) and brief biographical sketch (300 words) to Elis Jones (erj205 [at] exeter.ac.uk) by the 30th of June 2023. Guest editors will inform about abstract acceptance in Mid-July and invite authors to submit a full paper by 1st of December 2023.
Journal website: History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences<https://www.springer.com/journal/40656>
Link to call for papers: https://marinesciencestudies.co.uk/call-for-papers/