Kinship as critical idiom in oceanic studies

Abstract

This introduction puts forth a working definition of oceanic kinship as kinship with the ocean and kinship shaped by the ocean. It uses the notion of kinship as a critical idiom and conceptual lens through which we can examine the oceanic turn’s potential for rethinking forms of human and nonhuman belonging. Modernity and coloniality were spurred and sustained by oceanic mobility. The oceans, as waterways and material presences, have helped shape modern-day (re-)configurations of kinship. This introduction acknowledges oceanic kinship’s situatedness within conditions of systemic racism, colonial injustice, and global power imbalances in the various contexts of oceanic im/mobility, labor, and ecologies, presently and historically. Our notion of kinship encompasses practices of mutual care which emerge from an understanding of interdependence, collectivity, and affiliation. With its focus on kinship and mutual care, this introduction charts a new critical tradition within ocean studies.