Sensing Seascapes: How Affective Atmospheres Guide City Youths’ Encounters With the Ocean’s Multivocality

Abstract

The healing potential of blue spaces in human lives seems to have a universal timbre, yet little research has examined the great diversity of particular individual encounters with waters. To meet the challenge to capture this multivocality of individuals and of the sea, this article offers a perspective of seascapes through the lens of affective atmospheres and person-centered ethnography. Based on 2 years of fieldwork among urban youth in Norway, the material reveals that contradicting atmospheres can coexist and also may be perceived differently. Even though sensing the sea is highly individualized, I argue that deeply anchored psychological processes lie beneath why humans are drawn toward waters.