Adjacent to the Sea: How coastal communities resist and reimagine blue frontiers

Background: Scholars have long grappled with the complexity of governing oceans and coasts, seeking to balance coastal inhabitants and seafaring nations with the dilemma: Who shall benefit from the sea? Privileging local, embedded coastal actors over global, mobile entities is central to the debate on adjacency; however, little conceptual innovation has addressed adjacency or how benefits are allocated. Objective: AdjacenSEA investigates the power of adjacency claims employed by coastal actors to assert their authority over area, access, and benefits (AAAB) of their seas and coasts. To achieve this, the project poses four research questions to address: articulations of adjacency, resistance logics within AAAB claims, discursive power of adjacency, and the potential of these to reimagine the position of local communities within marine governance. Approach: AdjacenSEA adopts an ambitious abductive research paradigm whereby its novel, synthesized theoretical framework of dimensions of adjacency, AAAB, and power will be evidenced through multi-site, comparative case studies. Case studies draw data from coastal communities navigating 1) tourism-driven gentrification, 2) offshore wind energy, and 3) blue carbon restoration. Data will be collected via mobile interviews and photovoice in addition to ethnographic fieldwork in three coastal regions. Using these innovative, participatory methods enables researchers to recognize the emplaced and embodied aspects of adjacency. Both thematic and discourse analyses will be used to answer the research questions. Impact: One of AdjacenSEA’s groundbreaking ambitions is to build a rich (qualitative) dataset and innovate the tradition of discourse analysis by taking it out from behind desk and into the field. AdjacenSEA will advance our understanding of whether coastal communities can mobilize adjacency and how these mobilizations enable or constrain sustainability transitions.