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The recent literature on “marine sovereignty” encourages to consider the ways of management and governance of the Pacific Ocean from a new perspective, in order to face the ecological crisis and acknowledge the coexistence of different ontologies. In this paper I aim to convey the density and the poly-chrony that characterize the aquatic ontology of the Belema people, the inhabitants of the Belep Islands (Kanaky New Caledonia). For the Belema, the ocean is more than a surface to cross or the source of important economic resources. The ocean is a dense space: visible and invisible intertwine in its opaque depth; past and present, life and death mingle; human and non-human meet. The aquatic geography (a hydrography, punctuated by underwater villages and paths), the genealogies (in which the first ancestors are marine animals) and the continuities and correspondences between aquatic and terrestrial beings reveal the force of the ocean. It shapes the Belema society and contributes to making it a more-than-human society.

From a maritime anthropology perspective, this article analyzes how artisanal fishermen of the San Andrés Archipelago are propelled to the forefront of conflicts between commoning and sea grabbing. In doing so, it questions how this contributes to document the process of the maritimization of societies. Built on six months of ethnographic work in fishing cooperatives, the article questions the positioning of artisanal fishermen as new guardians of the sea, by crossing several scales of analysis. The article first considers the recent upgrading of the social status of fishermen and then the place of their “good practices” as symbolic forms of localized appropriation of fishing territory. It then points out the contradictory dimension of the fishermen’s role of guardians of the sea at regional and sub-regional scales. In a context of regional border conflict and competitive access to oil exploration, the role assigned to fishermen by national institutions is one of heritage before being one of environmental citizens. The Biosphere Reserve fulfills above all a geopolitical function, making fishermen guardians of national frontiers rather than guardians of the biodiversity.

This paper explores matrilineal kinship in the Buka area, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, from the perspective of saltwater people on Pororan Island. In Bougainville and elsewhere in Melanesia, anthropological research has highlighted the importance of joint work in the gardens, of sharing and exchanging garden food, and of negotiations of access to land for kinship and relatedness in the region. Where does this leave saltwater people, who often have only small areas of land of their own, take little interest in gardening and depend on traded sweet potatoes or imported rice for meeting their subsistence needs? In the first part of this paper, I indicate “landed” bias in anthropological research on kinship, including matrilineal kinship. I then suggest complementary descriptive and analytic terms that may be useful for researchers who want to understand kin relations among saltwater people, based on my experiences among Pororan Islanders in Bougainville. Finally, I indicate the theoretical contribution that these terms can make to research on kinship in landed settings, as well.

The present article provides an analysis about the history of academic research carried on in the field of Anthropology, History and Archaeology, specially referring to those researches focused on the study of different nautical cultural traditions developed in several aquatic environments in Brazil. The article outlines the main thematic choices pointing out the limits on their approaches. Due to its largeness, the study has been divided into two parts: the first part concerns the presentation of the problem and the discussions which were set up in the Anthropological field, while the second part, still on its way to be published, will approach this theme in History and Archeology.

Maritime anthropology federates, since the 1970s, numerous research studies on coastal societies. Emphasizing the singularity of the experience of life at sea, maritime anthropology particularly leaned until now on the comparative ethnography of fishing communities in oceanic environments. Societies living close to estuaries and coastal rivers also feel the influence of the sea under various forms, both direct - as the intimacy with the aquatic environment - and indirect. But the place and role of anthropological research addressing this specific experience in the development of the field of the maritime anthropology remains uncertain.Drawing on the comparison of two field studies -fishing activities in the Amazonian estuary of Oyapock and socio-environmental conflicts on the coast of Finistère (France) - this article shows the multiplicity and the changing forms of presence of the sea in coastal, riparian and rural societies. In the context of rapid and complex anthropogenic change, the margins of the maritime space appear as a heuristic viewpoint to explore the material and immaterial transformations, which affect the connections with marine ecosystems and seascapes.The article raises new questions and avenues as regards to the scope and future directions of maritime anthropology, emphasizing the need for an overtaking of the land-sea dialectic and enhanced reflexivity of the observers. To do so, the authors suggest a systemic and phenomenological approach of the sea and the marine element, which in such a perspective should be addressed as a continuous, dynamic and unstable system extending beyond coastal societies.

The paper explores the social meaning and uses of a beach located in the central coast of Catalonia (Spain). We focus on the heritage process or “patrimonialization” carried on in this beach by an association devoted to traditional sailing, and how this process affects to other beach users. A conflict generated around the project to construct a seafront promenade in the same place showed up that the beach itself is considered heritage by local people and that it fall into the discourses and representations of local identity. The heritage process of the beach will be involved in the inclusion/ exclusion practices both as subject and object.