Benthic Geopolitics off the Bangka and Belitung Islands, Indonesia: Go Offshore, Go Deeper

Abstract

With growing global metal demand for green energy transformation, the seafloor has become the last extractive frontier. This doctoral study seeks to contest this capital assumption of the seabed. It does so by conducting ethnography in seabed tin mining operations, undersea cables and coral reef restorations off the Bangka and Belitung islands in Indonesia. This dissertation indicates how multiple human and non-human relations exist in this oceanic space. Such material relations disrupt the hegemonic notion of the seafloor as mere mineral extraction sites devoid of humans. This study empirically contributes to making visible environmental violence often obscured by the dominant geopolitics of the seafloor. Meanwhile, this scholarship has also theoretically conceptualised benthic phenomena to highlight diverse seafloor meaning-making. This theory expands the benthic concept beyond marine science (i.e., benthic ecology) toward social science (i.e., human geography)