Imagining justice with the abyssal ocean
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| Abstract |
How are we to ethically source the materials needed to live well while taking care of the worlds that we extract from? This dilemma is explored through different modes of “predation” associated with material extraction. Particular attention is given to the emerging seabed mining regime as the poster child industry for blue capitalism and as a model for how international law of the seas facilitates its extractivist expansions into the deep ocean. While critiquing the ecological force of UNCLOS as an instrument of extractivism, the chapter also examines individual implicatedness in the ecological harms caused by mining. The conditions of material embodiment and vulnerability necessitate provisioning of materials for everyday goods such as household wiring, batteries, and mobile phones. Sourcing these materials sutures us, in different ways, within inalienable relations of violence toward more-than-human others, instantiating ethical obligations of care to the worlds of our prey. |
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