Maritimacies and Nature-Culture Collectives as Inputs for a Sustainable Blue Economy on the East Coast of Uruguay

Theoretical Perspective

How do we give an account of the marine-coastal environment? By identifying humanity in its constituent and dynamic frameworks, emphasizing that these processes are physical as well as ecological, cultural, and historical (Ingold, 2002) and can serve as inputs for the management of marine-coastal environments inhabited by humans and non-humans. To this end, we return to Diegues’ (2003) concept of “maritimacies.” This perspective brings us closer to what is observed in the practices of social actors: that human beings and the environment are not two separate entities but a process in permanent constitution. In this regard, the environment is defined in terms of the technical and social activities (tasks) carried out by skilled individuals as part of the environment (Ingold, 2002). Their development constitutes a “taskscape,” what Malm (2015) will specifically term “marine taskscapes” for coastal maritime areas.

The other concept that Ingold has explored more recently is that of meshwork, which understands the environment as a zone for the interpenetration of human and non-human movements and trajectories (Ingold, 2012: 73). The environment develops with and around social actors in a process that is never complete, an idea derived from the analysis of empirical cases which, at the same time, show that environments are forged and interpreted via human activities, even as these remain organisms in themselves. That is why we cannot think about the management of the marine-coastal environment without understanding nature-culture collectives, the transversal aspects that characterize them, and the knowledge they carry—concepts that were the starting point for this project. Once the ethnographic data was collected, further aspects were incorporated to make the approach more complex and examine the case study through the analysis of economic, political, and social dimensions, among others.

Another approach to understanding the relationship between society and nature is that provided by O’Connor (1998) and derived from ecological Marxism, which allows us to directly include the political, economic, and symbolic dimensions. My study confirms O’Connor’s assertion about capitalist societies: “capital and wage labor, technology, finance, competition, and the world market, both mediate and transform nature and culture, which, in turn, sometimes enable and sometimes constrain human activity” (1998: 71). With this in mind, I looked for continuities within that space, understanding at the same time that space is a condition for the possibility of social experience that it is historically, economically, and politically constructed, and that these elements also have an impact on perceptual and practical experiences. Might mapping different environments, milieus, spaces, places, entities, plots, and knowledge constitute a way to transcend envirocentrism? Building from the idea of ethnocentrism, understood as unduly elevating the values one’s own society to the category of universals (Todorov, 1991: 21), I follow Grimson, Merenson, and Noel (2011: 31) to understand the “ethno as a metaphor for all cultural differences, for all the contrasts between symbolic worlds,” and propose the concept of envirocentrism as a modality of ethnocentrism that privileges a unique way of understanding, inhabiting, and managing the environment.

Methods

The research was performed in Punta del Este, in resorts and about ten surrounding towns (which are regularly included within the limits of what is considered Punta del Este). ² This international touristic destination is presented to both current and potential tourists as an exclusive, luxurious, and expensive resort, one whose continuous real estate growth extends beyond the formal territorial limits of the resort itself, leading to a range of ecological and social impacts. Additionally, there is an ongoing process in which “many foreigners, mainly (though not exclusively) from the region, invest in the sector, and their long-term residency is becoming significant. Therefore, it is now widely believed that the Uruguayan coast is becoming a privileged residential sector in the Southern Cone, which in turn implies aspects of segregation” (Roche, 2010: 3). This is linked to the process analyzed by Noel (2011) regarding the Argentine coast, “whose growth can be linked, among other aspects, to what some authors call ‘neo-exclusivism’” (Noel, 2011: 212). This process is characterized by the emergence of a new commercial and service niche aimed at upper and mid-upper class sectors that seeks to reproduce a touristic version of the processes of suburbanization that these socially mobile sectors have experienced during recent decades (Noel, 2011: 212).

However, when I immerse myself in the native categories for the territory’s geographical limits, the place is redrawn in a heterogeneous and multiple cartography. Here, different localities emerge and gain a voice though the sense of belonging of the social actors who inhabit this topography. The place is reterritorialized, as one interlocutor defined it, in a process through which the local inhabitants are returning to the coastal strip after their parents’ generation was displaced by real estate pressures, among other processes. Andrés, ³ a twenty-three-year-old surfer and grandson of an artisanal fisherman, was referring to a seaside resort that is once again inhabited year-round by locals (though not exclusively). Here, local projects rework the idea of the place as just a tourist destination inhabited by vacationers during the summer and deserted in the winter. This process leads many social actors to express an interest in transcending the exclusivity of planning everything around tourist activity and developing public policies designed for the tourists rather than the local inhabitants.

This ethnographic study was carried out over more than eight years of fieldwork with artisanal fishermen, surfers, and biologists during different periods. It began between June 2004 and April 2006, with stays of between three and seven days; it was then that the first concerns arose in relation to artisanal fisheries and the social actors involved in artisanal fishing. The second stage of work took place between August 2007 and January 2009, with field trips, interviews, and boat trips with artisanal fishermen in Piriápolis and Punta del Este. At that stage, I was often accompanied by other anthropologist colleagues, and together we carried out research on artisanal mussel fisheries (D’Ambrosio et al., 2010). Another important portion took place between July 2012 and December 2016, with fieldwork trips in the company of biological science researchers, artisanal fishermen, and surfers.

One of the major differences between research periods was that during the first (2004-2006) and second (2007-2009), I spent several days on the coast for fieldwork, while during the third period (2012-2016), I lived there permanently. I was often immersed in social relationships with my interviewees, with whom I shared the spaces of my daily neighborhood and work activities. Fieldwork involved instances of participant observation (Guber, 1991, 2001; Noel, 2009), in-depth open-ended interviews (Taylor and Bodgan, 1992), and informal conversations on fishing, biological fieldwork, and surfing trips, among other opportunities. Seeking to capture the point of view of the local people engaged in these practices, I practiced listening (Cardoso de Oliveira, 1996), empathy, and participation. The ethnographic data collected via these different qualitative techniques was subsequently systematized into categories of analysis using the open-ended questions asked at the start of the research and then incorporating those that were significant for the interviewees. As a result, aspects and dimensions that had not been identified in the project’s development were addressed during the research process. The interviews (ethnographic as well as in-depth, open-ended) were conducted in spaces that were important for the interviewees because of the activities and social relations that take place there, rather than being mere scenarios or backdrops for social action.

Importantly, practices intersect across the trajectories of social actors, e.g., artisanal fishermen who surf and work on projects with marine biologists, or those who are marine biology researchers but whose parents were artisanal fishermen, as well as surfers whose grandparents were engaged in artisanal fishing, among many others. Therefore, when I speak of fishermen, surfers, or biologists, I am referring to classes of practice, not classes of people. The choice of these three practices responds to my search for activities related to the sea on a daily as well as annual basis. The sea, for the purposes of this research, is the beach, waves, tides, the river-mouth of lagoons, coastal sands, and is located on the coast as well as several nautical miles away from it. Depending on the social actors and their practices, we can say that there are different marine-coastal taskscapes linked to these practices. However, these do not exhaust the trajectories of those who inhabit the sea and coast.

The ethnographic perspective enabled me to transcend some of the limitations associated with more traditional approaches. Listening, observing, and participating in the ways in which artisanal fishermen relate to and inhabit the sea and coast helped me understand, observe, listen, and participate in how surfers and biologists inhabit the sea and the coast, and vice versa. Thus, the strategy of studying three practices enriched the work both methodologically and conceptually, as well as in terms of ethnographic results and analysis. If I had focused on the study of only one of these practices, many of the transversal dimensions that emerged across all three would have undoubtedly been analyzed in terms of their individual uniqueness. Finally, I seek to relate the micro dimension of ethnography to the macro dimension of political economy. I therefore alternate between ethnographic processes and their global and intermediate connections, following Marcus and Fischer’s proposal “to take account of power relations and history within the context of their subjects’ lives” (Marcus and Fischer, 1986: 77).

Analyzing Maritimacies

In analyzing the practices of maritimacies, I systematize and highlight the continuities and transversal elements and their forms of production and reproduction, while focusing on the process of socialization and, especially, on the relationship with the environment and other significant entities for the social actors in that process. The ethnographic analysis of learning is divided into several dimensions. On the one hand, there are those elements linked to the kinetic skills required to learn. On the other, there is learning by observation and studying the environment, its movements and changes. El Colorado, an artisanal fisherman from Piriápolis and Puerto de Rocha, told me that as one of the first steps in mastering the trade, he instructs trainees to “bathe, swim in the salty water and enter into the environment. . . using the sense of smell; then you start fishing, because those who fish daily, they stink of fish.” This involves a sea inhabited and captured through the senses. Later, one of the tasks assigned to sailors to become part of the “marine taskscapes” is to steer and learn to sail. According to Pedro, an artisanal fisherman from the west, this is “one of the greatest responsibilities; I don’t care so much if they catch a lot of fish, but they have to go out and come back, that’s the most important thing. Then we can move on to the part where, yes, we do have to be good fishermen. . .” Being able to adapt to the swinging at anchor is another challenge. One day, I noticed the movements of one of the sailors were somewhat clumsier than those of his colleagues. And yet, I was struck by the naturalness with which he incorporated dizziness and vomiting into his working day. This had remained almost imperceptible to me until, seeing that I too was dizzy, he came over and told me that it was normal, and that he had to deal with dizziness and vomiting on every outing. In this instance, the methodological tool of participant observation proved essential to get closer to the moving body of fishing activity.

The importance of experienced colleagues is highlighted by many fishermen, as well as by surfers and biologists. Marley, a surfer from Punta del Este, points out that “you learn a lot, because [when] I went out with them, they watched me, told me, ‘Yo, look, you need to stand more like this when you’re trying this maneuver’. . .” In this regard, we approach what I mentioned in the theoretical section: a sea mediated by the human, a nature-culture that is accessed through the evolution of one’s own senses as well as through the mediation of other humans.

For artisanal fishermen, it is essential to have the necessary means of production: the right boat and the right equipment. In the past, it was difficult for surfers to access a board, and they jumped into the sea with whatever was within reach, whether lent by a friend or abandoned in some garage among the tourist buildings. Changes in board production, the technologies employed, and the preponderance of global trade increased the possibilities of accessing the necessary equipment at a lower cost. In this sense, we are reminded of O’Connor’s (1998) approach to how these aspects transform nature and culture at the same time, enabling or constraining human activity. Thanks to new neoprene equipment, surfers have access to winter waves they could not ride previously since it was impossible to surf without a protective suit for the cold.

Other aspects deal with how one learns to recognize those who enjoy supremacy and legitimacy within their practices. Who are the significant players with whom to engage in dialogue, negotiation, or exchange? Most of the interviewees in this study introduced, in some way, an ideal of how to perform their practice. This situates them morally apart from those engaged in other ways with the same job. Biologists in Punta del Este, for example, differentiate themselves from those who work for the North Atlantic Treaty Organizatino (NATO) or create chemical weapons. Artisanal fishermen may seek to differentiate themselves from industrial fishermen, among others, by the type of fishing gear employed and the reduced selectivity of the industrial operation, which results in very high fish mortality. There are also surfers who question development models that transform places by “manhandling” (polluting) them. Environmental discourse and associated conflicts are expressed in all three practices.

In each, an environmental discourse is accompanied by actions that might relate to “practical environmental awareness” (Santos, 2012: 338). These involve “ecological knowledge generated in the practices of locality” (LEK) (Ingold and Kurttila, 2000: 194) or “traditional ecological knowledge” (TEK) (Narchi et al., 2014: 118). Tito, an artisanal fisherman and mussel diver from Piriápolis, noted the care one must take when extracting blue mussels: “Because it’s not good to touch the rock if you are not going to take it all; since many times you say, ‘Oh, I’m missing two bags and here’s a rock’—we cannot touch that, because then the storm comes and there’s nothing left; you have to leave it for the day you go and take it all, and not just fill one bag and let the sea take forty.”

Some surfers have made proposals to protect the waves, which are often affected by pressure from powerful real estate interests and transformations on the coast. Many have joined social movements such as the Movimiento por un Uruguay Sustentable (Movement for a Sustainable Uruguay, MOVUS), which began in 2011 in response to an open-pit mining project. Among their actions was production of a video in which well-known surfers expressed their opposition to this extractivist enterprise. Some biologists joined the movement, providing expert knowledge about possible impacts. Similar actions related to other coastal ventures are supported by academic publications. There is also a kind of self-reflection associated with environmental awareness, as articulated by a biologist: “It often implies sacrificing animals, right? And even though they are crustaceans and may appear very insignificant, well, after all, they are living beings. . .” She was critical of doctoral theses, because, among other reasons, they kill many specimens for a study that is often an academic exercise with no application. There is, however, a shared perception among some researchers that this is changing, and that they seek to influence public policies and mitigate environmental damage.

“Being there” is another dimension that is emerging to establish continuity between practices in a liminal space involving change and movement. This confirms Ingold’s argument about the extent to which the environment develops with and around social actors in a process that is never complete. When describing his field trips, José Ignacio, a marine biologist from Maldonado, remembers them as relevant learning opportunities. In his words, “when you are there in the sand, on the beach, you learn. At least what I learned a lot about is the dynamics of the place; that is, knowing how to see things on the ground that validate you or that can help you to avoid mistakes.”

The pleasure of being in that place—the sea, the lagoon, the beach, or the island—develops alongside the experience of suffering and facing risks. Thus, one of the tasks that emerges as fundamental for learning the practices analyzed here is observation of the environment—the experience of the environment. In the words of some interviewees, “knowing how to read the sea,” and “becoming one with the sea.” These experiences often appear in accounts by locals as a guarantee of the authenticity and legitimacy of their practices and knowledge. In this regard, although biological sampling is characterized by its systematicity and precision, Sebastián, a marine biologist from Montevideo, explained that, during the fieldwork, “many things were not recorded, they remained as observations. It’s a perception that always stays with you. . . you see so many things.” Similarly, Viviana, a marine biologist from Maldonado, says that although there is not much room for intuition at the university, it has played a key role in her analysis of the results, helping make things “click.”

On the other hand, knowing how to read information and data confers prestige while also providing the means to find resources, as related by Sergio, a surfer from Maldonado: “Because there are people who’ve never known how to read the sea, they don’t know if it’s good or not, they jump in and don’t know if the wave breaks here or breaks there, they follow you and watch.” This reflection highlights the difference between retrieving a scientific report on the climate from a website and experiencing it (Manhaes Prado, 2012).

In this process, new technologies have often mediated the relationships between individuals across these different practices. In the case of surfing, technology has had an impact on observation vis-à-vis actually being there. Years ago, greater weight was placed on practical knowledge in situ, compared with now, when, in some cases, the mediation of others is emphasized: humans or cameras recording the waves in real time. Likewise for fishermen, the relevance of experts mediating the access to natural resources (waves and fish) is decreasing in some dimensions. However, for some species, it is still necessary to know how to listen and observe their dynamics and the environment, both social and ecological. The leader maintains his place in the hierarchy thanks to his traditional ecological knowledge (Narchi et al., 2014), which highlights the relationship between a place and its changes over time. For surfers, the dynamism of the coast makes it necessary to be there, to compare what is found on the internet about the weather and waves and what can be seen on the spot. Data does not allow for the same reading as watching the sea and each beach in situ. Similarly, biologists (including bioinformaticians) point out that it is not the same to look for samples in person as it is to download information from the internet, as the latter contains gaps. However, field biologists do make use of different devices to increase the data collected on the environment or to integrate it into their sampling process by employ measuring stations permanently installed in some sites. Sampling activities continue to be carried out in the field but, at the same time, ongoing monitoring is mediated by electronic measuring instruments.

New technologies do not supplant previous knowledge but rather complement the knowledge of social actors on the ground. It would be interesting to consider to what extent this new knowledge can be understood as LEKs that, in some respects, complement and supplant the TEKs developed by numerous generations of artisanal fishermen, surfers, and biologists. From above, we can conclude that for artisanal fishermen, biologists, and surfers, an important part of the focus of their practices is on subjective experience and on what Ingold and Kurttila (2000) call knowledge “generated in practices of locality” (LTK). This knowledge and its associated practices guide and sustain the functioning of community management systems. It is empirical and practical, the product of a cumulative and dynamic process of practical experiences and adaptation to change. It is local, holistic, and the bearer of a worldview that integrates multiple dimensions (D’Ambrosio et al., 2020).

This dynamic demonstrates the importance of a multisensory education for acquiring the keys to meaning and, at the same time, the privilege provided by people’s knowledge of their lives, their daily experience of moving through the world (Ingold, 2012). Here we find “situated knowledge” (Haraway, 1995). Relevant ethnography confirms that even the sciences develop in specific places after starting from other places and subjectivities; at the same time, these are multi-localized and permeated by daily, global, human, and non-human situations.

Knowledge is not spoken, it is learned by feeling and affected as an embodied disposition (Probyn, 2016). Delving into the experience of the locality, of “being there” in its many facets and presentations, is one aspect of the continuities among some social actors, and it led me to reflect on the practices of locality and the knowledge that arises in that process. The experience of place, the relationship with others, as well as the way multiple senses are felt by bodies along with the affective and cognitive dimensions, constitute an important pillar of my analysis.

Probyn (2016) has presented an interesting proposal to project management from within the marine-coastal environment that considers the interrelationship of the environment and the knowledge that arises from experiencing it. The author references Pálsson’s (1994) analysis of the implications of being at sea for Icelanders, who implicitly recognize the relationship between knowledge and practice and the unity between emotion and cognition, body and mind. For them, seasickness does not only involve a body stricken by nausea, which can sometimes be caused by a lack of practical knowledge or the unexpected movement of the world; is also employed as a metaphor for learning in the company of others. For those who work at sea, learning takes place in the presence of others who are both human and, more importantly, non-human (Probyn, 2016).

Another dimension of mapped maritimacies that emerged during my fieldwork is that both in processes of socialization and daily practice, ethnographic data reveals different ways of linking and constructing nature-culture collectives that transcend the apparently stable definitions of human, animal, and object. I approached a range of agencies and entities from these perspectives. What emerged were temporalities governed by nature. For all three practices, beyond the nuances, there are multiple temporalities. “Traditional time,” as Giddens (1991) calls it, is linked to the natural environment (Moura 2013: 56), which means that the temporal experience of traditional societies is associated with the flexible, irregular, and cyclical rhythm of ecosystems. The link between time and place is made possible by temporal referents materialized in natural cycles that announce the periodic return of certain material natural phenomena and, consequently, allow traditional populations to adapt to “the natural dynamics of the world” (Moura, 2013: 82). Julio, a fisherman and mussel diver from Maldonado, explains how natural rhythms cause him to alternate between the two activities he does for a living: “In June the water cools down quite a bit. . . Winter begins, it starts to rain, seawater gets contaminated with a fairly high percentage of fresh water from the Uruguay River, the Paraná River, and then. . . mussel quality drops. So, you stop doing that and that’s the season when you can go fishing for young croaker. . . in June, and it lasts till the end of September.” These changes can be termed “memory signals” or “temporal references” linked to both the traditional calendar and living in an estuary (Moura, 2013: 82).

There is an environmental time and a social time in which some aspects are governed by climatic and ecological issues—by the resources that are the object of interest of social actors, such as surfable waves, fish to be caught, sea lions, polychaetes, plankton, and research methods. Other aspects are guided by the cycles of productive activities, such as “sun and beach tourism,” ⁴ with a seasonal alternation in the activities of the people of Maldonado and Punta del Este. The seasonal variation (Mauss, 1979) is marked by an increase in temperatures, the arrival of summer tourists at the resort, and long work hours for those employed in service-related areas, such as those who earn extra money providing a service or renting out their homes.

On the other hand, when it comes to separation in the animal domain (e.g., the fish caught by fishermen, the species studied by biologists, and the sea lions that interact with surfers), “the characteristics that define the boundaries between people and animals are mixed in a way that gives order to this world. Traces of what is commonly associated with human behavior indicate, for example, how certain fish behave” (Colaço, 2015: 268). This study finds that the human characteristic of intelligence is attributed to a fish people want to catch; a species under study is considered cute, and interaction with a sea lion or dolphin reveals that the animals are understood as being able to play and surf, respectively. The reverse process also occurs, and some humans are ascribed similarities to other species. What Descola (2016: 143) has described for the Amazon as “a daily sociability maintained with non-humans who become interlocutors that, if not privileged, at any rate end up acquiring a very important role in everyday interactions” can also be observed in the systematized maritimacies.

Another aspect that emerges in these maritimacies is that the maritime-coastal environment is understood as an indivisible space for which collectives develop diverse strategies of appropriation. Elements come into play in the form of appropriation/territorialization, which account for a certain specificity of the maritime-coastal territory across all the practices in this study. Knowledge, secrecy, and lies become strategies to ensure control and ownership over goods (Simmel, 1927). The knowledge of (ecological) time, materialized in space, is a way of appropriating space and therefore territorializing it (Moura, 2013: 82). For example, someone who knows which rocks have the most mussels does not tell the other mussel divers. As Bruno points out, “Of course. . . there is always a bit of competition too [. . .] It’s like the fisherman, he always has his fishing turf; well, here you have your own places.” This is also the case when it comes to the fishing of other species. Marcos, an artisanal fisherman from Piriápolis, states, “Suppose you caught fish, suppose, above Punta Fría and they saw you; when you got back to port they would check if you caught anything, and then they would go fish there themselves, so you had to be selfish and couldn’t tell, and you still don’t.”

On this point, Malm (2015) highlights the native regulation of natural resources, citing the seminal article “The Tragedy of the Commons” in which Hardin (1968) argues that the resources held in common are subject to massive degradation because they are exploited as if there were no limit. Combined with population growth, freedom among the commons would ruin everyone. To avoid this, he concludes these should either be privatized or kept as public property with specifically assigned rights of access and use. Common ownership is, however, not necessarily synonymous with open access, because the use of open access is likely to be regulated by local communities so that other users are excluded (Malm, 2015). It is noted that while

“the group does not directly control the resources [. . .], restrictions to resource access are sought by controlling knowledge regarding fishing sites, which is transmitted through kinship or other ties. This secrecy limits the flow of information, and not just to fishermen from outside the community. Therefore, the territorial distribution of stocks and their areas of fishing activity is not carried out by means of spatial borders, but thanks to social boundaries that make up groups and domestic units” (Galván and Fernández, 1996: 133).

In these nature-culture collectives, we can see how the moral and economic limits of access to territory are redrawn in terms of practices. This accounts for an inequality in access to natural resources. A research project for one scientist can be a way to access spaces restricted to others, as in the case of a biologist who for the past five years has been carrying out research on an island with restricted access and, during fieldwork, catches sight of those who wish to dock there but cannot. Likewise, for young people from more peripheral neighborhoods, surfing can be used to legitimize their presence in a space that is a priori destined for tourists—a territory that can be accessed, temporarily, in accordance with the possibilities and consumption capacities of the social actors. Artisanal fishermen pass through the most luxurious and expensive yachts docked in Punta del Este, part of a territory in which contrasts and inequalities abound.

To conclude my ethnographic analysis, I observed heterogeneity within social practices. There are different ways of being an artisanal fisherman, surfer, and research biologist, and there are different repertoires that, as defined by Noel (2013), are “more or less open and more or less changing sets of associated resources based on affinities grounded in their socially habitual modalities of acquisition, circulation, accumulation, access or use in a certain reference group.” Based on an analysis of these factors, we can establish, as a methodological tool, a classification arising from native categories. These create some nuance of alterity or otherness in terms of development, place of origin, interests, purposes, access to resources, and means of production, which are some of the significant variables for social actors. We could, in the future, systematize actions and venture projections of management and possible conflicts based on the nuances of the perspectives that characterize these repertoires, since there are values and ways of developing practices that are transversal to several categories while others present considerable contrasts. This potential demonstrates the relevance of addressing maritimacy from an ethnographic perspective and accounting for its heterogeneity and dynamism.

It is important to note that these are not fixed categories, and, in some cases, the same actor could move from one to the other, just as the practices are not fixed and some actors traverse them. Among biological researchers, we find the following classifications: bioinformaticians, geneticists, naturalists, those who mostly engage in observation, scientists, model makers or theorists, managers, and “integralists” who seek to incorporate multiple social perspectives. In the case of artisanal fishermen, we have artisanal fishermen versus industrial fishermen, mussel divers, experienced ones versus novices, old descendants of fishing families and newcomers to the coast, artisanal and salaried fishermen, fishermen from the west, fishermen from Montevideo, fishermen from Piriápolis, fishermen from La Paloma, fishermen from Rocha, machine fishermen, responsible laborers and bohemian fishermen, fisherman versus farmers, and gaucho fishermen. The surfers may be surfers for pleasure versus pro surfers, local versus non-local surfers, gaucho surfers, and clumsy surfers versus experienced surfers. The heterogeneity of these native classifications requires greater complexity in the approaches to Blue Economy policies that, so far, seem to ignore the diversity of the human element or humanities, which are related to the sea and the social practices developed in this environment.

These fieldwork results reveal that the ecological knowledge developed in the practices of the locality and practices of resource appropriation are fundamental, as is access to the coastal maritime environment. Therefore, it is essential to ask how these elements could be affected in the process of implementing Blue Economy policies and whether these might lead to cases of maritime dispossession.

Conclusions

This study employed Marcus and Fischer’s (1986) approach to ethnography to develop a sensitive record based on closeness to actual experience that permitted the development of analytical concepts finely attuned to that reality. It identified humanity in its constituent and dynamic networks as these formed in interaction with the coastal marine environment. It also addressed the continuities that can be observed in the practices of social actors and which account for multiple maritimacies (the trajectories of artisanal fishermen, biologists, and surfers), the particularities and historicity of the marine-coastal environment, and the knowledge generated within it by various actors, all of which should be seen as valuable inputs when designing public policies. Thus, following Grimson (2011), I highlight the possibility of envisioning public policies for the Blue Economy that incorporate the knowledge of difference, questioning our common sense of space, sea, conservation, coast, environment, work, and development.

The inclusion of different forms of inhabiting and constructing the sea-coast enables transcending hegemonic visions that are often based on models that ignore the particularities of the coastal-marine environment of implementation. In Uruguay, the development policies proposed under the banner of a “Blue Economy” is an ambiguous project that seeks to implant itself in the marine-coastal territory. This makes the study of maritimacies, skills, maritime-coastal taskscapesm and ways of inhabiting, knowing, and experiencing the coast and the sea all the more important. It is particularly challenging to systematize and incorporate local ecological knowledge (Narchi et al., 2013; Malm, 2015) and ways of inhabiting the environment when designing management processes, for example, to create Marine Protected Areas. Likewise, the roles played by the economy, inequalities, and the global market must be studied since, as O’Connor (1998) notes, these processes can both facilitate and restrict human activity. The goal is to develop a reflexive approach that recognizes envirocentrisms and deepens our understanding that the knowledge and management of the sea and coast is complex, based on a multiplicity of historical processes during which human and non-human beings have all inhabited the environment, deploying experiences, sociabilities, and conflicts.