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ABSTRACT
By zeroing in on the term ‘heritage’ in the most important international legal instrument on oceans – the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC), this article explores how the concept of the Common Heritage of [Hu]mankind and maritime heritage are produced and deployed in the global legal project of ocean-ordering and the implications thereof. The Common Heritage of [Hu]mankind concept embodies and enacts a dominant resource-centric framing of the ocean. This framing prioritises and valorises the material and economic value of the deep seabed, thereby transmuting it into an oceanless exploitable common. The LOSC, with minimal cultural preoccupation, also conceptualises and confines maritime heritage within a narrow land-based and material-centric understanding of heritage that often prioritises state control and claims. This is because the LOSC is constrained and shaped both by the metaphysical, geographical, and legal tendency of ocean parcelisation and by the authorised heritage discourse that conditions how heritage is understood and practiced. We conclude by suggesting taking the Middle Passage as an analytical provocation, that is to recognise the mutually constitutive and constituting relationship between the Middle Passage and the (Atlantic) Ocean, to enable critical reflections and alternative perspectives on heritage-making in ocean environment.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Yuan Wei, Edyta Roszko, Lucas Watt, Shengdan Cai, and Tirza Meyer for their valuable support and helpful feedback at various stages of this research. We are equally grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for helping us clarifying our arguments. Last but not least, our writing is also indebted (and hopefully dedicated) to the late Professor Oscar Salemink, who generously spent time on sharing his thoughts with us even at the very last stage of his life.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. While both the Maltese Ambassador Arvid Pardo and the LOSC refer to ‘common of mankind’, we prefer using the term ‘common heritage of [hu]mankind’ in this article to avoid reproducing the masculine connotations implied in the wording of ‘mankind’.
2. Most of Pardo’s own or cited predictions throughout the speech were thereafter proven to be overly optimistic or simply unsubstantiated. The cost effectiveness of DSM and the estimated seabed mineral bonanza were both questioned (Ranganathan Citation2016, 712). The polymetallic nodules are unlikely to form at a rate faster than their consumption given that their formation rates ‘are amongst the slowest geological processes on earth’, about 1 inch per million years (Childs Citation2022, 193–95). The prospect for permanent human inhabitation in the deep seabed seems to be, if anything, still far-fetched six decades after his speech.
3. See ‘Archaeological and Historical Treasures of the Sea-bed and the Ocean Floor Beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction’ submitted by Greece to the UN General Assembly’ in August 1972 and ‘Turkey: draft article under point 23. archaeological and historical treasures on the sea-bed and ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction’ submitted by Turkey to the UN General Assembly in March 1973.
4. The proposal submitted by Greece in 1972 suggests that ‘if the International Authority will not undertake itself exploitation activities of the resources of the sea-bed area, all persons, natural or juridical, public or private, national or international, exploiting the area by a system of contracts or by the establishment of joint adventures, are to be obliged to report to the Authority the discovery of any item of archaeological or historical value’ (See, UN General Assembly, Committee on the Peaceful Uses of the Sea-Bed and the Ocean Floor Beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction, Sub-Committee 1, UN Docs A/AC.138/SC.I/L.16, 2 August 1972).
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Hang Zhou
Hang Zhou is a political ethnographer interested in South-South relations, global China, politics of development, maritime anthropology, and everyday states in Africa. His PhD thesis finished at SOAS, University of London, was shortlisted for the 2022 Audrey Richards Best Doctoral Thesis Prize of the UK African Studies Association. His recent works have appeared in African Affairs, Marine Policy, Revue internationals des études du développement, and African Study Monographs, among others.
Jieyi Xie
Jieyi Xie is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Hong Kong Shue Yan University. Her research focuses on heritage and museum studies, with a particular interest in world heritage politics and the Maritime Silk Road heritage. Email: [email protected].