Sea Changes: Experimental Collaborations across the Indian Ocean
Vivian Choi, St. Olaf College

Monday, Mar. 21, Open Talks will be held noon to 1pm, and the Grad Workshops will be held 1 to 3pm.
In-person in ISR-Thompson 6050
Presentations will also be available online via Zoom

Abstract:
Inspired by ethnographic accounts recounting the colors of the Indian Ocean in Eastern Sri Lanka, this talk explores the colors of the Indian Ocean, as social, political, and material reflections of life and death. While oceans are almost always described and associated with the color blue, these descriptions of past disasters — the black sludgy waters of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the red, blood-tinged sea from civil war violence — harken to the Indian Ocean’s significance as a reminder and a harbinger of danger. Scaling up, I then turn to ocean color science, which charts and models the presence or absence of phytoplankton as an indicator of the rapidly warming Indian Ocean basin, changing its hues to a deeper green and signaling broader concerns for and relations with biological life, weather, atmosphere and land. What might a broader spectrum of hues offer in contrast to dominant economic and security narratives of bluing? What might attention to Indian Ocean colors offer to examine the social and ecological impacts of planetary risk and danger?

This is a part of the Research Center for Group Dynamics (RCGD) Winter 2022 Series - "Water Ways: New Social Science, Science Studies, and Environmental Approaches to Water"

This is also a part of the class Anthrcul 558 section 002