In A Book of Waves Stefan Helmreich examines ocean waves as forms of media that carry ecological, geopolitical, and climatological news about our planet. Drawing on ethnographic work with oceanographers and coastal engineers in the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Bangladesh, Helmreich details how scientists at sea and in the lab apprehend waves’ materiality through abstractions, seeking to capture in technical language these avatars of nature at once periodic and irreversible, wild and pacific, ephemeral and eternal. For researchers and their publics, the meanings of waves also reflect visions of the ocean as an environmental infrastructure fundamental to trade, travel, warfare, humanitarian rescue, recreation, and managing sea level rise. Interleaving ethnographic chapters with reflections on waves in mythology, surf culture, feminist theory, film, Indigenous Pacific activisms, Black Atlantic history, cosmology, and more, Helmreich demonstrates how waves mark out the wakes and breaks of social histories and futures.
- Cover
- Contents
- Foreword / Daniel R. Reichman and Robert J. Foster
- Preliminary. Forward and Back
- Preface. Wave Clutter
- Color Plates
- Introduction. Significant Waves
- Chapter One. From the Waterwolf to the Sand Motor: Domesticating Waves in the Netherlands
- Set One. First Wave: The Genders of Waves
- Set One. Second Wave: Venice Hologram
- Set One. Third Wave: Wave Navigation, Sea of Islands
- Chapter Two. Flipping the Ship: Oriented Knowledge, Media, and Waves in the Field, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
- Set Two. First Wave: Being the Wave
- Set Two. Second Wave: Radio Ocean
- Set Two. Third Wave: Gravitational Waves, Sounded
- Chapter Three. Waves to Order and Disorder: Making and Breaking Scale Models inside and outside the Lab, from Oregon to Japan
- Set Three. First Wave: Massive Movie Waves
- Set Three. Second Wave: Hokusai Now
- Set Three. Third Wave: Blood, Waves
- Chapter Four. World Wide Waves, In Silico: Computer Memory, Ocean Memory, and Version Control in the Global Data Stack
- Set Four. First Wave: Middle Passages
- Set Four. Second Wave: Wave Power
- Set Four. Third Wave: Wave Theory ~ Social Theory
- Chapter Five. Wave Theory, Southern Theory: Disorienting Planetary Oceanic Futures, Indian Ocean
- Postface. The Ends of Waves
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- References
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
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Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
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