‘Maritime Mindsets’ Actors Maneuvering into Global Maritime Commodity Chains.
Thomas van den Brink, PhD Candidate at TUDelft, History of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Since 2019 there is an Academic debate to redefine societies’ relationship with the sea. A worldview often framed as a Maritime Mindset which since its conception included cultural expressions as diverse as swimming to the way we think.
This thesis assumes that if it exists, it should be observable in the behaviour of actors operating within Global Maritime Commodity Chains. Therefore, the thesis’ objective was to determine whether there is enough empirical grounding to legitimize the concept, to determine its main feature and to develop a way to observe and analyse it.
The research concludes that a Maritime Mindset exists, provided that it is understood as a manoeuvre in space. Either in the physical, social or cultural space. Expressed through logistical, governance and imaginative interventions. Moreover, they always aim to break away from the status quo. Which in turn stimulates other actors to manoeuvre as well.
The added value of the mapping method is that it becomes possible to observe these manoeuvres that often fall outside the scope of conventional research as they do not emerge from demarcations in time and space determined a priori by researchers, but from the way in which specific actors addresses the sea under specific circumstances.
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