Deepwater Alchemy

Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor

Lisa Yin Han

$397.95 $318.33

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

University of Minnesota Press
01 December 2024

Media studies; Impact of science & technology on society; Oceanography (seas)

How underwater mediation has transformed deep-sea spaces into resource-rich frontiers.

Green energy technologies such as windmills, solar panels, and electric vehicles may soon depend on material found at the seabed. How did a space once imagined to be empty and unfathomable come to be thought of as a treasure trove of resources? Lisa Yin Han traces how contemporary developments in underwater sensing and imaging materially and imaginatively transmogrify the ocean bottom into a resource frontier capable of sustaining a digitally connected global future.

Set against the backdrop of climate change, energy transition, and the expansion of industrial offshore extractions, Deepwater Alchemy looks at oceanic media and its representation of the seabed in terms of valuable resources. From high-tech simulations to laboratories and archives that collect and analyse sediments, Han explores the media technologies that survey, visualise, and condition the possibility for industrial resource extraction, introducing the concept of extractive mediation to describe the conflations between resource prospecting and undersea knowledge production. Moving away from anthropocentric frameworks, she argues that we must equalise access to deep ocean mediation and include the submerged perspectives of multispecies communities.

From the proliferation of petroleum seismology to environmental-impact research on seabed mining to the development of internet-enabled seafloor observatories, Deepwater Alchemy shows us that deepwater mediation is entangled in existential hopes and fears for our planetary future. As the ocean bottom becomes increasingly accessible to people, Han prompts us to ask not whether we can tame the seafloor, but, rather, why and for whom are we taming it?

By: Lisa Yin Han
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 425g
ISBN: 9781517915933
ISBN 10: 1517915937
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 01 December 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Further / Higher Education , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lisa Yin Han is assistant professor of media studies at Pitzer College. Her writing has been published in Media + Environment, Configurations, and Communication, Culture & Critique.

Reviews for Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor

""Lisa Yin Han takes readers on a compelling journey through deep seas to chart the extractive mediations of ocean environments. Along the way, we learn how crucial infrastructural media are to composing, visualizing, exploiting, salvaging, and transforming oceans. From mining to pipelines, telemetry and observatories, Deepwater Alchemy makes an essential contribution to the watery depths of the blue humanities."" —Jennifer Gabrys, author of Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle ""Deepwater Alchemy tells a story vital to our present, when deep-sea oil drilling, deep-sea mining, and the state of the sea, from top to bottom, organic and inorganic, is under grave distress from human enterprise. Lisa Yin Han gives us an unexpected way in, screening the abyss as a kind of medium revealing deep pasts, presents, and futures."" —Stefan Helmreich, author of A Book of Waves