1 See, for instance, the recently launched interdisciplinary journal Maritime Studies and the Centre for Maritime Research at the University of Amsterdam.

2 Pathbreaking publications have been, among others, Martin W. Lewis & Kären E. Wigen, The myth of continents: a critique of meta geography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997; the special issue ‘Oceans connect’, The Geographical Review, 89, 1999; and Steinberg, Philip E., The social construction of the ocean, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar

3 Cf. P. D'Arcy, The people of the sea: environment, identity, and history in Oceania, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006; Epelì Hau ` ofa, We are the ocean: selected works, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008.

4 The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

5 The hidden dimension, Garden City, NY: Double Day, 1966.

6 See, for a fine example of a sociological analysis, Jacqueline, Nassy Brown, Dropping anchor, setting sail: geographies of race in black Liverpool, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.Google Scholar

7 See Driessen, H., ‘Mediterranean port cities: cosmopolitanism reconsidered’, History and Anthropology, 16, 1, 2005, pp. 129–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Between the devil and the deep blue sea: merchant seamen, pirates, and the Anglo-American maritime world, 1700–1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

9 Envisioning power: ideologies of dominance and crisis, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.

10 See the attempt by Alain Corbin and Hélène Richard, eds., La Mer: terreur et fascination, Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Seuil, 2004.

11 See, for example, Arjun Appadurai, ‘Sovereignity without territoriality: notes from a postnational geography’, in Setha Low and Denise Lawrence Zúñiga, eds., The anthropology of space and place: locating culture, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 337–49.