The Death of Great Ships: Photography, Politics, and Waste in the Global Imaginary

Abstract

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Uncovering Discursive Framings of the Bangladesh Shipbreaking Industry

“…Yard officials counterframe the pollution claim by acknowledging the multiple sources of pollution in the area, based on the diverse activities taking place as a result of global relations of production. Yard officials also counter the pollution frame by saying that the waste still has usability in Bangladeshi communities, thereby potentially emerging as commodity (Rahman and Mayer 2015;Crang 2010;Gregson et al , 2012. NGOs focus on "singling out" the issue by excluding the "reuse culture of the waste" narratives, instead stressing that shipbreaking activities discharge the major share of pollutants and create an unacceptable stream of toxic waste, itself a contested claim rendered more stable by the discursive framing and leveraging work done by NGOs to position the problem as a local issue for the purpose of global strategy.…”

“…This oversight is addressed in Cairns (2007), who illustrates how representation often assumes a western standard and thus requires careful scrutiny of the motive/s of representation (Crang 2010). Crang (2010) articulates how photography of shipbreaking activities constructs a sympathetic reality, contrasting bodies of workers with giant ships and ship parts together, arguing that whether workers were victimized or not becomes less concerning than the photographer's intention to frame shipbreaking as a horrific reality (Gregson 2011). Devault et al (2017) argue that the representation of shipbreaking issues in peripheral countries reflects as though the breaking activities are occurring in yards of developed countries.…”

“…What is lacking in his study is the contextualization of institutional standards of the shipbreaking nations that differ from developed countries. This oversight is addressed in Cairns (2007), who illustrates how representation often assumes a western standard and thus requires careful scrutiny of the motive/s of representation (Crang 2010). Crang (2010) articulates how photography of shipbreaking activities constructs a sympathetic reality, contrasting bodies of workers with giant ships and ship parts together, arguing that whether workers were victimized or not becomes less concerning than the photographer's intention to frame shipbreaking as a horrific reality (Gregson 2011).…”

“…This is a representation of Bangladesh shipbreaking that only objectivizes the phenomenon with no references to the human interventions that construct this environmental and worker representation. "Who is playing what games" remains relatively unexplored regarding shipbreaking (Cairns 2007;Crang 2010;Demaria 2010;Devault et al 2017). Demaria (2010) employs discourse analysis to discover multiple interpretations of the acceptance of Le clemenceu in India from NGOs, national government officials and international authorities, and concludes that the phenomenon is an "ecological distribution conflict."…”

Dis-locating innovation : amphibious geographies of creative reuse and alternative value production

“…Mimicking the intricate river topologies they navigate upon, their voyages have become tributaries to new imaginative geographies of affects, from their connection to various creative manifestations and the ingenious staging of religious rituals to absences that are not yet manifest. As previously pointed out, they mirror past developments and historical practices through "temporary stabilizations of things and relations, as coming into being and as coming apart" (Crang, 2010(Crang, :1085, be they abandoned ships, sacred relics or folk repertoires. Thus, the ways in which the floating churches mobilised this shared surplus is what arguably endorses them as an innovative response to processes of identity formation and place-making in Volgograd oblast.…”