National Governance of Offshore Volumes: Challenging Geometries, Geopolitics and Geophysicalities

Abstract

This dissertation explores the challenges posed by the materialities of oceans and other extraterritorial spaces to state capture and capital development. Utilizing theories emerging political geographers surrounding vertical and volume components of territory and theoretical engagements with materiality of non-terrestrial spaces, this research seeks to investigate entanglements of the geopolitical and geophysical in constructing and practicing (re)interpretations of territory and sovereignty, power and space. A focus on New Zealand and the South Pacific serves to unravel these cross scalar, dynamic categories of national territory and sovereignty in relation to the emerging political and social constructions of the deep sea, sea level, and air space, as well as the blurred and shifting boundaries of each. Contextualizing historical and regional contingencies of the spatial organizations of maritime space, this dissertation seeks to open up new ocean imaginaries and ontologies by making explicit the material, technical and political constructions that produce offshore territories.