Policy mobilities and the sociomateriality of U.S. offshore aquaculture governance

Abstract

This article examines the development of U.S. offshore aquaculture policy and governance through the lens of assemblage and mobility. It first characterizes the offshore aquaculture policy assemblage and identifies three “strands” of policy reform that have taken hold and influenced policy, regulatory, and governance development over time: (1) federal legislation, (2) regional management, and (3) administrative cooperation. The article then draws on two specific cases of policy mobility, based in California and the Gulf of Mexico, to show how policy models and ideas moved not only across U.S. geographies, but also across time and institutional scales. Together, the analysis demonstrates the sociomateriality of policy; it shows how policy ideas and practices travel and transform, emphasizing where policies come from, how they are reshaped by local geographies and practices, and, in turn, how they reshape the broader policy landscape in the process. Among other outcomes, these mobilities led to an infusion of precautionary policy ideas at the national scale, a critical reinterpretation of policy authority by a federal agency, and greater interest in shellfish aquaculture and administrative cooperation across all institutional scales. By exploring subnational processes in a novel policy context (oceans), this article contributes to emerging work on policy assemblage and mobility, advances research on oceans geography and governance practices, and argues for greater engagement with the oceans among critical geographers and policy scholars.