Communicative Space and the Maritime Agora

Deliberative participation is a popular strategy in contested spaces such as fisheries and marine protected areas. However, in Indonesia, maritime dwellers share stories in spaces unbounded by the moment that new spatial imaginaries or participatory decision-making processes emerge. Such communicative spaces form a maritime agora of backrooms and thoroughfares where knowledge and lived experience are discussed and performed. This reveals three insights. First, communication chaos and disorder are intrinsic to informal participation. Second, thoroughfares should be viewed not as temporary passing spaces but as habitual timespaces of engagement. And third, the boundaries between public and private communicative space are elastic.