Rival Knowledges, Secrecy and Stowaway Cultures

Through this project, I am attempting to rethink some of the findings from my research into the governance and treatment of maritime stowaways in global shipping through themes of secrecy, rumour and ignorance. This particularly relates to the rival bodies of tactical knowledge generated by communities of stowaways living around ports on the one hand, and a network of actors in the shipping industry who seek to control the stowaways on the other. I am interested in the continuous constitution of these rival knowledges, their mutual permeation, their protection against access by the opposing side or outsiders through deception, but also their ironically readily accessibility, as well as the ethics of mapping these rival knowledges as a researcher.