Tangled coastal connections: ethical tensions in materialities and imaginaries

Abstract There is an urgent need to address ethical tensions emerging from intensified connections and materialities among coasts, cities and seas. This essay introduces a collection of papers examining ethical discourses used to make sense of entangled connections and materialities. The studies reveal both a tangle of connections in each set of city-coast-sea relations and an array of ethical tensions in materialities and imaginaries as locals try to make sense of each scene. Each paper finds ethical claims proliferating and entangled, with problems of legitimacy swirling around projects the ethics are meant to support. The collection emphasizes how local situations – in material, social and ecological arenas – are shaping the links between coastal urban areas and the ethical discourses being assembled around them.