Oceans adrift: On the Seychelles' blue economy agenda and the unbounding of the boundary object

For at least the last ten years, the Republic of Seychelles has been lauded as a Blue Economy innovator, where ’novel’ financial instruments have integrated the priorities of an international environmental non-governmental organisation into a comprehensive marine spatial planning programme. Drawing on twelve months ethnographic fieldwork in Seychelles, this chapter makes a distinction between the Blue Economy as a discursive event and as an operationalised development agenda – a distinction that effectively unbounds the BE from earlier conceptualisations of it as a boundary object. The account presented here argues for more closely attending to the BE multiple, contested, and strategic implementation processes. Ultimately, this chapter contends that the Blue Economy registers as a coherent development paradigm primarily in its reification as a policy package rather than as a fully embraced agenda that permeates individual actions (by policy makers or other stakeholders). As such, instead of dismissing it as either a nefarious scheme or an empty rhetorical trope, we argue that the Blue Economy exists less as a thing in the world (i.e. a coherent, and potentially realisable, series of policy initiatives) than as an orientation that is used by multiple actors to make sense of the world.