Life in (and beyond) underwater hotels

Phillip Vannini was awarded a grant from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to explore underwater hotels as an entry points into new possibilities for human mobilities.

From the surface of a planet exhausted by a global pandemic and scarred by climate change, few endeavors might seem more feckless than the development of underwater hotels. A more indepth immersion into the subject, however, reveals broader social trends and the potential for profound reflections about human life. Therefore, while the immediate research setting of this project is delimited and unusual, the broader landscape this pilot study sheds light onto is as fundamental as the possibility of human life in both existing and new habitats.
How do people who temporarily inhabit underwater hotels—guests and workers—relate to underwater environments? More broadly, what can underwater tourism development teach us about the possibility of more permanent human inhabitation of underwater environments and extreme environments in general? In this sense the proposed research project is the first building block of a future research agenda that will tackle global developments in the inhabitation of challenging environments.
“Inhabiting challenging environments” is one of SSHRC’s 16 Future Challenge Areas. The challenges —which focus on research subjects that may have a major impact on Canada and the world in the next decade—were identified as part of a horizon scanning exercise launched by SSHRC in association with Policy Horizons Canada. The inhabitation of challenging environments may be a collective necessity to consider as plans, inventions, and development projects push us to reconsider where people may live and how we may adapt to life in challenging conditions. Advances in space exploration and in marine technology and architecture are playing an important role in the development of livable or visitable environments, and “a future of undersea hotels, undersea farming, and floating citystates is evolving, leading to a reframing of culture, economics and governance” (Policy Horizons Canada, 2018, n.p.). life is extremely difficult for some species due to limited accessibility to energy sources, high or low temperature, or pressure conditions unsuitable to certain kinds of life. Now, underwater hotel rooms are clearly not extreme habitats for their guests, but their development is but the tip of an iceberg in the global quest for new space to colonize. Around the world’s seas, seasteading residential colonies, agricultural production projects, military installations, and residential subdivisions are taking shape. As more of the world’s advanced economies are coming to terms with the finite availability of space, expanding opportunities made possible by technological advances and the growing diversity of clients’ demands for novel experiences are resulting in the design and construction of new environments. Underwater hotels, the proposed project will reveal, are but amongst the very first and more easily accessible entry points into new possibilities for human mobilities.
While underwater hotels are mentioned in a few studies—especially on the future of tourism—no social scientist has ever conducted research in or on them. Given its novelty and timeliness, the usefulness of the proposed research project across the social sciences is considerable. Moreover, given the curious nature of the topic, the proposed project is likely to stimulate the attention of the general public. Due to the transdisciplinary nature of the fields of study in question—chiefly tourist studies and mobility studies—and due to the combination of theoretical and methodological approaches rooted in anthropology, geography, sociology, and cultural studies it is requested that this proposal be adjudicated by a multidisciplinary review committee.