Anthropological Quarterly

In Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean, anthropologist Jatin Dua has woven an insightful and refreshing monograph about contemporary maritime piracy emanating from Somalia, with specific focus on what he refers to as "an anthropology of protection" (23). For Dua, this means empirically tracking practices of protection that are violent and/or coercive, whether they are meant to protect lifestyles, land, trade routes, financial assets or free trade (19). This move destabilizes the "empirical and analytical divides between piracy and counter-piracy," (4) and Dua shows us how they are, in many ways, quite similar.

The introduction to Captured at Sea is a fabulous piece of scholarship that offers important interventions to how we understand sovereignty, and specifically challenges the taken-for-given conceptual divide between the land and the sea. The first three chapters seek to anchor piracy practices to reciprocal kinship groups (diya) and counter-piracy to marine insurance companies (121). He begins with a thorough historical framing of protection practices in the region, and then shows how these practices continue to be relevant in everyday relations with those who practice Somali piracy. His chapter on the connections between counter-piracy and marine insurance is based on the framework of maritime regulations and law. Thereafter, Dua focuses on ransom-making practices (Chapter 4) and on being captive (Chapter 5).

The book is based on research that stretched over approximately four years during which he developed a methodology that is "transregional" (24). In practice, this means that Dua not only links sites perceived as separate—such as places at sea and on land or diya groups and insurance [End Page 737] companies—but he shows how these sites are and constituted through their connections across space, time and reciprocal relations. By taking juxtaposed local practices of space, time, and relations seriously, he charts a field of global connections. In fact, describing his own work as "transregional" does not do the scope of this research justice. Dua brings the reader to courtrooms in Kenya and to coastal villages and khat markets in Puntland, northern Somalia, where readers bump along mountain roads with him and worry that he is "no longer a protected guest" (177). We accompany him to the underwriting rooms at Lloyd's of London's marine insurance offices (110) and are introduced to seafarers in Delhi offices, sometime-pirates on Somali shores, and even a pirate boss in "a town in Puntland" (80). We join him at the Multi-National Headquarters—the EU's counter-piracy taskforce—nestled in a suburb of north London (100), at a bar in Djibouti frequented by private armed guards (141), and for lunch in Washington, DC with high-ranking officers from the US military. We meet a wealth of interlocutors: fishermen and pirates, khat merchants, village elders, private armed guards, international seafarers, dhow captains, military figures, marine insurance underwriters and ransom negotiators. Research of this kind requires serious travel and on-going and nimble access negotiation. Dua's methodology is much more than just transregional. Importantly, he also carried out field research at sea, on board small fishing vessels, dhows, naval patrols, and a container ship. Constructing a field of connections across land and sea are key to his arguments.

The monograph is also built up around relevant historical accounts. Dua carefully frames Somali piracy within a wider colonial and postcolonial history of Somalia (50), including its civil war from 1969–1991, and within a rich history of trade routes, practices, and relationships in the region (8). Walking the reader through the historical and political underpinnings of hostis humanis generis, or "the enemy of all mankind" (86), we learn that the pirate was not always seen as a criminal, or even as an enemy. Instead, Dua unpacks two kinds of historical thalassocracies: one that is diasporic, and one that is imperial. A diasporic vision allows the lines to be "blurred between seizure and exchange" (12). In the other, piracy is seen...