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The Blue Economy concept is being embraced enthusiastically in Africa, both internally and externally. However, this new framing creates and calls for new understandings of how actors and places relate to one another, control, and create meaning and value. Thus, understanding the ocean - and its conceptual and material fabric - in this context, is a matter of political ecology, raising a number of questions that extend across geographies, spatio-temporalities, and political actors, both human and more-than-human. In this article, we flesh out these questions. An understanding of historical efforts to legally secure oceanic space can help contextualize the emergent African blue economy, one which we propose rests predominantly on the notion of 'security.' We demonstrate how resources are economically, environmentally, and politically 'secured' as they are first constructed as economic objects of accumulation, then militarized as matters of geopolitical security, and finally controlled through technologies of monitoring, surveillance, and resistance. The 'security' of the blue growth agenda and its effects operates across different temporal and spatial dimensions and are realized in different ways across the continent as explored in the six articles in this Special Section.

The Blue Economy concept is being embraced enthusiastically in Africa, both internally and externally. However, this new framing creates and calls for new understandings of how actors and places relate to one another, control, and create meaning and value. Thus, understanding the ocean - and its conceptual and material fabric - in this context, is a matter of political ecology, raising a number of questions that extend across geographies, spatio-temporalities, and political actors, both human and more-than-human. In this article, we flesh out these questions. An understanding of historical efforts to legally secure oceanic space can help contextualize the emergent African blue economy, one which we propose rests predominantly on the notion of 'security.' We demonstrate how resources are economically, environmentally, and politically 'secured' as they are first constructed as economic objects of accumulation, then militarized as matters of geopolitical security, and finally controlled through technologies of monitoring, surveillance, and resistance. The 'security' of the blue growth agenda and its effects operates across different temporal and spatial dimensions and are realized in different ways across the continent as explored in the six articles in this Special Section.Keywords: blue economy, deep sea mining, political ecology, oceanic space, security

The Blue Economy has gained traction as a key concept that seeks to stem biodiversity loss whilst stimulating economic development, thereby integrating environmental and economic interests. Although the Blue Economy builds on the more familiar Green Economy, academic critique is still emerging and can be slow to translate into changes in policy and practice. What the Blue Economy means to national and local policy makers and practioners is seldom explored, and specificity is lacking on how the triple bottom line of economic growth, environmental sustainability, and social equity can be attained. This article explores these issues in one of the pioneering nations promoting the Blue Economy – the Republic of Seychelles – to establish a) how policy makers and practitioners in Seychelles perceive the Blue Economy b) what perspectives influence the concept; and c) who stands to gain or lose from its implementation. Seychelles has a unique position in Africa, due to its remote location in the Indian Ocean, its political history, and its pioneering role in promoting the Blue Economy: it presents itself as a leader for Africa in this respect. Using a combination of interviews and Q-methodology, we identify three perspectives on the Blue Economy in the country. Policymakers and practitioners are either: supportive in principle, critical in practice; pragmatic and accepting; or idealistic. These three perspectives capture the interpretations of those tasked with enacting the Blue Economy, but many of the perspectives present in international discourse are not present in the country, and indeed elements of them are met with resistance. Drawing on a social network analysis we find that the critical perspective is most influential in terms of information, both with government and non-government actors. However, the pragmatic and accepting perspective is more influential in terms of resource allocation, indicating a lack of resources could hamper actions by the actors that would like to see change.Keywords: Blue Economy, blue growth, oceans economy, Seychelles, Africa, Q Methodology, network analysis, natural capital

The Blue Economy has gained traction as a key concept that seeks to stem biodiversity loss whilst stimulating economic development, thereby integrating environmental and economic interests. Although the Blue Economy builds on the more familiar Green Economy, academic critique is still emerging and can be slow to translate into changes in policy and practice. What the Blue Economy means to national and local policy makers and practioners is seldom explored, and specificity is lacking on how the triple bottom line of economic growth, environmental sustainability, and social equity can be attained. This article explores these issues in one of the pioneering nations promoting the Blue Economy – the Republic of Seychelles – to establish a) how policy makers and practitioners in Seychelles perceive the Blue Economy b) what perspectives influence the concept; and c) who stands to gain or lose from its implementation. Seychelles has a unique position in Africa, due to its remote location in the Indian Ocean, its political history, and its pioneering role in promoting the Blue Economy: it presents itself as a leader for Africa in this respect. Using a combination of interviews and Q-methodology, we identify three perspectives on the Blue Economy in the country. Policymakers and practitioners are either: supportive in principle, critical in practice; pragmatic and accepting; or idealistic. These three perspectives capture the interpretations of those tasked with enacting the Blue Economy, but many of the perspectives present in international discourse are not present in the country, and indeed elements of them are met with resistance. Drawing on a social network analysis we find that the critical perspective is most influential in terms of information, both with government and non-government actors. However, the pragmatic and accepting perspective is more influential in terms of resource allocation, indicating a lack of resources could hamper actions by the actors that would like to see change.Keywords: Blue Economy, blue growth, oceans economy, Seychelles, Africa, Q Methodology, network analysis, natural capital

The Blue Economy concept is being embraced enthusiastically in Africa, both internally and externally. However, this new framing creates and calls for new understandings of how actors and places relate to one another, control, and create meaning and value. Thus, understanding the ocean - and its conceptual and material fabric - in this context, is a matter of political ecology, raising a number of questions that extend across geographies, spatio-temporalities, and political actors, both human and more-than-human. In this article, we flesh out these questions. An understanding of historical efforts to legally secure oceanic space can help contextualize the emergent African blue economy, one which we propose rests predominantly on the notion of 'security.' We demonstrate how resources are economically, environmentally, and politically 'secured' as they are first constructed as economic objects of accumulation, then militarized as matters of geopolitical security, and finally controlled through technologies of monitoring, surveillance, and resistance. The 'security' of the blue growth agenda and its effects operates across different temporal and spatial dimensions and are realized in different ways across the continent as explored in the six articles in this Special Section.Keywords: blue economy, deep sea mining, political ecology, oceanic space, security

• Summary: Within the domains of health and social care the expertise of patients, service users, volunteers and carers is becoming increasingly recognized and valued. Their involvement in various aspects of research and service development is becoming more common through 'co-production', emphasizing the social capital of these groups in contributing to new types of knowledge and service development. This article develops the notion of 'co-production' further by discussing the value of involving lay people, volunteers, service users and carers in scholarly writing and dissemination activities, and will explore ways of achieving this. Bourdieu's General Theoretical Framework is used to explore how the field of 'higher education' can embrace the social and cultural capital of those outside of the academy in both research and scholarly writing activities, and how volunteers and lay researchers can be supported in such activities. • Findings: In producing this article, two volunteers were asked to reflect on their experiences of becoming researchers, and their thoughts about disseminating the research findings through scholarly writing. The social capital of experts by experience can be valued within scholarly writing, and through this creative process different representations and understandings of the social world we live in begin to emerge. • Application: The importance of synthesizing alternate epistemologies within academic debate and discourse is centrally important when involving lay people and volunteers in research. This serves to stretch the boundaries of professional knowledge further, and contributes 'insider' perspectives to our understanding of social life.

This article offers 'insider perspectives' on participatory action research (PAR) by exploring the reflective narratives of older volunteer researchers who were involved in a recent participatory action research project into the needs, experiences and aspirations of older lesbian women and gay men (OLGs) living in Dorset, England. It explores in their own words the experiences of being a volunteer researcher on a project that explored the marginalized identities of older lesbians and gay men. The Gay and Grey project was funded for three years by the Big Lottery Fund, and was a joint initiative between Help and Care, a voluntary agency working with older people in Dorset, and Bournemouth University. In this article the volunteers offer narrative reflections on their involvement in this project, and what it meant to them. The tensions in participatory action research will be explored in terms of the different expectations of stake-holders in the research. Consideration will be given to what can be learnt from the narratives of volunteer researchers, and the issues of inclusivity within marginalized voices.

Ecosystem services have become a dominant paradigm for understanding how people derive well-being from ecosystems. However, the framework has been critiqued for over-emphasizing the availability of services as a proxy for benefits, and thus missing the socially-stratified ways that people access ecosys- tem services. We aim to contribute to ecosystem services' theoretical treatment of access by drawing on ideas from political ecology (legitimacy) and anthropology (entanglement). We hypothesize that where customary and modern forms of resource management co-exist, changes in customary institutions will also change people's ability to and means of benefiting from ecosystem services, with implications for well-being. We ask a) what are the constellations of social, economic, and institutional mechanisms that enable or hinder access to a range of provisioning ecosystem services; and b) how are these constellations shifting as different elements of customary institutions gain or lose legitimacy in the process of entangle- ment with modernity? Through a qualitative mixed-methods case study in a coastal atoll community in Papua New Guinea, we identify key access mechanisms across the value chain of marine provisioning ser- vices. Our study finds the legitimacy of customary systems – and thus their power in shaping access – has eroded unevenly for some ecosystem services, and some people within the community (e.g. younger men), and less for others (e.g. women), and that different marine provisioning services are shaped by specific access mechanisms, which vary along the value chain. Our findings suggest that attention to entanglement and legitimacy can help ecosystem services approaches capture the dynamic and relational aspects of power that shape how people navigate access to resources in a changing world. We contend that viewing power as relational illuminates how customary institutions lose or gain legitimacy as they become entangled with modernity.

We bring new insights to environmental governance research from leadership studies where there is a growing recognition that leadership is a process that is enacted through a "web of interactions incorporating both people and objects" (Hawkins et al. 2015: 953). Leadership is broadly defined as a process of influence resulting in shared direction and commitment (following Bolden et al. 2012 and Haslam et al. 2011). To illustrate what a more nuanced understanding of leadership can look like we employ a deliberately provocative analytical perspective inspired by Actor Network Theory which recognises that societal outcomes are shaped by relations among humans and non-human, including discursive, actants (Latour 2005; Dwiartama and Rosin 2014 and see discussion for detailed examples). We report on an empirical study of Solomon Islands' engagement with the multi-national, multi-objective Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI), an initiative that is labelled as potentially transformative. We aimed to understand how different actors perceive leadership for improved environmental governance in Solomon Islands in practice. First, we determine whether there are sources of leadership in addition to key individuals and organisations. We investigate the potential of organisations, policy and legislative instruments, and ideologies or discourses to enact leadership by influencing governance outcomes. Second, we establish how leadership varies across three different, potentially contested CTI goals – food security, biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation – that in combination are expected to contribute to improved environmental governance. Third, we determine whether leadership can also disrupt or stall progress towards improved environmental governance outcomes. This paper aims to open up a broader debate about leadership research in environmental sciences – the empirical approach and evidence are illustrative rather than definitive.