Home > Catalogue > Lagoonscapes > 3 | 1 | 2023 > The Gulf of Finland as an Unknown Waterscape that Needs to Be Tamed

Lagoonscapes | Vol. 3 | Issue 1 | June 2023

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Research Article

The Gulf of Finland as an Unknown Waterscape that Needs to Be Tamed

Perceptions, Imaginaries and Knowledge in Imperial St. Petersburg

Alexei Kraikovski    Università degli Studi di Genova, Italia    

Julia Lajus    Columbia University, New York, USA    

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abstract

The paper summarizes the study of St. Petersburg as a center of multifaceted control and management of the adjacent lagoonscape through the perspective of knowledge as a social construct. We argue that the dwellers of the Russian capital knew their surrounding environment in a variety of ways. We can distinguish knowledge based on perception, imagination, and observation, and these three societal mechanisms of dealing with the nature of the Neva inlet, the most eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, shaped the ways of development of St. Petersburg as the center of complicated network interactions that eventually created the St. Petersburg maritime empire.

Published
June 30, 2023
Accepted
June 6, 2023
Submitted
April 27, 2023
Language
EN

Keywords: St • The Baltic Sea • Littoral society • Environmental knowledge • Petersburg • Neva Bay

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2023/01/009

Copyright: © 2023 Alexei Kraikovski, Julia Lajus. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.