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Through a Foucauldian framework I further my analysis of sustainability as a discourse, and
suggest that the four-pillar model of sustainability has its origins in the natural sciences and
the disciplinary divides of the enlightenment period. I turn attention to marine sustainability
and the development of marine science knowledge and institutions. This will be an
opportunity to further think through the relationship between biodiversity and cultural
diversity discourses. As I have suggested, a discourse of cultural diversity in sustainable
development incorporates the language and conceptual framing of biodiversity. In the next
chapter I analyse the relationship of sustainability to the history of the natural sciences and
formations of disciplinary areas of expertise. I introduce the idea of environmental ordering
and explore the emergence of such terms as ecosystem biodiversity, species, as well as
Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) in fishery management. I consider how marine
sustainability discourses are enacted in specific institutions, through markets, calculative
devices and modes of governance. I develop an analysis of the cultural dimensions of
sustainability projects and argue that even those projects that are clearly aligned with
environmentalism and focused solely on the sustainability of a species (that is, not based on a
four-pillar model), have cultural dimensions. There are cultural dimensions in the very
knowledge framework that inform, identify and measure environmental sustainability. By
undertaking this work I continue to build a framework of sustainability as a global
assemblage, which at times incorporates an integrated sustainability discourse (four-
pillar model) mobilising concepts related to cultural diversity, while at other times is
constructed through a biological discourse, grounded in enduring disciplinary divides of the
natural and social sciences. In doing so, I begin to develop a framework that deepens our
understanding of the term sustainability, and cultures of marine sustainability, as well as
addresses the challenge of defining and sustaining fishing cultures.
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