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the forms of the sayable’ (Foucault 1991, p. 59), and delineate the range of possibilities –

relationships, truths, concepts and practices.

This Foucauldian inquiry into discourse asks: what are the conditions of possibility

that define the rules of how knowledge is ordered, and the existing concepts, structures and

institutions at a given time? And how do these conditions provide both opportunities and

limitations through which a particular discourse emerges? Applied to sustainability, the

relevant questions are: What are the conditions – concepts, structures, technology, ordering –

that have fostered the emergence of a sustainability discourse? What are the ideas, related

objects, devices, statements and practices that support it and work to lay down the terms of its

existence? That is, what is the discursive framing of sustainability and how is a product like

sustainable tinned tuna implicated in the production and reproduction of such a discourse?

What institutions and disciplines work to produce and hold in place this discourse? Who can

participant in defining the term and terms of sustainability? And finally, what are the

limitations of this framing and what is at stake? It is this work and set of questions that guides

the current chapter.

Ordering Sustainability

Let us return to some of our objects – Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide and the Coles

eco tin – in order to think through and to trace the conditions that have allowed a wider

sustainability discourse to emerge. While there are conflicts surrounding what is and is not

sustainable, as will become clearer in the next chapter when I refer to specific articulations of

sustainability by diverse groups, there is nonetheless a shared foundation. That is, there is a

string of key concepts, practices, knowledge, authoritative figures and institutions that come

together to support and give value to the practices (for example certification) and materials (a

certified tin of tuna) of sustainability. Using a Foucauldian framing we can say that the

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