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certain coordinates of knowledge and are conditioned by that knowledge (in Rabinow

2003, p. 53). For example, a sustainable tin of tuna has certain currency because it is a

response to a crisis that has been articulated through familiar forms of knowledge –

environmental science, economic rationality – which are distributed and laboured

across diverse institutional spaces. The sustainable seafood guide is also, as I outlined

in the introduction of this chapter, a market device that responds to a crisis and

articulates what sustainability is. It does this through particular knowledge

coordinates and a set of calculable criteria that allow sustainability to be measured.

Seafood sustainability discourses online reveal how knowledge is connected,

where knowledge is produced and reproduced, and how it circulates and comes into

effect in local practices. The online sphere is a relatively new platform that facilitates

knowledge production and sharing, and connections among a wide range of actors. By

“actors” I mean both a narrow sense of the word actors (stakeholders like NGOs,

consumers, corporations, conservationists, supermarkets, marine conservation

organisations, marine science authorities, certification bodies, and canned tuna

companies), as well as “actors” in the Latourian/ANT sense (the platforms on which

these stakeholders meet, market devices such as sustainability apps, documents such

as sustainability guides, and different ideas and classification systems that are

evoked). What I would like to point out here is that despite the range of actors that

form this network, a limited sustainability discourse is produced and reinforced

through its circulation. We could say that these heterogeneous actors come together

and work to circulate and maintain knowledge. In this case the common sources of

information frames and limits the way that sustainability is defined. This network thus

also works to guard the borders of knowledge production and distribution.

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