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domains of action, knowledge, and social being by shaping the institutions and

disciplines in which, for the most part, we largely make ourselves’ (1995, p.54). The

UN, ICCAT and the disciplinary spaces of marine biology are some of the institutions

I have highlighted as central to a marine sustainability discourse. These institutions

connect with a wider ensemble of participants (e.g. NGOs, supermarkets, consumers)

in the making and circulation of this discourse. Sustainability devices interact with

both consumer markets and the institutional networks I have just described. They are

tangible examples of how sustainability discourses are enacted, and the knowledge

and systems of classification on which they are based.

One of the key points to make is that on the flip side of a making possible,

there is a simultaneous process of limitation both in the creation of knowledge and

then in the ideas and practices that are possible thereafter. The discourse that I have

detailed here is limited by the particular environmental/social ordering, which has

emerged with Enlightenment thinking, and disciplinary specialisations that separate

the social from the natural. I have attempted to demonstrate the falsity of this

separation by framing sustainability as a discourse.

My point is not to suggest that there is anything inherently wrong, or to imply

misuse of power. Rather, my point is to ask some questions. What is and what is not

included? Who is and who is not included? What blind spots emerge through the

various devices and technologies of environmental governance, which attempt to

enact sustainability? It is not just about seeing what has become possible but also

about what could become possible. How could the term and terms of sustainability be

shaped if other voices, different kinds of devices or knowledge frames were part of

determining the breadth and the limitations of its meaning and of its use? What can

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