Page 165 - KATE_JOHNSTON_2017

effective resonances of concern and care to the analysis of an environmental conflict we can

work to challenge persuasive campaigns that often single out fishermen as destructive agents

of conflict, while ignoring the socio-economic circumstances within which they operate.

But before we pile concern and care into one basket, it is worth considering the

different things they do. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa suggests that although both concern and

care share the Latin origin cura, and even if ‘“concern” alters the affective charge of the

thinking and presentation of things with connotations of trouble, worry and care’, they

express different things (2011, pp. 87-89). To begin with, care is more easily turned into a

verb: to care (Bellacasa 2011, pp. 89-90). One can be concerned or thoughtful about an issue,

but care more strongly directs us to a notion of doing (Bellacasa 2011, p. 90). Caring for and

doing something about an issue are core motivations in environmental politics. Attention to

this word might help us to overcome narrow environmental narratives that pit fishermen as

uncaring and the perpetrators of unsustainability and animal cruelty. Fishers are increasingly

squeezed between different frames, which position them as ‘the exploiter of the sea’

(Nightingale in Probyn 2014, p.296). Similarly, in some social science constructivist critiques

of science and technology, researchers often assume certain actors (scientists) have a lust for

power, which can strip these actors of other motives (Latour in Bellacasa 2014, p. 88). This

suggests the importance of acknowledging diverse cares and practices of caring. In San Pietro

cares were unifying at times, divisive at other times, and they were certainly diversely

motivated. For example, motivations included species conservation, animal cruelty and a time

honoured practice of killing tuna. Attention to the word care also offers the opportunity to

think through unintended consequences of caring. For example, van Dooren (2014) explores

Whooping Crane conservation practices. Typically conservationists are positioned as the

carers of the environment. Van Dooren (2014, p. 15) challenges this moral position by

demonstrating the odd juxtaposition between care for a species and violence towards an

153