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In the next chapter I focus on the epistemological aspects of this inquiry. I develop the

notion of an institutional form of precarity wherein, through the process of making possible

certain forms of knowledge and of life and ways of framing (which are connected to certain

types of expertise), other forms of knowledge and of life and ways of framing become

uncertain. I look at knowledge and expertise more closely and consider the precarious

relationship between fishers and institutions and processes of legitimisation. This includes a

return to the discussion of the term traditional knowledge. My inquiry therefore heads

towards questions about where and how categories such as local/global, traditional/modern,

sustainable/unsustainable, nature/culture are enabled, as well as their governing effect. I

begin to draw on the notion of governance, broadly understood as ‘systems of authority

aimed at influencing or regulating people to behave in particular ways’ (Barclay 2016, p. 65).

For example, let us take the term culture. Bennett suggests that culture has become a

distinctive area of policy (e.g. four-pillar model of sustainability) in modern times (Bennett

2013, pp. 278-279). This is because:

…of the ways in which policies aimed at influencing how cultural resources are
produced and distributed, by whom, in what relationships of production and
exchange, etc., can, through their influence on the relationships between different
ways of life, also provide a means of acting on the social. (Bennett 2013, pp. 278-
279)

By this Bennett does not mean “society” as a pre-given realm but as a construct of

government – a realm of conducts and relationships that can be fashioned in certain ways

through ‘specific forms of expertise that government mobilises’ (Bennett 2013, pp. 278-279).

For my purposes, this involves exploring the ways that environmental governance acts on the

social. This means considering not only how terms like sustainability, culture and tradition

are mobilised, but how they operate in the field of governance to influence forms of knowing

and forms of life in tuna fishing communities in southern Italy. Thus, articulating the

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