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local and socio-historical context. Building on this point, we can now look at how tradition

can function, and does in the EU proposal, as a political strategy.

Tradition as Strategy

Etymologically, tradition is a “handing down”, or over, from the past to the
present, but it functions as a “reaching back” from the present to the past –
perhaps better thought of as a – past. (Schochet 2004, p. 296)

Speaking of heritage and the associated term tradition, David Florio-Corral suggests that it ‘is

always the end result of a process of selection from the past’ (2013, p. 58). This suggests that

tradition, when mobilised involves a selection process, and therefore letting go of aspects of a

(not the) past. It is, however, also a future oriented term. It is usually mobilised in the face of

a hegemonic struggle, which may threaten the future of a practice, and so is invoked for

particular political ends. As Schochet has argued, when the aim is not to identify tradition in

order to break free of it, ‘the purpose is defensive or motivational, either to justify something

that has been attacked or is presumed to be in danger of being undermined’ (2004, p. 305).

Put another way, we can think of the invocation of tradition as an attempt to stabilise certain

aspects of an assemblage so that a certain version of the past can continue.

The EU proposal illustrates this process well. In this case the threat is the potential

discontinuation of trap fishing in the Mediterranean. One of the justifications, as Giuliano has

repeatedly said, is the insufficient quota for the tonnara to be financially sustainable. As a

reminder the tonnara depends upon a large workforce to operate. This is also the way that the

proposal frames the situation when it states that the:

…economic survival of almadrabas currently depends on the quota of tuna – a
figure is assigned to each almadraba each fishing season, and therefore the
fluctuations in these quota along with the tuna’s selling price determine the
profitability of this fishing technique. (Ambrioso & Xandri 2015, p. 53)

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