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discursive, is to theorise sustainability as a global assemblage made up of heterogeneous

actors and situations

By applying these theoretical and interpretative frames to an integrated sustainability

discourse through the case study of tuna, my thesis offers a cultural studies contribution to

understandings of culture in marine management. In particular the notion of culture as

knowledge in practice and the connection of knowledge to issues of power, demonstrates the

role of experts and the process by which certain knowledge comes to matter in tuna

management.

The field of cultural geography has offered methodological and theoretical direction

in researching human and more-than-human relationships, and the politics of food

production, trade and consumption. My empirical research has been inspired by numerous

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works of Ian Cook et al. on the practice of following things to uncover social, political,
historical and material complexities. Lesley Head, Jennifer Atchison and Alison Gates’

project of following wheat stands out for the way it uses the plant wheat, rather than any one

of its reified products, to explore not only the visible products/ingredients that wheat becomes

but also the not-so-visible transformations into things other than wheat (2012, p. 3). In doing

so they offer a precedent for studying networks of technology, people, policies, plants,

financial instruments and so forth (Head et al. 2012, p. 34).

Empirical Matters

The main research methodologies I employed were discourse analysis and ethnography, or

more precisely a range of multisite ethnographic approaches, including “assemblic

ethnography” (Zigon 2015) and following (I discuss these multi-site approaches and their

theoretical basis in chapter one). Fieldwork included, field visits in Italy, Australia and Japan

(see table 0.1 and description of sites below); observation in tonnara tuna fishery in San

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