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contexts. Specifically in the case of the tonnara the productive power of sustainability also

involves a new configuration of the tonnara as a data generating system for tuna governance;

and the capacity to foster certain knowledge and practices and to render others precarious.

Each of these points indicates the challenges and paradoxes of sustaining fish and fishing

cultures.

For the tonnara of San Pietro, sustainability as a defining principle and environmental

ordering marks a new era in a long history that spans over 1000 years. Through this case

study I established that scientists, scientific practices, devices, knowledge and myths such as

maximum sustainable yield have become part of the assemblage that is the contemporary

tonnara. This is evident in the 2015 EU proposal that positions the tonnara not only as a

traditional system of food provision but also as a scientific data generating system. Indeed

this configuration has enabled the trap to continue in a period that has witnessed its near

closure. This configuration also supports its case for an increase in quota. But what is

sustained is precisely this new socio-technical configuration. When the tonnare were in crisis

and environmental NGOs refused to support the tonnare, it was the scientists and the

scientific potential of the tonnara (and thus its potential for managing tuna sustainably) that

enabled the tonnara to survive (albeit as a quite different system all together). This is the first

example of the productive power of sustainability.

Throughout this thesis I have examined the production of discourse and its

relationship to knowledge and power. I have provided examples that illustrate the process

whereby certain forms of knowledge are sustained and others sidelined. In the first half of the

thesis this involved an analysis of the emergence of two interrelated sustainability discourses.

th
I argued that both of these discourses have an epistemological origin in the 19 century

disciplinary divides of nature and culture. I have developed this argument throughout the

thesis, demonstrating that the problems of bifurcating nature and culture as distinct areas of

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