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Food. However, support could have come with the proviso that the traps harvest locally.

Considering the quantity of quota needed is so small it is frustrating to think that the lack of

political will demonstrated by some of the influential players has almost caused the loss of

the tonnara. It has certainly played a part in its transformation into a less ecologically and

socially responsible system.

Now that we understand the productive capacity of sustainability and many of the

heterogeneous actors of a sustainability assemblage, perhaps the pressing questions need to

be reframed. What do we need to do in order for tuna, and tuna fishing and processing

communities (that bear the burden of destructive fishing as well as sustainability responses)

to flourish?

A strategy for the tonnara, which has not been directly discussed, is a traditional

quota model. Even though the EU proposal draws on notions of tradition, a traditional fishery

rights model could offer a way to ensure the sustainability of certain practices such as the

mattanza and post-harvest, which are currently being neglected. Traditional rights quotas

would also incentivise investments in tonnare and perhaps move away from purse seine and

longliner fishing. Of course, as I have argued through this thesis the term tradition is

problematic. Yet I have also highlighted that tradition is currently an effective political term

that is employed strategically already through the EU proposal.

Solutions such as a traditional fishery rights model are limited unless certain issues

are addressed. That is, the central problem remains of how to define a biocultural system to

be sustained? If we acknowledge that the term tradition, as I argued in chapter six, functions

as a mode of forming socio-cultural and ecological boundaries then is tradition a useful

concept and how do we account for innovation?

Conceptually these remaining issues relate to the dilemma of a nature/culture binary

that has remained a topic of this thesis. How do we account for (talk of, analyse and be

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