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responsible for) biocultural realities within the limited frame of references produced through

disciplinary boundaries? Along with others I have argued that there is no unproblematic way

out of a nature/culture binary. I argued this in relation to a diversity discourse that sought to

combine biological diversity with cultural diversity and generated further binaries –

tradition/modern, local/global. Towards this end, throughout this thesis I have argued for the

necessity to research on the one hand, signs of nature and of culture and on the other hand,

the places and processes whereby these terms are produced and mobilised for political ends.

Val Plumwood’s (2006) notion of landscapes [or seascapes] as biocultural collaborations and

Tony Bennett’s notion of the culture complex are useful here. The culture complex offers a

way to conceptualise the bearing of a range of knowledge practices and institutions in

governing conduct (Bennett 2013, p. 24). A biocultural complex turns the analysis to the

roles played by a range of knowledge practices and institutions of nature and of culture. This

is relevant to the governance of fish and fishers. This accounts for the productive power of

sustainability discourses and brings into the analytical frame a fuller spectrum of culture and

of nature. It includes an acknowledgement of the problems of institutional modes of defining

culture and nature, while at the same time drawing on some of the interdisciplinary tools to

analyse forms of culture and nature in practice. The biocultural complex is a material

semiotic approach that accounts for material as made through and in collaboration with the

discursive. A biocultural complex helps us think about how to research nature/culture

entanglements while also being aware of powerful discursive and institutional use of these

concepts and importantly the actors in positions of power to define these terms.

By highlighting the institutions where concepts of nature and culture are made and

reshuffled we are also highlighting who and what is involved in establishing the terms of

sustainability. Finally, this brings us to the broader point of this thesis: what might

sustainability look like if some of the less powerful players were involved in defining this

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