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term and its terms? Perhaps developing a conception of what the tonnara is and what ought to

be sustained could start by acknowledging some of the concerns of members of the fishing

community who are invested in the tonnara or drawing on their own definition of the tonnara

and the important elements to sustain. In relation to these communities, the notion of

persistence might be more helpful than tradition, for the purpose of identifying practices that

have continued for over 1000 years and accounting for innovation. Persistence may also be a

starting point to define natural and cultural processes that make up the tonnara. What are

those elements that have persisted and allowed for the fish and fishers to flourish? This

suggestion challenges the institutional places of knowledge formation and hierarchy and asks

questions such as, what would a fishery institution look like on the sea rather than in

universities or the regional or supranational governing bodies? What might a dingpolitik

approach look like, wherein diverse concerns and cares are brought to bear on fishery

management? What issues might be forwarded? What might be included into traceability

projects? I propose that by adopting both the conceptual framing of a biocultural complex and

a following assemblic method, we can push the term and terms of sustainability discursively

and geographically to account for a fuller picture of the cultural and material processes that

sustain our existence.

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