Page 32 - KATE_JOHNSTON_2017

also presented challenges. For example, the budget and timeframe of a PhD research project

places limitations on the multiple sites to which one can travel. This was the case for my

minor case study of eco tin tuna, as I was only able to follow it through secondary research

and engagement with primary materials in the form of sustainability campaigns, news media,

and company advertisement. This limitation also existed for my major case study of the

tonnara. Had I followed the tuna further along its supply chain from Italy, I would have spent

time visiting Maltese fattening farms, on a fleet that tranships tuna from the Mediterranean to

Japan. Not only were budget and timeframe considerations for travelling to these other sites

but so too was safety.

Beyond these points, researching a global assemblage is also problematic because of

its wide scope. Yet this is a necessary outlook, which allows the researcher to recognise

diverse actors and structures of power in an attempt to overcome simple cause and effect

explanations of social phenomena.

Conducting interviews in Italian was both limiting and enabling for my research.

Limiting because interviews in Italian had to be structured first. Only when I felt comfortable

with the dialogue between myself and the interviewee, and my comprehension of the

interviewees' responses, could I adlib and follow an interviewee's lead. Furthermore, at times

it was difficult for me to assess the nuanced ways that key words like culture, tradition and

sustainability were being used by participants and in materials written in Italian. On the other

hand, I would not have been able to interview fishermen and a range of industry people had I

not spoken Italian, since most of these participants knew very little English. This gave me

access to an important group, the fishermen, who are often left out of fishery management

conversations. Speaking in Italian and being a woman, who knows little about fishing,

reduced the contrast between my official education level and the education level of most

fishermen. It placed me in a more vulnerable position than had I been interviewing in my

20