Page 43 - KATE_JOHNSTON_2017

is situated in the world – historically, ecologically, materially, politically and culturally – and

as part of a wider sustainability assemblage. I introduce the reader to my fieldwork locations

and give considerable weight to the historical context of tinned tuna in order to establish a

background to the contemporary conflicts associated with sustaining tuna. I therefore present

a fair amount of technical and historical information. As part of the story of the

industrialisation and globalisation of food, and the exploitation of resources, tinned tuna

offers a lens through which to analyse sustainability. It also offers a lens through which to

consider the discursive framing of sustainability. Ultimately the discursive framing can limit

the representations of and responses to crises. It can also limit who participates in defining

the term and terms of sustainability, and therefore ways of knowing and being in a world

made up of human and more-than-human entities. This chapter aims to demonstrate the

potential of following as an intervention into the contemporary worldwide conditions that

characterise food production through to consumption. These conditions result in the opacity

of food systems and their environmental and socio-cultural contexts.

Following and other Multisite-Thing-Species Ethnography

Sustainability and tuna are slippery subjects and curious objects for a cultural studies research

project. They evoke the dilemma of how to practice research when the objects and subjects of

research disturb traditional boundaries of culture. Bluefin swim through several national

jurisdictions to fulfil their life cycle and, once captured, continue to traverse national

boundaries as part of global food systems. Due to a declining biomass caused by industrial

fishing, bluefin is one of the most controversial fish globally, listed as endangered on the

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Collette et al. 2011b) and highly regulated through

regional bodies that set limits and monitor catch. Its humble cousins (skipjack, albacore,

yellowfin) found in tinned tuna and other tuna commodities are similarly global in reach

31