Page 44 - KATE_JOHNSTON_2017

through their wide-ranging habitats, as part of diverse cultures of consumption and

contemporary environmental debates. An average tin has probably touched every corner of

the globe as it circumnavigates the earth through production and distribution. Similarly, the

subject of sustainability is difficult to pin down. Debates are constructed around a global

logic and also help to construct that logic (see Tsing 2005, pp. 81-112). The term itself has

become mobilised and has gained valency across diverse settings. It is a central concept in the

NGO sector, local to transnational policy, commercial industries, and to varying degrees in

communities involved in production, trade and consumption of tuna. The context of the sea is

a similarly complex area for social research. Not only because marine regulations are

intricate, involving local, national, regional and global participants, but as Stefan Helmreich

(2011, p. 133) suggests, the sea is still seen as a strange place for ethnographic research.

Indeed the sea challenges traditional notions and boundaries of fieldwork.

For these reasons, my research tools have had to match the maneuverability and

global ambit of this topic, while at the same time problematising a neat global/local

distinction. Such methodological challenges are not new. There are many anthropologists

who have spent time widening the boundaries of ethnography. Ulf Hannerz (2006, p. 24)

summarises some of the changes saying that when once the ethnographer typically went away

from home, studied subaltern groups, or focused on isolated communities, it is now common

place to study ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘sideways’, ‘through’ and ‘backwards’. Within this expansion of

the field, following has emerged as a conceptual and methodological tool in geography,

cultural studies, food studies and anthropology. It is one of a string of research practices that

responds to contemporary global conditions within which products are made, traded and

consumed. As a framework it is useful to analyse ethical dimensions of contemporary

consumer cultures, such as the many environmental issues, which in terms of contemporary

politics are some of the most pressing problems that cultural research could engage with

32