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(Foxwell-Norton 2013, p. 269). Following has been cultivated within the exploratory milieu

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of multisite, multispecies and multi-thing research . As a practice it is dynamic and

interdisciplinary, and typically attunes to social, political, economic, and ecological aspects

of a thing on its journey from production through to consumption.

There are several ways that one can employ following. In the 1990s Marcus

recognised several areas that researchers were following – things, people, discourse,

metaphor, conflict, and story or allegory (1995, pp. 106-110). On following things he says:

This mode of constructing the multi-sited space of research involves tracing the
circulation through different contexts of a manifestly material object of study (at
least as initially conceived), such as commodities, gifts, money, works of art and
intellectual property. This is perhaps the most common approach to the
ethnographic study of the capitalist world system. (1995, p. 106-107)

‘Follow the things’ is a phrase coined by Arjun Appadurai in 1988 and then developed by

George E Marcus in the 1990s (followthethings n.d., para. 2). Following things, conflict and

discourse is central to my project and has guided my interest into practices of rendering tuna

sustainable or unsustainable. It has led me along fascinating trajectories across the globe and

to zones relevant to a sustainability assemblage. This has been in person, as in the case of

fieldwork in Italy, as well as following sustainability discourses through campaigns, products,

policy and media.

Marcus describes following as a post-modern kind of ethnography and even suggests

it is a form of activism (1995, p. 113). Not in the traditional sense of being affiliated with a

movement, rather aligned with the feminist slogan of the political is the personal, but here the

political is the professional (Marcus 1995, p. 113). Following projects can be political

because the multisite space through which the researcher traverses is one that the researcher

constructs through both pre-planned and opportunistic movements (Marcus 1995, 113). As

will become clear through this chapter, these opportunistic movements, where the starting

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