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Organization (FAO) implemented a series of projects aimed at improving post-harvest

systems, and conducted scientific research on tuna stocks.

This brief history raises questions about the potential unintended socio-cultural

changes brought about by international groups, which now include certifiers, NGOs and

supermarkets. Following and assemblic ethnographic research, which considers cultural (in

addition to ecological and economic) outcomes, could help to identify epistemological and

ontological changes that come about through these international engagements. Have these

engagements introduced new skills, knowledge, authorities or norms? Dunn suggests;

‘[s]tandards work to shape economies because they are able to drive new norms down to the

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level of the individual’ (Dunn 2007, p. 183) . Is sustainability another phase in the political

history of the Maldives, which has seen outside entities engage with local people and

practices? And how should we understand tradition in this context of new and past

relationships?

Another point to draw from this brief history is that we are always presented with a

partial story. This is certainly the case for sustainability discourses presented in eco products

and campaigns. I have demonstrated how contemporary companies narrate a story of

unchanged and unchangeable relationship to practice and place. Now I would like to consider

what is left out of such narratives. There are many places, people and components that extend

beyond tuna and the Maldives but remain invisible in the Coles eco tin.

Prior to the sustainable tuna movement, tinned tuna had been the ultimate displaced

global commodity, the quintessential product of commodity fetishism. It arrived on the

supermarket shelf, its places of production obscured apart from the obligatory ‘made in...’

Recent sustainability discourses draw attention to the fishery but the many other locations,

materials, people, labour and technologies have become further obscured. This is more than

an oversight. It echoes Val Plumwood’s suggestion that there is a tendency in the global

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