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solutions presented. This can be to the detriment of many biocultural zones implicated in an

object like tinned tuna. I have drawn on many examples of multisite and multi-thing

ethnography as well as scholars who advocate this style of research in order to demonstrate

that following projects need not set out with predetermined boundaries. Rather, such object-

oriented ethnographies should consider how objects are embedded in the world and the world

in them (Dumit 2014, p. 350). This is in contrast to certification and traceability schemes.

Furthermore, I have argued that to pursue this project we could think of sustainability as a

non-fixed global assemblage made through heterogeneous elements. I have begun to name

some of the components of that assemblage. In this way the Coles eco tin becomes one object

that exists in relation to a wider sustainability assemblage and is afforded its existence by that

wider assemblage. If we open up the ethnographic focus to pay attention to diverse elements

of the assemblage and moments of assembling – which means being open to non-obvious

connections – we can end up in the midst of shadowed places, conflicts and things. My

suggestion, is that this approach offers nuanced ways to articulate global and local

continuities, and also ways to describe how people, ecosystems, beings and objects that are

dispersed globally can get caught up in the shared conditions of sustainability.

This chapter also puts forward the argument that we would benefit from considering

socio-cultural aspects of environmental issues as well as from thinking about sites of

environmental conflicts as biocultural collaborative spaces. In the next chapter I explore the

notion of bioculture further, although in a different manner. I look at specific expressions of

nature and culture, and the attempts to break down nature/culture binaries in sustainable

development discourses and in academia. I look closely at institutions of governance, in

particular the United Nations (UN), through which a four-pillar model of sustainability

emerged and brought culture onto a global sustainable development agenda. In the next

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