North Atlantic fishy feminists and the more-than-human approach: a conversation

Fishy windows to an Arctic city: Urban (in)visibilities of global fisheries in Tromsø

“…Recently, emerging feminist research has increasingly applied feminist theorisations to broader societal contexts and systems of oppression in the context of fisheries. In particular, feminist accounts have contributed to unfolding the human-fish relations (Probyn, 2014(Probyn, , 2016Lien, 2015;Knott, Power, Neis, & Frangoudes, 2022) within contemporary globalised fisheries and have developed feminist analyses for understanding the makings of different "fishery places" (Knott & Gustavsson, 2022). Analyses of gender have expanded to consider gender and the asymmetrical valuations of feminine and masculine, as a broader societal category, in organising and (re)producing cultures, economy, politics and narratives in relation to fisheries.…”

Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography of the Undersea?

“…10 Ecofeminist theory is especially relevant when analyzing how relations among humans, but also between humans and nonhuman species, that depend on gender are shaped by intersecting systems of oppression. These gendered, capitalist, colonial, and speciesist (Knott et al 2022) systems of oppression are especially relevant in analyses of human intervention in the underwater environment considering that commercial diving consists of accessing the undersea to expand and connect capitalist infrastructures (pipes, harbors, wind farms, etc.). Some authors are interested in how natural elements such as water are framed and channeled through technologies, infrastructures, and politics that result from the legacies of settler colonialism (Jue and Ruiz 2021; Liboiron 2021) and how the degradation of the environment resulting from these colonial dynamics relates to gender-based violence and manhood in marine professions (Alonso 2022; Fabinyi 2007; Waitt and Hartig 2005).…”

“…Some authors are interested in how natural elements such as water are framed and channeled through technologies, infrastructures, and politics that result from the legacies of settler colonialism (Jue and Ruiz 2021; Liboiron 2021) and how the degradation of the environment resulting from these colonial dynamics relates to gender-based violence and manhood in marine professions (Alonso 2022; Fabinyi 2007; Waitt and Hartig 2005). These studies specifically allow explorations of the articulation of environmental degradation and patriarchy (Knott et al, 2022) in the case of commercial diving, as the profession emphasizes masculinity (as a set of values and corporeal dispositions) and environmental damage (through the degradation of the underwater environment via public work activities).…”

“…If water is then one of nature’s elements that bears the most long-term and visible traces of human exploitation, as framed by Western rationality since European colonial expansions (also see Voyles 2021), the undersea is an overlooked environment wherein these same logics of pollution and exploitation can deepen our understanding of how gender and colonial dynamics are present in today’s anthropogenically exacerbated crises. For instance, analyses of aquaculture from an ecofeminist perspective allow us to further understand how human–fish relationships (for example) shape the use of marine resources and how fishery arrangements result from multiple oppressions (Knott et al 2022). Such analyses highlight the relevance of focusing on our relationships with marine ecosystems to better understand our role in the Anthropocene.…”

Pathogenic proliferations: Salmon aquaculture, industrial viruses, and toxic geographies of settler-colonialism

“…Intersecting systems of oppression such as colonialism and racialization remain absent within much fisheries literature from the North Atlantic and fisheries scholarship writ large is only just beginning to advance frameworks for thinking fish outside of human-centered, object-focused, and economic-based relationships (Knott et al, 2021). With attention to the ways in which geographies of pollution are generated and maintained, this paper takes up Christine Knott et al’s (2021) call for feminist fisheries research to highlight how altered fishery and aquaculture arrangements contribute to and are shaped by intersecting capitalist, colonial, and human-exceptionalist frameworks in ways that exacerbate social inequalities including the violations of Indigenous rights and sovereignties. This paper similarly builds upon Reena Shadaan and Michelle Murphy’s (2021) invitation to expand conceptualizations of harm beyond individualized and body-centric narratives.…”