How does the process of domestication change our understanding of the species involved, the animals themselves, and the human-animal relation? How do these processes challenge notions of nature?
In the project 'Newcomers to the farm', we addressed these and other questions by focusing on the Atlantic Salmon in Norway, juxtaposing the 'wild' and the farmed.
About the project
Atlantic salmon has been subject to a dramatic transition over the last three decades, from going through a life cycle predominantly in the wild, to a situation in which more than nine out of ten Atlantic Salmon worldwide are born and raised on fish farms.
This historical situation represented a unique opportunity for developing a more sophisticated understanding of marine domestication.
This transition is closely connected to a global increase in intensive and industrialised systems of fish farming in which Norway has taken a key role. This poses particular challenges to Norwegian politics of nature, and environmental and animal welfare policy and practice. Indeed, it makes Norway both a ‘reservoir’ of salmon biodiversity, and a place where the challenges that intensive salmon farming poses for wild salmon fisheries are particularly acute. The project contended that in order to face up to these challenges, a nuanced understanding of this unique, historically unprecedented situation was needed.
Through a focus on salmon-in-the-making in which we trace salmon's transitions between the wild and the farmed, the project also explored notions of nature. ‘The natural’ tends to be whatever is said to exist in the external environment, and the focus was on salmon as a wild species whose domestication could threaten global biodiversity. The project had as its starting point that the natural, too, is made through human practices
Objectives
The project had the following core objectives:
- to explore social science aspects of wild salmon, particularly Sami fishing practices,
- to understand the dynamics of salmon aquaculture,
- to incorporate broader projects concerning domestication, sustainability, and animal welfare,
- to enhance research quality through regional and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Subprojects
Aquaculture in Hordaland
Through fieldwork in the aquaculture industry, the subproject sought a better understanding of how human-animal relations evolve in the context of domestication. The subproject followed the salmon through its life-cycle, studying reproduction at the smolt-production site, following its journey through freshwater tanks until it turns to smolt ready for sea, and finally it studied the marine sites where smolt grew to become salmon ready for slaughter. The project was particularly attentive to the relations between fish, humans and the various material artefacts that make the growing of salmon possible.
Researchers: Marianne Lien and John Law
Wild Salmon in Tana
Through fieldwork in the River Tana, in Arctic Norway, the subproject sought to explore the variety of human-fish relations in Tana, ranging from fisheries managers, Sámi fishermen – both locals and tourists, as well as fish biologists and other scientists. These human-fish relations engage with different material artefacts, technologies and economies. The project was concerned with what is enacted in these relations: What is a salmon and what is its purpose? The project engaged with these knowledge practices, keeping in mind the farmed salmon. In what way does the farmed salmon have an impact upon the wild?
Researcher: Gro Ween
Domesticated Cod
This subproject sought to explore recent visions and challenges related to the domestication of cod. The project was carried out through archival research.
Researcher: Kristin Asdal
Results
The project has inspired new research, including a focus on domestication as part of the the RCN-funded "Anthropos and the Material" project. It also triggered a successful Centre for Advanced Study research group on "Arctic Domestication in the Epoch of the Anthropocene" (2015/2016), as well as further research on fish welfare legislation. The project has significantly surpassed its initial output expectations and left a lasting impact on salmon research and related fields.
The project also resulted in multiple publications in various academic journals, and two major books:
- Lien, Marianne Elisabeth. (2015). Becoming salmon : aquaculture and the domestication of a fish (1st ed., Vol. 55). University of California Press.
- Swanson, H.A.; Lien M. E. and Ween, Gro B. (Eds.) 2018 Domestication Gone Wild, Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations. Durham: Duke University Press.
Significant journal publications and book chapters:
- Law, John & Lien, Marianne Elisabeth (2017). The Practices of Fishy Sentience. I Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Hinchliffe, Steve (Red.), Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The More Than Human Condition. Routledge. ISSN 978-1-4724-4868-2. doi: 10.4324/9781315587639-2.
- Ween, Gro Birgit & Lien, Marianne Elisabeth (2017). Indigenous land claims and multiple landscapes: postcolonial openings in Finnmark, Norway. In Head, Lesley; Saltzman, Katarina; Setten, Gunhild & Stenseke, Marie (Red.), Nature, temporality and environmental management. Scandinavian and Australian perspectives on peoples and landscapes. Routledge. ISSN 978-1-47-246465-1. s. 133–149. doi: 10.4324/9781315597591-9.
- Law, John & Lien, Marianne Elisabeth (2013). Slippery: Field Notes on Empirical Ontology. Social Studies of Science. ISSN 0306-3127. 43(3), s. 363–378. doi: 10.1177/0306312712456947.
- Marianne E. Lien and John Law (2011). Emergent Aliens; On Salmon, Nature and their Enactment. Ethnos Volum: 76 (1) 65 – 87 https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.549946
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Gro B. Ween 2012. Resisting the Imminent Death of Wild Salmon: Local Knowledge of Tana Fishermen in Arctic Norway. In Fishing People of the North; Cultures, Economies, and Management Responding to Change. J.P. Johnsen et al (eds). Alaska Sea Grant.
