Global Trout

• Nustad, Knut G; Brown, Duncan & Swanson, Heather Anne (2025). Bodies in Landscapes: Entanglements of trout and waters in South Africa. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. ISSN 2514-8486. doi: 10.1177/25148486251365166. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In post-apartheid South Africa, landscape morphologies give clues to how scholars can read landscapes as historically layered, ongoing more-than-human projects. This article explores how starting with the forms of rivers and the bodies of trout can further enrich ongoing conversations in the environmental humanities and social sciences about the structures of multispecies assemblages. Trout, a fish in South Africa with roots in British colonialism, have earth-forming effects because rivers and stillwaters with trout in them, and the landscapes they flow through, are managed differently from rivers and stillwaters without trout. Yet these same rivers also come to remake trout, as white South Africans cultivate fish bodies to fit their landscape ideals. Trout, however, are not fully mutable, as they carry other landscape histories in their bodies. The trout at the heart of this paper were introduced from North-Western America, and their bodies are indelibly shaped by histories of geology, glaciation, and management in that region. As white South African fly fishermen work to make what they see as beautiful local trout, they raise crucial questions about which fish are considered a good “fit” for South African rivers and who gets to decide. Through this case, we probe how fish morphologies and landscape morphologies exist in complex, interdependent and interactive ways that offer new insights into ongoing conversations about wilderness, nature, belonging, colonial relations, as well as dispossession and the racialisation of landscapes. Examining these topics through attention to the relations of fish and water bodies, we explore how landscapes are always at the intersection of colonial histories and multispecies relations.

• Nustad, Knut G (2024). Property relations beyond the human? Trout, enclosures, and land in South Africa. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology. ISSN 0155-977X. 68(2), s. 82–98. doi: 10.3167/sa.2024.680205. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G; Brown, Duncan & Swanson, Heather Anne (2023). Hatching Conflicts: Trout Reproduction, Properties of Water, and Property Ownership in South Africa. Ethnos. ISSN 0014-1844. s. 1–20. doi: 10.1080/00141844.2023.2221832. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Trout were introduced to South Africa in the late nineteenth century with colonial fanfare, but since the 1990s, post-apartheid legislation has declared trout alien and sought to reduce their numbers. Both the initial introduction of trout and contemporary debates are entangled with ‘properties’, in the dual sense of land claims and biophysical traits of fish and waters. Trout introductions were part of colonial enclosures; now, attempts to control them are seen by many white owners as a state attempt to undermine private property. Trout become a site for conflict because they struggle to spawn in South African waters and are largely dependent on hatchery reproduction, which makes them available for legislative acts that can eliminate owners’ ability to maintain private stocks. Attention to links between these dual meanings of property illustrates how contestations over land-waters in contemporary South Africa are shaped by the ongoing effects of more-than-human colonial projects.

• Nustad, Knut Gunnar & Swanson, Heather Anne (2021). Political ecology and the Foucault effect: A need to diversify disciplinary approaches to ecological management? Environment & Planning. D, Society and Space. ISSN 0263-7758. 5(2), s. 924–946. doi: 10.1177/25148486211015044. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  While explicitly Foucauldian analyses have declined in recent years in the social sciences, Foucault’s ideas continue to strongly influence scholars’ approaches to power, governance and the state. In this article, we explore how Foucauldian concepts shape the work of political ecologists and social scientists working on environmental management, multispecies ethnography and the Anthropocene – often in an unrecognized way. We argue that – regardless of whether or not Foucault’s work is explicitly cited – his legacy of linking scientific projects, population management and state control continues to have an outsized impact on thinking in these fields. It is time, we assert, to directly consider how such theoretical inheritances are affecting the shape of political ecology, in particular, and the social sciences, more generally. How, we ask, are Foucauldian traditions at once enabling and constraining more-than-human scholarship? In this article, we explore the contributions and limitations of Foucauldian approaches in environmental contexts through empirical attention to trout introduction and management efforts in South Africa. Our overall aim is to call for a deeper conversation about how scholars working on environmental topics engage the science-governance nexus. The article ends with proposing landscape, as a material enactment of more-than-human politics, as a useful analytical category to this end.

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• Nustad, Knut G (2025). Global Trout: Colonial legacies, property claims and properties of fish and water. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G (2025). Global Trout: Living with the ongoing effects of more-than-human colonial projects. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The colonial introduction of rainbow and brown trout has created many biosocial dilemmas. The lecture explores how anthropology can use this example to study “global environmental change”. Natural scientists and environmental policy-makers routinely use this term to highlight the fact that we are not dealing with a series of discrete ecological problems, but with deeply interconnected issues. But as anthropologists have been quick to point out, “global” environmental problems are not the same all over the world: thinking in terms of universal problems often homogenises profound differences. How can we hold on to the particularity of detailed location-based research—a central commitment of anthropology—while also attending to patterns of linked environmental damage across wide areas? The project Global Trout is a case in point. It is a research project addressing these questions by integrating analytical perspectives from political economy, world-systems scholarship, the natural sciences and colonial studies with those that draw attention to concrete interactions between species, such as multispecies ethnography.

• Nustad, Knut G & Swanson, Heather Anne (2024). Moving Trout, Moved by Trout. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G (2024). Å bygge broer i tverrfaglig samarbeid. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G (2024). Global trout and Interdisciplinarity. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Salinas, Cecilia & Flikke, Rune (2024). En død ku som melkes. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Dewan, Camelia & Nustad, Knut G (2023). ‘Fluid Dispossessions’: Contested Waters in Capitalist Natures. Ethnos. ISSN 0014-1844. doi: 10.1080/00141844.2023.2214340. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This special issue on ‘“Fluid Dispossessions’: Contested Waters in Capitalist Natures” examines the multiple and mutable relationships between water, dispossession and property. We use ‘fluid dispossessions’ as an analytical prompt to examine the different ways in which water’s biophysical properties, its material fluidity and movements (and the more-than-human species that move with it), shape processes of capitalist extraction, accumulation and dispossession. Fluid dispossessions go beyond the power politics of controlling water as a resource to include indirect and more-than-economic forms of dispossession. By analysing emic understandings of dispossession, we draw on ‘fluid dispossessions’ to reject binary categorisations of liquid:solid in order to reveal the diversity of ways capitalist extractive activities may disrupt existing affective, ecological, or spiritual relations with water. This can cause more-than-economic forms of dispossession such as the loss of social reproduction, emotional distress, loss of health, the rupturing of multispecies relations and local care practices of waterscapes.

• Christensen, Peter Andreas (2023). Fisken, der erobrede verden. Sportsfiskeren. s. 46–50. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Flikke, Rune (2023). Patagonien og den jyske forbindelse. Sportfiskeren. s. 76–78. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G; Brown, Duncan & Swanson, Heather Anne (2023). Reading landscapes from fish bodies: The “fitness” of South African trout, presented at Multispecies Landscapes: A Workshop, Gran June 2023. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G & Swanson, Heather Anne (2023). "Global trout: living with the ongoing effects of more-than human colonial projects. SAI Department Seminar. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G (2022). Global Trout: ecological globalisation, colonial legacies, and properties of water. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  What can trout tell us about living with colonial legacies, human-induced environmental change, and Anthropocene landscapes? In this talk I will present the Global Trout project, a collaborative and interdisciplinary project that draws on anthropology, biology, and the humanities to study legacies of colonial trout introductions in Japan, Argentina, New Zealand, and South Africa. The South Africa part of the project uses trout histories to intervene in debates about domestication/wildness, conservation/aliens, science/coloniality and properties/property. I will present some thoughts on the last of these themes: The physical characteristics of water initially sparked alliances between settlers and the colonial state to promote the introduction of trout, but since the 1990s, have amplified conflicts over trout management between white landowners and the post-Apartheid government. Where most introduced species are difficult to control, trout can be nearly eliminated by legislative efforts, due to the specificities of the region’s waters, which limit trout spawning and make them dependent on hatchery reproduction. Environmental legislation declares trout as alien and invasive and seeks to reduce their numbers. Trout advocates interpret restrictions on hatcheries as an attempt to control and nationalize privately-owned waters through environmental legislation. I will argue that paying attention to water properties that affect trout spawning can shed new light on contemporary property debates in South Africa.

• Nustad, Knut G (2022). Global trout. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G (2022). 'Trout and the future of colonial river landscapes in South Africa: Contemporary debates' for the panel: Mending Waterscapes: Restoring River Landscapes. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G; Brown, Duncan & Swanson, Heather Anne (2022). How fish bodies make South African earth forms. Paper for the roundtable Earthforms: Round Table on Landscape Morphology, Memory and Loss. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut Gunnar (2022). Den globale ørreten: en fiskehistorie. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Britene var ikke bare opptatt av å reise til Norge for å fiske laks. I løpet at et par tiår fra midten av 1860 tallet introduserte de ørreten til alle hjørner av det britiske imperiet. Et forskningsprosjekt på Universitetet i Oslo samler biologer og samfunnsvitere for å studere denne fascinerende historien.

• Nustad, Knut Gunnar (2022). Ørreten splitter samfunn: Britiske koloniherrer satt ut regnbueørret mange steder i verden. Det endret miljøet i vassdragene og mange lokalsamfunn er preget, forteller forsker. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut Gunnar (2022). Colonial trout between enclosures and expropriation, for the panel 'Future Commons of the Anthropocene'. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut Gunnar (2022). Colonial trout between enclosures and expropriation. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Flikke, Rune; Ciancio, Javier & Salinas, Cecilia G. (2021). Argentina forbyr lakseoppdrett: Følger Norge med i timen? s. 15–15. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut G (2021). Global Trout: ecological globalisation and colonial legacies. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Flikke, Rune; Salinas, Cecilia & Ciancio, Javier (2021). Argentina forbyr lakseoppdrett. Følger Norge med i timen? Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Dewan, Camelia & Nustad, Knut Gunnar (2020). Contested Waters and Fluid Properties in Capitalist Natures. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nustad, Knut Gunnar; Lien, Marianne Elisabeth; Flikke, Rune & Münster, Ursula (2019). Project opening and film screening: an aquatic antropocene? The domestication of fish and rivers. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Flikke, Rune; Ciancio, Javier E.; Aigo, Juana & Clarke, Rodrigo R. (2019). El polémicosalmón invasor. Desde la Patagonia. ISSN 2618-5385. 16(27), s. 10–19. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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