About the project
The thesis studies Norwegian seaweed cultivation. Although an established industry in Southeast Asia, seaweed cultivation is new to Norway and has been credited with an enormous growth potential. Here, scientists and industry actors alike have turned to seaweed cultivation as an opportunity to not only grow the ocean economy, but to improve the relations between economy and environment.
Those who work with it consider cultivated seaweeds as resource efficient replacements for ill-reputed substances such as fossil fuels, meat, and soybeans, and emphasise that seaweed farming itself comes with environmental benefits, including the provision of new rearing grounds for fish, and the curbing of ocean acidification and climate changes.
Through ethnographic fieldwork among such different actors as seaweed farmers and breeders, technology producers, public authorities, and researchers from various academic fields and institutions, the thesis examines how these potentials are sought to be realised – and how they came into being in the first place.
The fieldwork combines multiple methods and materials, including practice-oriented document analysis of commissioned reports and scientific articles about seaweed cultivation and its potentials, participant observation at a seaweed farm, a seed producing company, and industry conferences, and interviews with farmers, farm workers and shareholders, seaweed breeders, technology developers, researchers – just to name a few of those different professions involved in raising the seaweed cultivation industry. Through this work, I show that seaweed cultivation happens across multiple sites and involves multifarious practices of knowing and valorising cultivated seaweed.
I also show that cultivation is very much about understanding, improving and forging new relations between seaweeds and economy. The key findings are that seemingly mundane textual devices, such as speculative market applications, were key to produce the large estimate of the Norwegian seaweed industry’s growth potential and its turnover value; that seaweed farming forges new and troubling relations between the farmed seaweed and the other beings on and near the farm-site; and that working with such troubling relations and potential conflicts between enhancing the cultivated seaweed’s market value and protecting its wild-growing congeners sparks creativity among seaweed cultivators. In that sense, the thesis shows that what is at issue in seaweed cultivation is defining good nature-economy relations.
Thesis supervisors
The thesis is supervised by Professor Kristin Asdal (TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo) and Associate Professor Frida Hastrup (SAXO-Institute - Archaeology, Ethnology, Greek & Latin, University of Copenhagen) and conducted as part of the research project Value threads. Tracing the economy as technology and culture in an emerging 'value economy', that runs from 2020 to 2026 and is funded by the Research Council of Norway, with Kristin Asdal as primary investigator.
Commentator
Associate Professor Pierre Delvenne, University of Liège
About Marie Stilling
Marie Stilling is a PhD candidate at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo. She holds an MA in European Ethnology from the University of Copenhagen. This seminar marks the final evaluation prior to submission of her dissertation.
How to participate
The seminar is open for everyone to join - either at TIK (Meeting room 1040) or via ZOOM. Welcome!
Meeting ID: 680 1090 5787
Passcode: 760856
The manuscript is available upon request. Please send the request to Marie Stilling marie.stilling@tik.uio.no.