Entangled Sensemaking at Sea

Bycatch Management That Makes Good Social and Ecological Sense

Jason Good

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000076592
• Subtopic: Accounting
• Index: Biological Sciences

Sustainable commercial fishing, species conservation, and bycatch are contentious topics. Great emphasis has been placed on the sustainable sourcing of particular species that we buy at the store and order in restaurants, but how can we trust that the fish on our plates, from a system-wide perspective, have been appropriately sourced? Even in what are commonly considered to be the best-managed fisheries in the world (i.e., Alaskan fisheries), thousands of tons of fish are wasted each year in the interest of providing certain species in certain ways to certain people, at certain prices. Are the management practices and regulations that we think are helping actually having the desired outcomes in terms of the effective use of natural resources?

This book presents a framework that can enhance our understanding, research, and regulation of frontline organizing processes in commercial fisheries, which may be generalized to other resource extraction industries. It enables readers to better grasp and respond to the need to develop practices and regulations that involve effective use of all natural resources, rather than just a chosen few. The book is especially important to researchers and practitioners active in the fishing industry, and natural resource managers and regulators interested in understanding and improving their management systems. It is also highly relevant to organization and management researchers interested in coupled human and natural systems, ecological sensemaking, the role of quantum mechanics in organizational phenomena, sociomateriality, and sustainability.

The book uses the real-world case of an Alaskan fishing fleet to explore how the commercial fishing industry (which includes businesses, management agencies, regulatory bodies, and markets, among others) entangles itself with natural phenomena in order to extract resources from them. After gaining a better understanding of these processes can we see how they can be improved, especially through changes to regulatory management systems, in order to foster not only more sustainable, but also less wasteful (these two goals are not necessarily interdependent in today's regulatory management systems), natural resource extraction and use. Such an understanding requires exploring how regulations, natural phenomena, human sensemaking processes, and market forces entangle at sea to materialize the fish that make their way to our plates - as well as those that, importantly, do not.

1

Introduction

What does metaphysical individualism have to do with sustainability? What does it have to do with the business of resource extraction (e.g., commercial fishing, logging, mining)? What does it have to do with natural resource management? The answer to these questions should be, ‘as little as possible.’ The unfortunate answer, however, is something along the lines of ‘a lot.’ Though your actual response might have been, ‘What the heck is metaphysical individualism?’ ‘Meta’ literally means ‘beyond’ or ‘on a different level,’ as in a meta-analysis, which is a study that examines other studies on a topic in order to learn something new (i.e., an analysis of analyses); ‘meta’ also has more colloquial uses, such as when a comment is deemed ‘meta’ because it says something relatively more abstract about more concrete things. For instance, a ‘meta-joke’ is a joke about jokes; a ‘meta-movie’ is a movie about movies (e.g., Adaptation, Get Shorty, The Player). In terms of the other part of the word ‘metaphysics,’ ‘physics’ refers to the entities whose commonalities or connections are the subject of the ‘meta’ part of the phrase. Such things include objects, people, organizations, and so on; they include whatever can be considered to be a ‘this’ or a ‘that.’ ‘Metaphysics’ as a domain of philosophy concerns fundamental connections or commonalities among individual things, which necessarily go beyond any one thing.

Don’t worry, this book is not actually about metaphysics. Instead, it offers an alternative to the metaphysical individualism that molds how scholars and regulators treat the entanglement of human and natural phenomena in resource extraction contexts. Thus, to understand what this book is about, we first need to clarify what it is both arguing against, and offering an alternative to: the metaphysical individualism-based approach that experts and decision-makers commonly take to studying, regulating, and managing the business of natural resource extraction in general, and the business of commercial fishing in particular.

Such a an approach grounded in metaphysical individualism goes something like this:

OK, here is a reality we are concerned with; it is constituted by these individual things; these things inter-act; their inter-actions may or may not be obvious, measurable, or even perceivable; nonetheless, what are they? What are their effects? Who is to blame for them? And, how can we control them?

At the heart of metaphysical individualism is the assumption that the world is composed of inherently separate things, each having its own roster of non-relational characteristics (Barad, 2007, citing Teller, 1989). By ‘non-relational characteristics,’ I mean boundaries, properties, and meanings that are not only inherent to what makes a ‘thing’ a ‘thing,’ but their existence is not dependent on the actual or potential activities of other things. Thus, the properties of a thing are self-contained to that thing, and the nature of the thing is not necessarily derived from the its relations with other things. This means that the boundaries and properties of the thing exist prior to any sort of relation; the individual thing’s relations with other things are therefore meta- (occurring after the) physical (thing). From a metaphysical individualism-based perspective, for instance, we need look no further than the zebra to understand its stripes (and can ignore the environmental conditions that the zebra thrives in, for they are ultimately separable); to understand an isolated tribe that lives on an otherwise uninhabited island we just need to study the tribe itself (and not the outside world that exists beyond the tribe’s boundaries, without which its boundaries would make little sense); an individual’s criminal behavior is simply a decision made by that individual, for which the individual is solely responsible (and the institutional and cultural arrangements that he or she grew up in, was embedded in at the time of the behavior, and without which the bad decision would make little sense).

From the perspective of metaphysical individualism, things may come together, impact, and change one another, but those things exist as separate stand-alone entities prior to those relations, and therefore prior to future relations. Such a perspective paves the way for scholarly and regulatory efforts that focus on preventing certain unwanted interactions among separate things from occurring, and, if they do happen to occur, seeking out an individual who is responsible for the occurrence. That individual is then punished and/or isolated as a way to prevent those unwanted interactions among the inherently separate individuals from re-occurring. Thus, the interaction that might re-occur after the existence of the individuals, or in addition to their individuality, is blocked. Such an approach, grounded in metaphysical individualism, has deep roots and a pervasive presence in Western society, not only shaping the ways in which academic theory and research are performed in prominent academic departments like economics and political science, but also how we structure our legal and regulatory systems, and enact the management processes that flow from them.

Readers steeped in philosophy will likely object to my unsophisticated description of metaphysics. Yet philosophical sophistication is not the point; my point is that scholars and practitioners tend to approach humans and nature as if they are individual entities, and then attempt to study, manage, and regulate their connections as if they occur in addition to the entities’ individualities; thus, their approach is grounded in metaphysical individualism, much to the detriment of our understanding, management, and regulation of humans and nature.

Let’s look at an example of metaphysical individualism and its metaphysical methodology at work. For many decades corporations have produced annual financial reports; in the past decade or so more and more corporations have begun producing ‘sustainability reports.’ Just as financial reports detail a firm’s financial goals, its strategies for reaching those goals, and the progress it has made in implementing those strategies and reaching those goals, sustainability reports detail a firm’s ethical and sustainability-oriented goals, its strategies for reaching those goals, and its progress toward implementing those strategies and reaching those goals. Often these reports speak to social governance principles, guidelines, and benchmarks, such as the family of ISO 14000 standards and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Research indicates, however, these reports are highly metaphysical in terms of how they communicate firms’ relationships with natural phenomena (Csabai, Good, & Parham, 2020). For instance, in their 2018 sustainability report, energy giant BP had this to say about how they manage their relationship with biodiversity:

Every year we review the location of our operations in and close to the most sensitive areas. This can change from year to year as governments update protected area designations. We evaluate new projects to determine whether planned activities could affect protected areas. If our screening process shows that a proposed project could enter or affect an international protected area, we conduct a detailed risk assessment to better understand any potential impacts. Executive approval is required before any physical activities can take place.

(BP, 2018, p. 52)

What is missing from this passage, and from all passages in BP’s report, is an assessment of how (non-human) natural phenomena and BP’s activities, as well as the activities of firms along BP’s supply chain, have constituted one another through time, and in turn how that mutual constitution shapes BP’s actual and potential relations with protected areas, as well as their understanding of them. Thus, in this passage BP discusses how they manage the potential impacts that their planned activities could have on protected areas, but they fail to account for the role that BP, and the firms that constitute its supply chain, have played in the natural and socio-political constitution of those protected areas (by ‘constitution,’ I mean the boundaries, properties, and meanings that define what things are and are not, can be and cannot). Were past actions by BP, as well as by other firms along its supply chain, part of the materialization of the protected areas that they want to manage their interactions with? Has BP and/or the other firms acted, intentionally or unintentionally, knowingly or unknowingly, directly or indirectly to shape the constitution of those protected areas? Are the natural phenomena that are in the protected areas already partly constituted by the activities of BP and the firms in its supply chain? If we take activity to be the fundamental stuff of reality, as many eminent scholars from multi-varied backgrounds urge us to do (e.g., Barad, 2007; Bergson, 2007; Butler, 1990; Haraway, 1991; Latour, 2005; Weick, 1979; Whitehead, 1978), and then we assume that BP’s activities have had a hand, in some way, in the materialization of the protected areas they are concerned with impacting, then boundaries between BP and those areas are not as distinct, and BP and the protected areas are not as separate, as BP’s language indicates.

If nature were not constituted the way it is, BP and other firms along their supply chain would not be constituted the way they are. Likewise, if BP and other firms along its supply chain were not constituted the way they are, nature would not be constituted the way it is (to a increasingly alarming degree). There is a strategic reason BP is operating within or near protected areas, for BP’s business activities are, at their core, inseparable from the activities of the natural phenomena that constitute those areas.

For one thing to ‘impact,’ ‘act on,’ or ‘affect’ some other thing requires that other thing to first exist apart from the one thing, and to then come into contact with it. If we assume that BP’s actions have in some way had a hand in the constitution of the protected areas, and that the natural phenomena in the protected areas have played a role in BP’s actions, how are we to understand BP’s attempts to manage its actual and potential impacts on those areas? BP would, in part, be managing its interactions with itself. Thus, assuming that BP and the firm along its supply chain have helped constitute the protected areas in some way, and that the natural phenomena in and around those protected areas help constitute BP in some way, does the idea of ‘impact’ still make sense? Does it capture what is really going on, and thus what needs to be managed?

Issues with BP’s metaphysical individualism based-approach emerge when we appreciate the fact that BP, and the firms that constitute its supply chain, are almost certainly already entangled with the protected areas that BP is concerned with impacting. But issues related to a metaphysical individualism-based approach do not stop there. In attempting to understand its potential impacts on something else, in this case on the protected areas, BP has to first understand the protected areas in their individuality, as they exist prior to its actions; then BP has to prospectively study its actions that would cross the divide between itself and the protected areas; and finally BP has to predict or ‘measure’ how those actions could change the protected areas. We can set aside all the problems with building models based on future probabilities (and there are many), for this approach has something more fundamentally problematic about it: it relies on the inherent separation of the measuring process from that which is being measured, which is yet another iteration of metaphysical individualism. Such separation has long been empirically rejected by quantum physics (Barad, 2007; Bohr, 1958, 1963; Mermin, 1998), and, because the lessons of quantum physics are not isolated to the ‘micro’ world (Barad, 2007, Mermin, 1998), such lessons need to be integrated into our research into, and management of, ‘macro’ phenomena. The issue is that, in attempting to predict, or ‘measure,’ its impacts on some other thing (i.e., on the protected areas), is BP actually able to maintain a clear division between itself, its measuring activities, and that other thing? Or is the dividing line between BP and the protected areas, between subject and object, humans and nature, always inherently indeterminate (as quantum mechanics teaches us)? And if the dividing line is always indeterminate, requiring determinacy to be imposed by the measuring process, what is BP really evaluating and assessing? Thus, not only do questions arise as to whether BP and the protected areas are separate prior to any sort of evaluation and risk assessment, questions also arise as to whether BP can keep its evaluation and assessment practices separate from that which it is attempting to evaluate and assess.

At the heart of these issues is the fact that any identification of a business’s impacts on natural phenomena is inherently self-referential. Proposals of potential, and accountings of actual, impacts between businesses and natural phenomena materialize from:

1. the manner in which (non-human) natural phenomena, such as breeding behaviors, migratory patterns, and morphological characteristics, make themselves intelligible to scientists and managers;
2. the ways in which scientists study and managers understand their own activities, the firms’ activities, and the activities of natural phenomena; and
3. how scientists and managers define ‘impact.’

In other words, an identified impact is inherently constituted (i.e., given boundaries, properties, and meanings) by both human and non-human activities; this in turn means that such impacts cannot be understood outside of an understanding of how they are articulated by entangled human and natural phenomena. Adherence to a priori assumptions of a separate ‘nature,’ and separate business practices, involving a supposed inherent boundary between human and natural phenomena, overlooks key organizational practices through which such boundaries are created and wedged into place, and then paradoxically treated as if they were there all along (see Whitehead, 1919, 1967b for rich examinations of this pervasive phenomenon, what he calls, ‘The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’). Such boundary-making practices are not only part of what makes organizations what they are and are not, they are largely unexamined by organization and management scholars (Good & Thorpe, 2019). An assumption of separation creates individuality where there is none, which in turn blocks appreciations and accountings of entangled constitutions, while also impairing clear understandings of how bad (or good) outcomes are articulated, and who is responsible for them. Thus, in practice, as well as in the current organization and management literature, the separateness of firms, such as BP and protected areas is taken for granted. The reality, however, is that humans, organizations, and nature constitute one another, including the organizing practices through they differentiate themselves from one another (Barad, 2007; Good & Thorpe, 2019).

Much like classical physics, metaphysical individualism is based on the idea of the stand-alone individual entity; but just as quantum physics, which empirically rejects the idea of the non-relational entity, has supplanted classical physics, we need to revise our metaphysical approach to studying, regulating, and managing how businesses relate with the natural world. This book, based on an ethnographic research project conducted in a fishing fleet that operates in the Gulf of Alaska, contributes to such a revision.

An alternative to a metaphysical individualism-based approach is an ‘entanglement’ perspective. To be entangled, according to Barad (2007, ix), “is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence.” Entangled entities (e.g., atoms, activities, objects, persons, organizations, systems) lack individually determinable or isolatable boundaries, instead gaining such qualities through their differentiating and constituting relations. ‘Entanglement,’ as it is understood here, is not merely an epistemological issue; thus, it is not only about how one comes to know something. Rather, entanglement is the ontological (i.e., inherent, physical, real) inseparability of ‘objects’ and ‘agencies or instruments of observation’ (or measurement, interaction, engagement, etc.). Thus, entanglement is the impossibility of drawing any sharp, unambiguous distinction between the behavior of what is being interacted with (the ‘object’) and the conditions or context of that interaction (the ‘agencies of observation’) (Barad, 2007). Put differently, there is an inherent indeterminacy regarding the boundaries that separate ‘objects’ and ‘agencies or instruments of observation.’ Entanglement is both the mutually constituted nature of what we consider to be individualities (‘objects’), as well as the mutually constituting nature of our acts of consideration (or any act of engagement, from observations to measurements to experiments). Because of this inherent indeterminacy, determinacy must be continually enacted, i.e., performed, such that separation that is necessary for unambiguous meaning is imputed (or ‘cut’) where it does not ontologically exist. As we will see later in the book, such meaning is found in the differential-yet-entangled responses to differential articulations of entanglements. Importantly, entanglement is not just a human, or even merely a quantum, affair; it occurs ‘all the way down,’ from the world of very large stuff to the world of very small stuff, and all the way back, from the present far back into the past (Barad, 2007; Butler, 1990; Slife, 2004).

Thus, from an entanglement perspective the isolation of phenomena into a separate thing renders the boundaries, properties and meanings of the isolated thing at least partly constituted by the isolating activity; likewise, the isolating activity is inseparable from the phenomena being isolated as a thing, for the phenomena being isolated gives boundaries, properties, and even meaning (to greater and lesser degrees of course) to the isolating activity (note that this is the case for all activity, human and non-human). Taken together, the appearance or notion of an isolated thing is a materialization that is performed by entangled (i.e., mutually constitutive) isolating and isolated activities, as well as the entangled phenomena that those activities are part and parcel of. Actions can never be isolated in and of themselves because they are always, whether intended or not, performing the boundaries, and contributing to the properties and meanings, through which actions (and things) take shape. We never encounter individual actions, or inter-actions, only intra-actions (Barad, 2007). Thus, the absolute isolation of an action, or a thing, cannot actually occur, for it is in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Context and methodology
• 3. (Non)rational decision-making at sea
• 4. Ecological sensemaking at sea
• 5. The propositional nature of ecological sensemaking
• 6. The entangled nature of ecological sensemaking
• 7. When lightning strikes: Making posthumanistic ecological sense of Chinook salmon bycatch
• References
• Index