Thinking with Oysters in Times of Uncertainty

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnography of the transnational life of oysters, viewed through the lens of Japanese aquaculture, where ecological emergences, alterations, and disruptions unfold across both inter- and intra-species dynamics. Oyster culture forms a landscape of uncertainties, marked by the escalating rise in intense ecological upheaval and socio-economic precariousness. These uncertainties are manifested as everyday encounters with and responses to unforeseen climate change impacts on oyster mortality, human depopulation and aging in the fisheries sector, and shifts in seafood consumption patterns. The simultaneous proliferation of these uncertainties has given rise to: bioengineering, such as selective breeding for high water temperature tolerance and disease resistance, aimed at optimizing cost efficiency and creating high-value-added products; techno-scientific innovations in seafood safety and security, such as virus-free oyster farming using microalgae engineering; and the re-establishment of oyster seasonality grounded in value creation for the consumption market. Drawing on years of ethnographic and archival research in Japan, Australia, Poland, and the USA, I address the transformation of the modes of production, circulation, and consumption of the Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas; magaki), a species endemic to East Asia that presently constitutes 80 percent of the total world production of edible oysters. Attentive to the spatio-temporal, material, metabolic, and affective relationalities of human-nonhuman-environment interactions, this thesis grapples with the contingent practices of more-than-human entanglements that constitute contemporary Japanese aquaculture. I pose the following questions: How have these unevenly distributed uncertainties been addressed by various epistemic communities, including oyster producers, marine biologists, market authorities, distributors, and consumers? How do more-than-human entanglements at multi-scalar levels lead to the creation of new forces and agents? Ultimately, I inquire into how the values and meanings of contemporary Japanese aquaculture have been reformulated in the face of ecological precariousness. By tracing this far-reaching knowledge-making, I argue that these practices are situated through interdependent enmeshments of networks in action, dynamics, and stabilization - in which multiple heterogeneous actors (oysters, viruses, local producers, marine biologists, biotech ventures, farming equipment, market distributors, and consumers) are entangled. Finally, this thesis explores the theoretical implications of multispecies ethnography in which oysters play vital roles in intention-forming and place-making, rather than being merely a passive consumable resource. Show more