What do oysters and ontology have in common?
Besides Os, Ys and Ts they can both be found in Willipa bay (pronounced Willipaaw as I learned from local sources) in the evergreen state Washington (or wharshington ;).
It was rather serendipitous that my field trip to Willipa Bay with ENVS 330 happened the very weekend after a week of discussion around ethics and politics in Environmental Theory. The whole weekend I couldn’t help but think about the entanglements between actors, stakeholders, values, and objects in Willipa in the context of ontology, epistemology, politics and ethics.
It seems that Willipa Bay is rife with opportunity for exploring the interdependence/overlap of the categories of ontology, epistemology, politics and ethics, and such exploration as a way of exposing the fallacy of adopting merely one as the way of knowing.
For example, the oyster industry is generally believed to be good for the Willipa Bay estuary ecosystem. The oyster’s not only filter feed and effectively clean the water in the bay, but the shells of living and dead bivalves provide necessary three-dimensional benthic habitat for other species of aquatic life. Now, beyond these qualities, humans within the oyster industry offer an adamant voice against pollution and other potentially destructive or extractive industries in the bay. This is because the oysters rely on clean, non-toxic water to thrive and grow big and tasty before being harvested, providing a multi-million dollar industry to the people of the peninsula. As a result of the productivity of the oyster industry, there is little need for logging and other pollution emitting industries in the area to support local livelihoods. The local oyster men and women have been cultivating oysters in a relatively unchanging manner since the late 1800s, and the bay continues to rank in the top 5 cleanest estuaries in North America to this day.
On the other hand, the government is focusing on the elimination of non-native, invasive species within Willipa Bay, as well as pursuing otherwise greater means of regulation for the oyster industry. The government has sided with large chemical corporations, such as Monsanto, to purchase and develop aquatic herbicides to rid the bay of non-native marine grasses.
The tensions then, within Willipa bay, come between non-traditional members of the environmental movement. Or at least, members who have adopted non-traditional roles within the environmental movement as we (the lay people of America) know and understand it.
This is a case where industry is fighting against the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides and calling for more regulation regarding extractive and polluting industries. In the meantime the Federal Government is trying to create effective policy to address invasive species and consider the arguments coming from all angles concerning argri-chemical use in the bay.
In the context of Environmental Theory, this can be read as a friction between ethics and politics. What value judgements might the government be making when they choose to eradicate non-native species with potentially harmful chemical herbicides? And what do the dynamic power relations at play in Willipa Bay look like? And how do they interact?
The answers to these questions lie behind every facade in Willipa bay; from the organizations fighting for elk-hunting access to the corner store selling fresh oysters, from the chambers of congress in D.C. to the very muck on the bottom of the tidelands, Ethics (how we feel about it) and Politics (what we do about it) are both very much present, in the open, and eagerly discussed by the people associated with this beautiful bay.
Now, I don’t want to commit either the ethical or political fallacy by saying the debates between the oyster-persons and the government boil down to mere power-relationships or values. The scene is quite the mix of values and power, including the very knowledge that informs and creates both power and values.
This leads into my last point, which I’d like to draw from today’s discussion on Noel Castree. Where does the knowledge come from that informs values and politics in Willipa Bay? Or should I say, who produces this knowledge? I would argue that the main epistemic community contributing knowledge to the debates within Willipa Bay is composed of the scientists working in the area. Now, surely oyster cultivators and hunters and citizen scientists contribute to what is known about Willipa Bay and it’s component parts, but the loudest voices in the room (or at least the voices most listened to and heard by those in power) are those of the scientists. Which begs further questions about science and it’s implementation that I do not wish to tackle here.
In sum, although such concepts/categories as epistemology, ontology, politics and ethics may seem largely inapplicable to everyday life and interactions, my experience in Willipa Bay last weekend lead me to strongly believe otherwise. Now the challenge is running with this conviction headlong into my praxis project!