Louis PILLE SCHNEIDER

Titre de la thèse :

Blue governmentalities, biopower(s) and ant the (trans)formation of multispecies temporalities within the Senegalese artisanal sardinella fisheries

Résumé de la thèse :

Anchored in political and multispecies anthropology, as well as in political ecology and environmental history, this PhD project is concerned with the (trans)formations of human-marine relations within the Senegalese artisanal sardinella fishery in the Anthropocene Ocean. Addressing notably the temporal dimension of these relations, the project employs a Foucauldian, more-than-human framework in the analysis of the multiple environmentalities – or “blue governmentality”, and associated forms of biopower(s) at play in the management of the assemblage of artisanal fisherfolk and sardinella populations across time and space, in a Senegalese, yet globally embedded context. In this maelstrom of political-economic transformations giving rise to crucial questions of social, environmental, and indeed, multispecies justice, sardinella has over the decades become a “(bio)political fish” engulfed in a more-than-human “politics of making live or letting die”. Historically tracing the sardinella resource-making process in Senegal and beyond, as well as the evolution of the associated multispecies relations, allows for uncovering the embeddedness of the (by no means merely exploitative) relations between Senegalese fisherfolk and sardinella within wider market forces and structures; forces and structures that are currently disrupting the multispecies rhythms woven over decades across the land-sea divide.

University of Bergen