War of the Whales

Post-Sovereign Science and Agonistic Cosmopolitics in Japanese-Global Whaling Assemblages

Bibliographic Data

ID5337774
AuthorsAnders Blok (0000-0002-3403-698X, University of Copenhagen, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume36
Issue1
Pages55-81
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243910366133
OpenAlexW2137656110
LanguageEN
Citations received36
References cited27

This article examines some of the difficulties of universalistic science in situations of deep conflict over global nature, using empirical material pertaining to ongoing controversies in the context of Japanese whaling practices. Within global-scale whaling assemblages since the 1970s, science has become a ''post-sovereign'' authority, unable to impose any stable definition of nature on all actors. Instead, across spaces of deep antagonistic differences, anti- and pro-whalers now ontologically enact a multiplicity of mutually irreconcilable versions of whales. Empirically, the article attempts to map out a ''cosmogram'' of Japanese pro-whaling enactments of abundant and ''killable'' whales. Following the political ecology of Bruno Latour, the global-scale situation is conceptualized as one of cosmopolitics, the politics of forging a common world across divergences in nature-cultures. Pointing to tensions inherent in this concept, the article ends by suggesting a move toward ''agonistic cosmopolitics,'' in clarifying the constructive potentials of a Latourian anti-essentialist political ecology

Aggression · Agonistic behaviour · Biology · Fishery · Militarism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Whaling · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Psychology · Law

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