26 October, TIK hosted a launch and lounge seminar on the occasion of Kristin Asdal and Tone Huse’s new book with MIT Press, Nature-Made Economy: Cod, Capital and the Great Economization of the Ocean.
After a short introduction from the authors Kristin and Tone, several scholars were invited to comments and take part in a conversation about the main themes in the book. We welcomed Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Maka Suarez, Economic historian, Postdoctoral Fellow at BI and editor of Vinduet, Ola Innset and Professor of STS at TIK, Susanne Bauer. The conversation was moderated by Bård Lahn, Postdoctoral Fellow at TIK.
The book, Nature-Made Economy, investigates how the ocean is the site of an ongoing transformation, aimed at creating new economic opportunities and prosperity. In Nature-Made Economy, Kristin Asdal and Tone Huse explore how the ocean has been harnessed to become a space of capital investment and innovation, and how living nature is wrested into the economy even as nature, in turn, resists, adapts to, or changes the economy. The authors' innovative methodological and conceptual approaches examine the economy by focusing on surprising and numerous “little tools”—such as maps and policy documents, quality patrols, and dietary requirements for the enhancement of species' biological propensities—that value, direct, reorder, accomplish, and sometimes fail to serve our ends, but also add up to great change.
The book is open access and can be downloaded here.