"Congealed Labor, Canned Fish: From the Adriatic towards a Global History of the Oil Sardine": Blogbeitrag von Ulf Brunnbauer

In the blog "Frictions" of the Leibniz ScienceCampus "Europe and America in the Modern World", Ulf Brunnbauer explores why not only the big, valuable fish, such as tuna and salmon, but also the relative small fry of sardines can offer an illustration of the changing history of global capitalism and experiences of economic change. He traces the entanglements of human, environmental and multi-species histories. His essay stresses the interconnections of local agency and external forces, nature and resource exploitation, and networks and historical ruptures. He also highlights the significance of gender relations in the canned fish industry. As he argues, the history of canned sardines can be written into the larger narratives of modernization, industrialization, exploitation of humans and degradation of nature. At the same time, it never completely tallies with any of these larger stories but involves ambiguities and surprising turns.