Luossa and Laks

Abstract

When technoscience and state policy interact with indigenous knowledges and practices they usually do so asymmetrically. Within relations of domination indigenous knowledges are treated as ‘beliefs’ or ‘culture’ whereas technoscience qualifies as ‘knowledge’ or truth. This paper explores one such interaction: a controversy in north Norway and Finland between biological modellers and policymakers on the one hand, and Sami fisherpeople on the other. The scientists and the policymakers argue that salmon numbers are falling in the Deatnu (Tana) river as a result of overfishing, and seek to limit fishing. Local fishermen partially agree, but argue that other factors (and especially the protection of predators) are also crucial. They also resist restrictions being imposed on local (and often Sami) driftnet fishing practices.The paper treats this controversy as epistemological, political and metaphysical, with a particular focus on the last of these. The metaphysical assumptions enacted by technoscience – and in particular its commitments to nature-culture dualism and a singular ‘one-world’ ontology – are explored. These commitments are shown to be absent in Sami practices. It is argued, following other work in postcolonial anthropology, that those embedded assumptions prevent technoscience and policy practices from recognising metaphysical difference, and so allow policymakers and scientists to refuse the possibility that there might be multiple and different worlds. The paper concludes by arguing that if less dominatory relations between science and policy on the one hand, and Sami practices and knowledges on the other, are to be achieved it will be important to attend: (a) to the down-to-earth material practices of knowledge production; and (b) to the significance of metaphysical difference within and between those practices. It will also be important: (c) to create ways of knowing that recognise and enact differences rather than hoping to seek consensus.