Comparative Globalities: Actor-Network Theory and the Topologies of Japanese “Research” Whales

Abstract

This article draws on ethnographic studies (conducted in Japan) into ongoing controversies over Japanese “research” whaling, in order to theorize what it might mean, in STS and elsewhere, to think comparatively about global connections, networks, and flows. Since the 1970s, Japanese whaling has been constituted as a high-profile global controversy, mired in a sensitive cultural politics of so-called whaling cultures (alongside Norway, Iceland, and various indigenous groups). While Euro-American environmentalists attempt to turn whales into charismatic friends of “humankind,” the Japanese prowhaling establishment continues to justify whaling in the Antarctic for scientific purposes. The ethnographic puzzle picked up here is how such work of scientific justification plays out in transnational contexts. Engaging discussions in actor-network theory (ANT), the article addresses this question by elaborating a notion of “comparative globalities.” Gradually, this concept comes to absorb three different STS-analytical strategies in the context of Japanese whaling: the “multicultural global” (ubiquitous cultural comparisons with political effects); “global assemblages” (specific conjunctures of scientific, legal, and cultural trajectories); and a notion of “interobject” and “intraobject” comparisons elaborated in the (post-)ANT language of topology (Law and Mol). This topological strategy of formal comparison aims to extend the notion that technoscientific objects, such as Japanese whale inscriptions, travel the world in different sociospatial patterns, each carrying specifiable effects. The article ends by reflecting on the methodological implications of such comparative globalities for STS work, which, like this article itself, travels between Euro-American and East Asian contexts.

Keywords:

• Japanese whaling
• global connections
• actor-network theory
• topology
• comparison

Notes

 1 It speaks to the great credit of EASTS to have helped spark highly inspiring and thought-provoking debates on this very issue (see Anderson 2007; Nakajima 2007; Thompson 2008).

 2 For a sample of existing social science work on (Japanese/global) whales and whaling, arranged according to disciplinary attachments, see Kalland 2009 (anthropology), Epstein 2008 (international politics), Watanabe 2009 (historical sociology), and Gillespie 2005 (international law).

 3 Admittedly, this is an anecdotal observation, based on personal familiarity with STS discussions. As a matter of meta-analysis, it would be interesting to survey the use of such scalar markers as local and global in STS texts, to see what analytical work they perform. Such an exercise would be especially pertinent, I believe, in the context of “regionalizing” notions such as “East Asian STS.” This task, however, is beyond the scope of my article.

 4 “Theory” is in quote marks here to acknowledge ongoing debates, among ANT practitioners, as to whether ANT is better conceived of as method or sensibility rather than as theory (see, e.g., Mol 2010).

 5 I owe the term hyperrelational to Annelise Riles (personal communication, Osaka, July 2009).

 6 A note on terminology: I use (post-)ANT in order to signal, on the one hand, how the specific interest in topology of Mol and Law changes certain aspects of “classic” ANT (e.g., Latour) while, on the other hand, remaining fully consistent with its methodological tenets. This follows Gad and Jensen 2010.

 7 Latour was writing in the context of discussing “cosmopolitanism” (or, as he prefers, “cosmopolitics”) with famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck. As should be clear, this article shares important parts of such a cosmopolitical context.

 8 Even Michael Heazle (2006), who claims STS inspiration in studying the strategic deployment of scientific uncertainty in international whaling politics, retains a rationalist tenet at his analytical core: if only political negotiators would stop misusing science, then we would know the truth of the matter.

 9 The ICR is a center of Japanese prowhaling science and politics.

10 International legal precursors to the IWC, organized in the context of the League of Nations, date back as far as the 1920s, making whale conservation one of the longest-standing issues of global environmental law.

11 “Euro-American” is a highly imperfect sociogeographical marker, given that, at least at the level of official politics, antiwhaling sentiments are currently prevalent in such far-flung places as the United States, Germany, Argentina, and New Zealand (to name only a few). However, I use this marker throughout, as it is still marginally less overloaded than “Western” (the term mainly used by Japanese prowhaling protagonists), and since it conforms to a prevalent convention in anthropological reflections on technoscience (e.g., Strathern 1996).

12 “Industry” is in quote marks here to signal that, while much talked about among Euro-American antiwhalers, what remains in terms of commercial Japanese whaling activities amounts to one company of fewer than seven hundred employees, entirely dependent on state (taxpayer) subsidies.

13 Interviews centered on nonstate organizational actors in Japanese whaling politics, including the above-mentioned scientific, industrial, and quasi-state civil society groups. Among antiwhaling protagonists, interviews were conducted with Greenpeace Japan and WWF Japan, among others.

14 More recently, Ayukawa was one of the coastal towns badly affected by the tsunami disaster on 11 March 2011. The fate of the towns' whaling legacies remains uncertain.

15 A notable illustration of this contentious situation was provided by Greenpeace Japan, when in 2008 they appeared to reveal deeply ingrained embezzlement in Japan's “research” whaling company, tied to whale meat gifts for employees. This led to fierce legal allegations against the activists. The methodological point here is simply to suggest that, in the midst of such clashing allegations, questions of public speech acts and their credibility seem more interesting than matter-of-fact truth content (i.e., to what extent embezzlement was happening).

16 Accessed 25 July 2009 at http://www.worldwhalers.com/world_whaling.htm (as of 30 October 2012, this webpage seems no longer available).

17 Quote from WCW website (http://www.worldwhalers.com/world_whaling.htm), accessed 25 July 2009.

18 “War of the whales” is a widely used epithet for global whaling controversies, and recently also the title of a popular US-based television docu-soap series on the high-seas antiwhaling activism of Sea Shepherd.

19 Such epistemic commitments are noteworthy, especially given the fact that they run directly counter to otherwise widespread disciplinary tendencies, during roughly the same period, to emphasize the globally fragmented, heterogeneous, and invented character of “culture” (e.g., Appadurai 1996).

20 A recent case in point is provided by Nobohiro Kishigami, professor of anthropology at the National Institute of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka, who warns against the “danger of environmental imperialism” implied by Western antiwhaling movements, in a commentary to the Asahi Shimbun, traditionally considered a left-of-center newspaper with wide circulation in Japan (Kishigami 2011).

21 I have elaborated on the arguments of this section in a different context in Blok 2011, where I go into more detail on some ambiguities, at the level of political theory, found in Latour's cosmopolitics.

22 To fully appreciate the irony here, one needs to note how affirmative discourses of animism have recently (re)appeared in the context of Shinto-inspired environmentalism in Japan (see Jensen and Blok 2013).

23 Surprisingly, to my knowledge, John Law, Annemarie Mol, and Vicky Singleton do not make this analytical connection between an ANT-style fire topology and what is often called the “affective turn” in sociocultural theory. For more on the importance of affect to human-animal relations, see Lorimer 2007.

24 A more rigorous critique of ANT methodology, beyond the scope of this article, would involve showing how this difference-generating strategy is itself enabled by some rather high-level conceptual and ontological abstractions (such as, indeed, the notion of cosmopolitics) (see Krarup and Blok 2011).