Seeing Like the Sea - A Multispecies History of the Ceylon Pearl Fishery 1800–1925

Summary

Tamara Fernando’s history of Ceylon’s colonial pearl fishery “dives below the waves”. Its divers knew the sea through their bodies: “Labour was a mode of knowing nature”. For a century and a half, British officials tried to bring oysters, sharks and parasites under scientific control, until they gave up in 1925: “capitalist rationalization was impossible”.

Rationale

Its divers know the sea as we think cognition works, through body and place; its officials’ long failure shows the limits of control that complexity science warns of.