A Wealth of Worths: Critical Details in the Cultivation of Norwegian Seaweed

Abstract

In recent years, the blue bioeconomy has been promoted as an economy that can deliver economic growth while being sustainable. Yet, it has also been subjected to critique. This article engages with the question of how to perform a scholarly critique of the blue bioeconomy by studying the Norwegian seaweed cultivation industry. Seaweed cultivation has been attributed with the potential to be environmentally beneficial and to generate enormous economic growth. Inspired by the “good economy”, the article problematises the good of Norwegian seaweed cultivation by investigating alternative ways of relating normative and economic value than the one currently dominating the industry. Through ethnographic studies of the manual processing procedures on a small seaweed farm, the article shows how these processing procedures enact the good of cultivated seaweed as residing in its processing rather than in the biological substance. The article also shows how this manual processing generates a wealth of registers of valuing, which value both seaweed and the beings in its environment for more than their commercial potential. Finally, the article argues for attending to details and uses them to commence a critical dialogue about what is and ought to be good of good economies.