Eating the Ocean

By: Elspeth Probyn

Narrated by: Lianne Walker

In Eating the Ocean Elspeth Probyn investigates the profound importance of the ocean and the future of fish and human entanglement. On her ethnographic journey around the world's oceans and fisheries, she finds that the ocean is being simplified in a food politics that is overwhelmingly land based and preoccupied with buzzwords like "local" and "sustainable."

Developing a conceptual tack that combines critical analysis and embodied ethnography, she dives into the lucrative and endangered bluefin tuna market, the gendered politics of "sustainability," the ghoulish business of producing fish meal and fish oil for animals and humans, and the long history of encounters between humans and oysters.

Seeing the ocean as the site of the entanglement of multiple species—which are all implicated in the interactions of technology, culture, politics, and the market—enables us to think about ways to develop a reflexive ethics of taste and place based in the realization that we cannot escape the food politics of the human-fish relationship.

The book is published by Duke University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2016 Duke University Press (P)2025 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"One of the most profound works I have read on the sea, and the issues with which it presents us..." (Times Higher Education)

"Fascinating in its emphasis on the interconnections and mutual influences among humans, ocean creatures and the ocean itself." (Agriculture and Human Values)

"A timely and masterfully judged intervention into debates in food studies." (Cultural Geographies)