Paper short abstract:

Projects of oyster cultivation aim to and rely on creating ‘domesticating insides’ and ‘wild outsides’ and to draw mollusc gleaners and oysters into these insides. Unruly molluscs and waters and gleaners who undermine projects, however, form a ‘wild’ alliance and thereby resist domestication.

Paper long abstract:

Gleaning for molluscs in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal unfolds across an extensive deltaic water-and landscape. It is about repetition with difference and never ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’, as there are always molluscs staying out there to be eventually found another day.

Lately, gleaning has become targeted by NGO interventions. Thereby, molluscs have been described as ‘wild’ and gleaners as ‘dynamic’, yet ‘archaic’, practicing a ‘traditional’ work that is ‘developable’.

In this paper I trace projects of oyster cultivation. These aim to and rely on creating ‘domesticating insides’ and ‘wild outsides’ while little changing oysters’ morphology or behaviour. Rather, human labour, time and technology become indicators of how ‘professional’ a project is and how ‘domesticated’ the resulting oysters and how ‘cultivated’ their consumers are.

Not establishing closed breeding cycles, such projects continue to rely on ‘outside’ oysters attaching themselves to the sites and the connecting, unruly flux of water. Yet, oysters do not always attach as planned or grow in different temporalities. And shifting tides and currents might also change oyster mobility. Because sites and planned tasks remain entangled with this unruliness of molluscs and waters, the projects struggle to establish continuity and deliver on their crucial promises of professionalism.

Gleaners seek to exploit this arrhythmicity. They uphold their ‘traditional’, rhythmic gleaning practice and integrate work for the projects as mere additions rather than fully committing to them. In complicating oyster cultivation while upholding their ongoing gleaning practice, gleaners thereby forge an alliance with ‘wild’ oysters and also circumvent their own domestication.