Paper short abstract:

Documents are key sites in which valuations are done. One example of this is the proliferation of policy documents articulating large-scale visions of a "blue growth" in the EU and Norway. How do these documents - the little tools of aquaculture policy - produce this desired future?

Paper long abstract:

Documents are key sites in which valuations are done. One highly interesting and most important example of this, is the major expansion of policy documents articulating large-scale visions for a European future in which green growth, innovation and the new bioeconomy are made central concepts. Indeed, documents both in the EU and beyond are also envisioning blue growth, in which the marine sector - fisheries, aquaculture and related industries - is recast as a driver of this new bioeconomy. In this paper, we seek to explore how these policy documents seeks to appreciate nature and the environment, while at the same time envisioning economic growth, both in sheer output volume (amount of fish produced) and in terms of value production in the conventional sense (financial revenue). How do these documents, what we call the little tools of government, work upon the issue of aquaculture to redefine what was previously understood as limits to growth and conflicts of interest into technical problems that may be solved by means of innovation and new technologies? In pursuing this question, we will investigate empirical materials from the EU and Norway, a small country at the margins of Europe aiming to become the world's leading producer of farmed fish. How do the little tools of Norwegian aquaculture policy produce this desired future?