– The ocean is a source of personal and cultural identity, for livelihoods, and a space for recreation and cultural practices
– I've been out in the large saltwater lagoon and for fishing expeditions to different atolls. I've followed the tuna economy onshore by visiting loining plants, participating in industry events and interviewing various tuna actors. Fieldwork is stimulating but also emotionally and psychologically exhausting, Ola G. Berta says of his fieldwork in the Marshall Islands. In this interview, he also questions the current mobility model for outgoing fellows.
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Fieldwork is always hard. If it isn’t, you’re doing something wrong. It’s often fun, interesting, and stimulating but if you’re worth your salt, it’s also emotionally and psychologically exhausting.
What attracted you to being a researcher and then to the SEAS programme?
I wanted to be a researcher because of the joy of intellectual pursuits, the excitement of doing fieldwork, and the challenge of writing analytical texts. The SEAS programme, and my wife, allowed me to keep doing that for a few more years. I also love teaching and engaging with students, and I’m grateful that my department gave me an opportunity to do that.
Can you give a description in general terms of your SEAS project?
I’m studying how the ocean figure into quests to assert sovereignty in the Marshall Islands, a large ocean state in the Central Pacific Ocean that outsiders typically describe as dependent. My research shows that Marshall Islanders use the ocean as a symbol to assert sovereignty in several important ways. The ocean is a source of personal and cultural identity, it provides the means for subsistence livelihoods and cash income, it’s a space for recreation and cultural practices, and it holds considerable marine resources that the state use to forge and maintain diplomatic relations necessary to navigate in a tense geopolitical region.
Are you about to see results that might also give you a way forward in your future research?
An anthropologist always finds a way.
What kind of fieldwork have you had during the SEAS programme and how would you describe the experience?
I’ve done ethnographic fieldwork in Majuro in the Marshall Islands. I did participant observation at a fish market, where I followed the employees as they went on fishing expeditions, handled and sold fish, and tried to figure out what to do with their down time between expeditions. This work brought me out in the large saltwater lagoon and for fishing expeditions on other atolls. Parallel to this, I followed tuna fish and the tuna economy onshore by visiting loining plants, participating in industry events and interviewing various tuna actors, including politicians, tuna purchasers, observers, hobby fishers, bureaucrats, and employees in and agents for fishing companies.
Fieldwork is always hard. If it isn’t, you’re doing something wrong. It’s often fun, interesting, and stimulating but if you’re worth your salt, it’s also emotionally and psychologically exhausting. Anthropologists tend to do fieldwork alone, so we often struggle with uncertainty and self-doubt. And loneliness, of course. Doing fieldwork far from home has the added element of isolating you from friends and family. It’s worth the struggle in most cases, both from a personal and disciplinary perspective.
What have been the pros and cons of the SEAS programme in terms of resources, in terms of community, or in terms of cooperation with industry and society at large?
The SEAS programme is amazing in terms of resources and community. Even if most of us work on vastly different things, we’re gradually starting to find commonalities to explore and creative ways of working together. Almost nothing of what we do together has direct relevance to my own project, but I love the intellectual exchanges that are happening and the small insights I get from disciplines I otherwise wouldn’t engage with. It’s so much fun to suddenly find yourself at the pub with a geologist, a mathematician, and a marine biologist. That would never happen outside of this programme.
The major drawback is the ideal of mobility embedded in the funding structure of the contemporary academy. As an outgoing fellow, I must stay abroad 18–20 months of my contract. This inhibits my chances of integration into my primary department in Bergen and in the SEAS gang. Plus, any host department knows that you’re just passing through, so you basically end up feeling like an outsider wherever you go (considering that, as a social scientist, I mainly work alone). It also disrupts family life and long-term friendships.
It’s a model for academic work worth reconsidering. I think research funders should investigate the purpose of mobility, to evaluate whether it is suited for all disciplines. We might find that we are treating the idea of mobility as effective in itself, as if ‘being there’ is what constitutes a productive collaboration across institutions. I worry that we are reproducing an old idea of researchers as some kind of lone (male) hero that is unattached from anything and anyone, living only for their work.
There are so many other ways of being mobile and internationalised than the current model allows, and they’re all more productive, emotionally sustainable, and environmentally friendly.
What has been your experience of being located in Bergen?
I love being in Bergen! It’s wonderful to have the university at the city centre, as it opens so many fun and interesting arenas, like the pub, where one can engage in informal intellectual exchange. Many of my best ideas emerge in such circumstances.
In what ways have you found the interdisciplinary aspects of the SEAS project to be a contribution to your project?
Not directly. I’m sure it will spark some interesting side projects, it already has, but nobody in SEAS is working on anything directly related to my main project.
In what ways does your project connect to the UN sustainability goals, or otherwise connect to the topic of marine sustainability?
I’m working on fisheries in Oceania, so I’m inevitably working on all the sustainability dimensions, and my research speaks to a range of sustainability goals and targets. I don’t consider them as guides in my own research but could potentially address them in op-eds and other forms of public outreach.
How do you spend your free time?
With my family, doing stuff that’s fun and interesting for all of us: hiking, foraging for mushrooms, visit museums, bicycling, and trying to be creative. I also read and play the guitar.
Where do you see yourself in 5 – 10 years?
I’ve never even been able to predict what the next year will look like, but I hope I do something intellectually fulfilling, whether on or off work.