Seals, salmon farms and politics : the institutional culture of seal relocation and other measures to counter seal-fish farm interactions in South-eastern Tasmania

Qualitative and observational techniques and a hermeneutic methodology were employed in this project. The primary focus was to explore the institutional culture surrounding the development of the Seal Relocation programme and attendant techniques for the mitigation of seal interactions with salmon farms in south-eastern Tasmania. The methodology relied on an inductive, inquiring logic, and produced a broad picture of bureaucratic and political culture in Tasmania that reflected currents of thinking surrounding the nature of late modernity. Foucault and Pusey proved useful in understanding power and resistance and Bauman was valuable for his insight into the fractured identity of the modern organisational actor. Four sub-themes emerged: history, efficacy, ethics and politics, providing four vantage points from which to view the multiple rationalities of the actors involved. It was found that the dominant ideology of development colours environmental management in a disciplined Public Service and polity captured by the technologies of governmentality. There are, however, pockets of resistance.