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A key question in any environmental dispute is the nature of what is under discussion. 'Cosmopolitics' – political battles over the form of reality – are a feature of many environmental clashes. This article focuses on one such clash: during the summer of 2014, grindadráp – the iconic practice of driving pilot whales for meat – was the big news item in the Faroe Islands. More accurately, a conservation campaign by the controversial group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), Operation Grindstop 2014, garnered most attention. Aiming to stop or at least disrupt the 'barbaric' and 'sadistic' grindadráp, SSCS were involved in several confrontations with Faroese authorities and publicly engaged with Faroese pro-whaling advocates in several discussions that were seemingly fruitless. Based on 3 months fieldwork during the campaign, this article describes a 'political ontology' of Grindstop 2014. What emerged was a 'hybrid' born of a clash between two fundamentally dissonant systems of ordering, which structured and were reinforced by various practices, both discursive and material. Activists on both sides were engaged in a cosmopolitical struggle to decisively enact their orderings, creating alternative stories of whales, Faroese whaling, the ocean environment and modernity. The aim is to understand what happened when these orderings met. This article argues that throughout the summer these two orderings moved apart, consequently hiding the diversity of opinion and discussion within Faroese society around grindadráp. As such, alternative orderings of grindadráp were suppressed, notably those voiced by Faroese activists arguing that the practice should cease because of the high levels of toxins in pilot whale meat.Key words: Faroe Islands, whaling, political ontology, cosmopolitics

A key question in any environmental dispute is the nature of what is under discussion. 'Cosmopolitics' – political battles over the form of reality – are a feature of many environmental clashes. This article focuses on one such clash: during the summer of 2014, grindadráp – the iconic practice of driving pilot whales for meat – was the big news item in the Faroe Islands. More accurately, a conservation campaign by the controversial group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), Operation Grindstop 2014, garnered most attention. Aiming to stop or at least disrupt the 'barbaric' and 'sadistic' grindadráp, SSCS were involved in several confrontations with Faroese authorities and publicly engaged with Faroese pro-whaling advocates in several discussions that were seemingly fruitless. Based on 3 months fieldwork during the campaign, this article describes a 'political ontology' of Grindstop 2014. What emerged was a 'hybrid' born of a clash between two fundamentally dissonant systems of ordering, which structured and were reinforced by various practices, both discursive and material. Activists on both sides were engaged in a cosmopolitical struggle to decisively enact their orderings, creating alternative stories of whales, Faroese whaling, the ocean environment and modernity. The aim is to understand what happened when these orderings met. This article argues that throughout the summer these two orderings moved apart, consequently hiding the diversity of opinion and discussion within Faroese society around grindadráp. As such, alternative orderings of grindadráp were suppressed, notably those voiced by Faroese activists arguing that the practice should cease because of the high levels of toxins in pilot whale meat.

As architects attempt to situate their practice in relation to ecology, there are questions to be asked about what kinds of ecologies they are approaching, how and why. That these questions are being taken seriously – as witnessed by the appearance of a journal with a title like
Design Ecologies (DES) – is to be commended, but we are still very much in the business of suggestive opening moves, precisely because what, broadly speaking, we can call an ecological sensibility' raises so many questions about so many aspects of architectural practice. As Felix
Robbins suggested in his contribution to the previous issue of DES, this extends even to the very idea of what engaging in an 'architectural project' involves. And like Robbins, I offer here a perspective on how what we might think of as 'architecture' could be invigorated
through its contact with ecological thinking, but – and implicitly demonstrating the huge scope of the disciplinary reappraisal we are embarking on – take a very different route. This article suggests that an 'ecological' approach to architecture might reactivate some
very old (and long-ignored) links between 'design' as craft and 'design' as implied in being crafty, and offers some thoughts about cunning as the way ecology and design meet.

The political ecological study of environmental issues is often concerned with the interactions of diverse actors, leading to accounts of different, conflicting worldviews. While different epistemological and ontological standpoints are covered, there is consensus that environmental issues are simultaneously social and material, and that worldviews differ. In this article, I argue Michael Thompson's rubbish theory can be usefully employed to compare and contrast environmental perspectives ultimately rooted in conflicting epistemological and ontological understandings of a situation. Rubbish theory describes the categorization of objects into durables, transients and rubbish, and movements between these categories.Rubbish theory focuses on how objects are restricted in their movement and how this reflects the distribution of power and status in society. Two aspects of a society may then be assessed: 1) its value system, and 2) the extent to which different groups may alter that value system. Dynamic changes in these two aspects are then traceable. As an example of extant environmental conflicts rooted in different worldviews, this article focuses on historic and contemporary issues around the consumption of whale meat. Focusing upon whaling and whale-watching, I argue that historic and contemporary conflicts manifest different orderings and that these comprise different epistemological standpoints, which as value systems are comparable within rubbish theory.

A perennial challenge in efforts to deal with environmental issues is the question of how to simplify. As such, where and when one simplifies is often a source of conflict, but perversely also paramount to finding a solution. This thesis focuses on one long-standing environmental issue, the whaling debate. Specifically, it performs a strategically sited microethnography of Faroese whaling, grindadráp, exploring linkages between actions on local and international scales. This thesis aims to contribute to environmental sociological efforts to analyse and resolve complex socio-environmental problems. The five papers that together constitute this thesis collectively provide a description of grindadráp from the local scale of the bays where pilot whales are killed to the international forums where whaling as a whole remains an issue at the heart of an on-going, deadlocked conflict. Primarily based on three months' fieldwork in the Faroe Islands, this thesis combines observation, interviews, media and other literature. The theoretical lenses employed are that of the 'ontological turn' and the 'theory of sociocultural viability' (cultural theory). The former utilised as a tool for ethnographic practice with the latter used to analyse how different perspectives on reality manifest throughout the whaling conflict. This thesis demonstrates that grindadráp has changed through time as a result of the interactions between actors with different views on the matter at hand. However, in contrast to the global whaling debate, this interaction has been mostly constructive, with appropriate changes in practice ensuring grindadráp's continued popularity within the Faroe Islands. Furthermore, its continuation will likely depend on grindadráp's continued ability to balance different perspectives. This thesis thus echoes environmental sociological calls for improved dialogue in the framing and resolution of environmental disputes, suggesting that cultural theory provides a tool that balances relativism and pragmatism in dealing with complex environmental problems.

A key question in any environmental dispute is the nature of what is under discussion. 'Cosmopolitics' – political battles over the form of reality – are a feature of many environmental clashes. This article focuses on one such clash: during the summer of 2014, grindadráp – the iconic practice of driving pilot whales for meat – was the big news item in the Faroe Islands. More accurately, a conservation campaign by the controversial group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), Operation Grindstop 2014, garnered most attention. Aiming to stop or at least disrupt the 'barbaric' and 'sadistic' grindadráp, SSCS were involved in several confrontations with Faroese authorities and publicly engaged with Faroese pro-whaling advocates in several discussions that were seemingly fruitless. Based on 3 months fieldwork during the campaign, this article describes a 'political ontology' of Grindstop 2014. What emerged was a 'hybrid' born of a clash between two fundamentally dissonant systems of ordering, which structured and were reinforced by various practices, both discursive and material. Activists on both sides were engaged in a cosmopolitical struggle to decisively enact their orderings, creating alternative stories of whales, Faroese whaling, the ocean environment and modernity. The aim is to understand what happened when these orderings met. This article argues that throughout the summer these two orderings moved apart, consequently hiding the diversity of opinion and discussion within Faroese society around grindadráp. As such, alternative orderings of grindadráp were suppressed, notably those voiced by Faroese activists arguing that the practice should cease because of the high levels of toxins in pilot whale meat.Key words: Faroe Islands, whaling, political ontology, cosmopolitics