When we talk about sharks, we rarely talk about just one animal. We're talking about something that precedes us and, at the same time, unsettles us. We're talking about a figure that emerges from the water but also from the collective imagination. It's precisely this dual level—biological and symbolic—that makes Dean Crawford's book "Shark" so interesting from a sociological perspective and has therefore prompted the author of this article to return to the topic of sharks and sociology after some previous mention.

The shark, in fact, is not just a marine predator. It is a cultural device. Through it, modernity expresses its fears, its limitations, and its contradictions.

Climate change, systemic pollution, and the erosion of biodiversity don't have such a powerful visual impact. They are slow, widespread processes, difficult to visualize. For this reason, they generate less immediate fear, despite being infinitely more threatening. Sharks, on the other hand, can be narrated. And what can be narrated becomes culturally central.

The original book in English can be freely consulted here.

It's no coincidence that specific moments—the 1916 New Jersey attacks, the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis , the global success of Jaws —have cemented the figure of the "man-eater." In those historical moments, fear is organized into a narrative. And once a narrative takes shape, it tends to reproduce itself.

The humiliation of anthropocentrism

However, limiting ourselves to the media dimension would be reductive. The figure of the shark touches a deeper nerve: human vulnerability. Western modernity was built on the idea of ​​control. We have organized the territory, regulated the environment, progressively reduced the spaces of unpredictability. On land, we are, in effect, the dominant species. At sea, the situation changes. The human body becomes fragile, slow, exposed. In the water, we are no longer the center of the natural order. We are just one organism among others.

The shark embodies this symbolic inversion. Not because it is omnipotent, but because it is indifferent. It does not recognize humans as superior. It does not attribute moral value to its prey. It responds to stimuli, not cultural hierarchies. This indifference may be what is disturbing. Not hatred, but the lack of recognition. Ultimately, what we fear is not just the bite. It's the idea of ​​not being special.

The monster as projection

Yet, when we talk about sharks, we rarely use neutral language. We call them "ruthless," "ferocious," "killing machines." But these categories don't belong to biology. They are moral projections. Here, a crucial shift occurs. We attribute to sharks a form of violence that, in reality, is part of our social structures.

If we look at the phenomenon of shark finning—the clipping of fins and abandonment of the body at sea—we find not an instinctive impulse, but an industrial system. Millions of sharks are caught every year to feed global demand. It's not about immediate survival, but about the market.

For this reason, the narrative is reversed. While the shark is constructed as a symbol of predation, it is economic modernity that exercises systemic and organized predation. The shark kills to feed, and the economic system kills to accumulate: the difference is not marginal.

Consumption and social distinction

The shark fin trade isn't just a food issue. It's a symbolic one. Fin soup has become, in many contexts, a sign of prestige, success, and class. Consumption, therefore, isn't just about need, but about distinction. Eating fins means displaying status.

For this mechanism to work, however, the destruction must remain invisible. The consumer doesn't see the mutilated animal. He doesn't see the impoverished ocean. He sees a symbol. Global modernity separates production and consumption, responsibility and benefit. The chain connecting the plate to the sea is long and opaque. In this opacity, violence becomes abstract. And so the shark, transformed into a commodity, loses its ecological dimension and becomes an object of exchange.

The conflict between temporalities

There's another element that runs through the book and deserves attention: the difference in time. Sharks have existed for hundreds of millions of years. They've survived mass extinctions, radical climate changes, and the emergence and disappearance of dominant species. Their form has remained surprisingly stable, a sign of successful adaptation.

Modernity, on the other hand, is characterized by acceleration. Rapid production, rapid consumption, continuous innovation. The time of the economy is short, oriented towards immediate profit. The time of evolution is long, stratified. When an accelerated system encounters an equilibrium built over millions of years, disequilibrium is inevitable. The shark crisis is not merely ecological. It is the effect of a collision between incompatible time models.

Fascinating and disturbing

However, the relationship with sharks isn't just one of fear and exploitation. It's also one of fascination.

The descriptions of diving, ocean migration, and the power of the great white emerging from the water convey an image of elegance and functional perfection. Hydrodynamic lines, skin composed of dermal denticles that reduce turbulence, electrical sensors capable of detecting the heartbeat of hidden prey.

The shark is not a mistake of nature. It is one of its most enduring projects. We fear what fascinates us because it represents a limit. In an almost entirely domesticated world, the shark embodies wilderness, the wild not fully integrated into the human system. Its eventual disappearance would not only mean a loss of biodiversity. It would mean a further reduction of the space for otherness.

The shark as a social revealer

At this point we can draw conclusions. Crawford's book, read sociologicamente, is not just a catalog of species or a naturalistic tale. It is an implicit analysis of modernity. At least three fundamental tensions emerge through the shark:

– The tension between real risk and perceived risk.
– The tension between anthropocentrism and vulnerability.
– The tension between natural predation and economic predation.

The shark becomes a mirror. It shows us our tendency to construct symbolic monsters while normalizing systems of structural destruction. It shows us the difficulty of accepting that not everything is controllable. Finally, it shows us that the true asymmetry is not between man and shark, but between the speed of our economy and the slowness of natural balances.

CORRELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM THE AUTHOR