The role of moral economy in two British Columbia fisheries: Confronting neoliberal policies

Pinkerton, Evelyn

doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2015.04.009

Cited by 33 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(48 reference statements)

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“…The Icelandic Fisheries Management Act says the fish are the right of all Icelanders (small-boat fishermen, as well as doctors and lawyers in strandveiðar and big businesses) (Althingi Icelandic Parliament 2006;Einarsson 2015b). In practice, however, neoliberal policies such as ITQ systems often ignore issues of equity (Pinkterton 2015), meaning that certain groups tend to gain greater control based on their positions of power. A growing number of fishermen in rural communities are therefore asking whether it is possible to imagine a more equitable fisheries management scheme and governance arrangement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Little kings”: community, change and conflict in Icelandic fisheries

2017

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Scholars of political ecology have long been interested in questions of access, equity, and power in environmental management. This paper explores these domains by examining lived experiences and daily realities in Iceland's fishing communities, 30 years after the implementation of a national privatized Individual Transferrable Quota (ITQ) fisheries management system. Drawing upon ethnographic data collected over 2 years in the rural coastal communities of Northwest Iceland, we address three questions; 1) How the ITQ system relates to other complex social and environmental factors facing coastal communities today. 2) How attempts to alleviate negative impacts of the ITQ system have led to new rifts in communities and 3) how the decision-making power of a few dominant interest groups in national politics leaves small-boat fishermen and rural communities at a disadvantage. In the words of our study participants, the Icelandic fisheries management scheme has created "little kings" in rural communities, where each little king acts in his own best interest, yet has no recourse to collective power and no platform to influence national politics. In this volatile political situation with cross-scale implications, it is difficult for fishermen, their families, and community members to imagine ways in which power over and access to the fisheries resource can be redistributed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Little kings”: community, change and conflict in Icelandic fisheries

2017

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“…We thus take issue with recent scholarship that has either made the case that state-led industrialization has resulted, despite resistance from small-scale fishers, in the enclosure of the commons and the complete marginalization of the noncapitalist sector (Mansfield 2004, McCall-Howard 2012 or sees the continued existence of the need-based economy as only a product of capitalist transformation and the workings of development discourse (Sanyal 2007). We suggest a much more complex, indeterminate, and context-specific relationship between industrialized and small-scale fishery systems, recognizing processes of enclosure that often result in small-scale fishers becoming wage labor on industrialized boats and in factories, but also highlighting smallscale fisher resistance and their ongoing contribution to coastal economies and social well-being (Kurien 2003, Pinkerton 2015, Bresnihan 2016. In other words, there continues to be a precapitalist logic to the small-scale fisheries that is worth unpacking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Menon et al (2016) make a similar point, suggesting that many small-scale fishers upgraded to trawling in the Palk Bay region of Tamil Nadu. Having said that, scholars such as Kurien (2000Kurien ( , 2003 and Pinkerton (2015) focus much more on small-scale fishers and how they continue to operate and thrive in certain contexts, making a valuable contribution to local economies and improving social well-being.…”

Section: The Political Ecology Of Fisheriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We too try to highlight how fisher resistance through fisher organizations and supportive NGOs is aimed at legal protection for small-scale fishers. We focus more directly on the moral economies of small-scale fishers by building on a significant moral economy of fisheries literature that already exists (McCay and Acheson 1988, Ruddle 1998, Kurien 2003, Pinkerton 2015. In doing so, we hope to illustrate that what Sanyal calls the need economy has its own moral economy logic that offers a way forward toward a more just and sustainable fisheries.…”

Section: The Political Ecology Of Fisheriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rethinking capitalist transformation of fisheries in South Africa and India

Menon¹,

Bavinck²

2018

E&S

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The industrialization of fisheries and the growth of a capitalist sector within fisheries have received considerable scholarly attention. For the most part, scholars have emphasized how capitalism has led to privatization of the commons, forced small-scale resource users into wage labor, and marginalized the sector. This analysis does not, however, explain the continued presence of such a vibrant and important small-scale sector in fisheries throughout the world. Drawing on the notion of Foucauldian governmentality, other scholars have argued that the small-scale sector or what they term the "need economy" is a product of primitive accumulation. The state must, in conditions of democracy, address the welfare needs of all those who have been dispossessed in order to govern. We engage with this theorization in the context of fisheries and argue that seeing small-scale fisheries only as a product of primitive accumulation and Foucauldian governmentality ignores the moral economies of these fisheries. By analyzing capitalist transformation of fisheries in two "democratic" countries, South Africa and India, we highlight how small-scale fishers resist increasing marginalization and how governments have afforded a measure of protection to this sector, and confirm the importance of their moral economies to sustainable and equitable fisheries in the future.

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“…These reforms also point to the importance of place-based identity and occupational stability, which South African fishers have struggled for through adhering to ideals of democracy and equality. Nonetheless, whether democracy and equality are conceptualized apart or highly integrated, fisheries governance needs to prioritize how fishers conceptualize traditional, moral and economic understandings of these ideals [124].…”

Section: Linking Actions Of Local Fishers To Socio-economic Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Sustainability of South African Small-Scale Fisheries Leveraging ICT Transformation Pathways

et al. 2020

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Though Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been employed in small-scale fisheries (SSFs) globally, they are seldom systematically explored for the ways in which they facilitate equality, democracy and sustainability. Our study explored how ICTs in South African small-scale fisheries are leveraged towards value chain upgrading, collective action and institutional sustainability—key issues that influence small-scale fishery contributions to marine resource sustainability. We held a participatory workshop as part of ongoing research in the town of Lambert’s Bay, South Africa, in collaboration with small-scale fishers and the Abalobi ICT project. We mapped fisher value chain challenges and explored the role of ICT-driven transformation pathways, adopting Wright’s ‘Real Utopian’ framework as the lens through which to explore equality, democracy and institutional sustainability. We found Abalobi’s ICT platform had the potential to facilitate deeper meanings of democracy that incorporate socio-economic reform, collective action and institutional sustainability in South Africa’s small-scale fisheries. Where fishers are not engaged beyond passive generators of data, this had the potential to undermine the goals of increasing power parity between small-scale fisheries and other stakeholders.

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The role of moral economy in two British Columbia fisheries: Confronting neoliberal policies

Cited by 33 publications

References 47 publications

“Little kings”: community, change and conflict in Icelandic fisheries

“Little kings”: community, change and conflict in Icelandic fisheries

Rethinking capitalist transformation of fisheries in South Africa and India

Toward Sustainability of South African Small-Scale Fisheries Leveraging ICT Transformation Pathways

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