Understanding The Cultures Of Fishing Communities

By the Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.

Throughout Europe, fishermen have often been portrayed as a ruggedly independent and freedom-loving lot, "a race apart" working relentlessly in perilous pursuit of prey to eke out a parsimonious livelihood. For this reason, fisher folk have often been romanticized in a rather heroic fashion in novels, poetry, pictorial arts, and popular and scholarly writing as a kind of "noble savages" at home. But, both the positive and the negative views were stereotypical and based on exoticism. The imagery of fishermen as folk heroes has changed dramatically over the past few decades. They are currently under increasing scrutiny from environmentalists and public opinion for allegedly being unruly marauders of marine living resources. This volume of essays throws light on cultural dimensions of fishing and whaling in Europe and the United States. Rob van Ginkel is an anthropologist and is affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands).

Using case studies drawn from across Canada, the papers demonstrate that there are many shared issues in the various small-scale fisheries of this country, and locate small-scale fisheries in their historical context as well as in that of global concerns.

Conventional management approaches cannot meet the challenges faced by ocean and coastal ecosystems today. Consequently, national and international bodies have called for a shift toward more comprehensive ecosystem-based marine management. Synthesizing a vast amount of current knowledge, Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans is a comprehensive guide to utilizing this promising new approach. At its core, ecosystem-based management (EBM) is about acknowledging connections. Instead of focusing on the impacts of single activities on the delivery of individual ecosystem services, EBM focuses on the array of services that we receive from marine systems, the interactive and cumulative effects of multiple human activities on these coupled ecological and social systems, and the importance of working towards common goals across sectors. Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans provides a conceptual framework for students and professionals who want to understand and utilize this powerful approach. And it employs case studies that draw on the experiences of EBM practitioners to demonstrate how EBM principles can be applied to real-world problems. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the factors that contribute to social and ecological resilience —the extent to which a system can maintain its structure, function, and identity in the face of disturbance. Utilizing the resilience framework, professionals can better predict how systems will respond to a variety of disturbances, as well as to a range of management alternatives. Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans presents the latest science of resilience, while it provides tools for the design and implementation of responsive EBM solutions.

Nineteen peer-reviewed articles are included in the proceedings of the 2011 symposium, Fishing People of the North: Cultures, Economies, and Management Responding to Change. Authors present research in the disciplines of anthropology, biology, and economics on fishing communities in Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Russia, Japan, and Norway. Among many topics, the papers cover cultural responses to climate change effects; transitions in fishing communities regarding permits, quotas, and target species; using local knowledge to preserve a fishery and to map subsistence patterns; and tribal involvement in fisheries management. Contributors share ways to address change and ensure that fishing remains a healthy, vibrant part of northern coastal communities

Annotation Confirms a number of recent global supply & demand trends.