Through the ethnography and history of fish production, seafood consumption, state modernizing policies and marine science, this book analyzes the role of local knowledge in the management of marine resources on the Eastern Black Sea coast of Turkey. Fishing, science and other ways of knowing and relating to fish and the sea are analyzed as particular ways of life conditioned by history, ideology and daily practice. The approach adopted here allows for a broader analysis of the role knowledge plays in the management of common pool resources (CPR) than is provided in much of the contemporary CPR debate that tends to have a somewhat narrow focus on institutions and rules. By contrast, the author argues that also local knowledge and the larger historical and ideological context of production, as manifest in state modernization policies and consumption patterns, should be taken into account when trying to explain the current management regime in Turkish Black Sea fisheries.

Small-scale fisheries are a major source of food and employment around the world. Yet, many small-scale fishers work in conditions that are neither safe nor secure. Millions of them are poor, and often they are socially and politically marginalized. Macro-economic and institutional mechanisms are essential to address these poverty and vulnerability problems; however, interventions at the local community level are also necessary. This requires deep understanding of what poverty means to the fishers, their families and communities; how they cope with it; and the challenges they face to increase resiliency and improve their lives for the better. This book provides a global perspective, situating small-scale fisheries within the broad academic discourse on poverty, fisheries management and development. In-depth case studies from fifteen countries in Latin America, Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, demonstrate the enormously complex ecological, economic, social, cultural and political contexts of this sector. Conclusions for policy-making, formulated as a joint statement by the authors, argue that fisheries development, poverty alleviation, and resource management must be integrated within a comprehensive governance approach that also looks beyond fisheries. The scientific editors, Svein Jentoft and Arne Eide, are both with the Norwegian College of Fishery Science, Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics, University of Tromsø, Norway.

This book reveals how a privatization of fish resources has paved the way for a wide-reaching concentration and change in ownership. It is a thought-provoking contribution to the debate on the future of European fisheries and the possible solutions to overfishing in Europe. Readers will discover a timely, critical insight into the social, cultural and economic aspects and consequences of market-based fisheries management. The privatization of fish quotas in Denmark represents one of the most far-reaching and comprehensive privatization schemes of its kind and has been widely promoted as a market-based system with innovative social safeguards. This work critically examines this privatization of fish resources, combining quantitative and qualitative material to provide new understanding of fish quotas and their social value. Scholars with an interest in privatization and the socio-economic aspects of fisheries, and those working with NGOs, fishers and fisheries, and concerned with political conflicts will all value the research presented here.

This book examines the changing role of statistics in institutional reform in Turkey, and the unanticipated ways in which such changes transform livelihoods as well. Turkish agriculture is undergoing its most profound transformation since the establishment of the Republic in the 1920s. Seemingly minor technical adjustments in farmers’ reporting requirements and practices to collect better data on agriculture for statistics are also having a rapid and massive effect on farmers’ practices and livelihoods. The attempt to understand agriculture in Turkey in new ways is changing agriculture itself. The relationship between statistics and social and natural phenomena is thus performative, and such performativity undergirds a great deal of socio-technical change in the world. Drawing on fieldwork in Turkey with statisticians, farmers and agricultural extension technicians, the book shows how alongside deliberation about reforms, it is in and through this performativity that much of the work of institutional commensuration actually happens.

For small-scale fisheries around the world, the Blue Growth and Blue Economy initiatives may provide sustainable development, but only insofar as they align with the global consensus enshrined in the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. If states do nothing to fulfill the promises they made when they endorsed these guidelines in 2014, the Blue Economy will come at a loss for small-scale fisheries and further their marginalization in the ocean economy. Under the umbrella of Blue Justice, this book demonstrates that these risks are real and must be considered as states implement their sustainable ocean development plans. These are human rights issues, which are embedded into governance principles and institutions and which make a difference for small-scale fisheries people in their daily lives. In stressing the importance of policies and institutions that build on the experiences of small-scale fisheries people in the contexts in which they operate, this book draws on case studies of small-scale fisheries from countries on all continents to clarify what Blue Justice entails for small-scale fisheries and make suggestions for real change. “Through the Blue Justice paradigm, this book flags the relevance of recognizing the potential impact that different factors, including the Blue Economy approach, could bring to fishing communities, their livelihoods, cultural traditions, and other potential multidimensional conflicts. Vulnerability in fishing communities can increase and inequalities can be reinforced at different levels if individuals and community capabilities are not strengthened... A first of its kind, not to be missed, this book is informative, purposeful, and pertinent in an era of change”. Silvia Salas, CINVESTAV, Marine Resources Department, Mérida, Mexico "The studies reveal that Blue Justice is a ‘governability’ issue, which requires establishing ‘right’ institutions, that are transdisciplinary (integrated), participatory, and holistic. It is implicit from these writings that the SSF Guidelines and Blue Growth initiatives do not form two different discourses, and that the implementation of the former would resolve many of the justice issues caused by the latter, in favor of small-scale fisheries and their communities". Oscar Amarasinghe, Professor & Chancellor, Ocean University of Sri Lanka and President, Sri Lanka Forum for Small Scale Fisheries (SLFSSF)

The Aral Sea is well known for its devastating regression over the second half of the twentieth century, and for its recent partial restoration. Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region is the first book to explore what these monumental changes have meant to those living on the sea’s shores. Following the fluctuating fortunes of the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet fisheries, the book shows how the vast environmental changes the region has undergone cannot be disentangled from the transformations of Soviet socialism and postsocialism. This ethnographic perspective prompts a critical rethinking of the category of environmental disaster through which the region is predominantly known. Tracing how the sea’s retreat and partial return have been apprehended by diverse local actors in the former port of Aral’sk and surrounding fishing villages, as well as by scientists, bureaucrats and international development workers, William Wheeler draws out the multiple meanings environmental change acquires within different contexts. This study of how people make their lives amidst overlapping ecological and political-economic upheavals is rich in ethnographic detail that is both rooted in Soviet legacies and alive to the new transnational connections that are reshaping the region. Offering a rigorous political ecology of Soviet socialism and after, the book is a major contribution to the nascent environmental anthropology of Central Asia. It will be of interest to environmental anthropologists, environmental historians, and scholars of all disciplines working on Central Asia and the former USSR.

The Asian tsunami in December 2004 severely affected people in coastal regions all around the Indian Ocean. This book provides the first in-depth ethnography of the disaster and its effects on a fishing village in Tamil Nadu, India. The author explores how the villagers have lived with the tsunami in the years succeeding it and actively worked to gradually regain a sense of certainty and confidence in their environment in the face of disempowering disaster. What appears is a remarkable local recovery process in which the survivors have interwoven the tsunami and the everyday in a series of subtle practices and theorisations, resulting in a complex and continuous recreation of village life. By showing the composite nature of the tsunami as an event, the book adds new theoretical insight into the anthropology of natural disaster and recovery.

Based on an ethnographic account of subsistence use of Amazonian forests by Wapishana people in Guyana, Edges, Frontiers, Fringes examines the social, cultural and behavioral bases for sustainability and resilience in indigenous resource use. Developing an original framework for holistic analysis, it demonstrates that flexible interplay among multiple modes of environmental understanding and decision-making allows the Wapishana to navigate socio-ecological complexity successfully in ways that reconcile short-term material needs with long-term maintenance and enhancement of the resource base.

Trees, Knots and Outriggers (Kaynen Muyuw) is the culmination of twenty-five years of work by Frederick H. Damon and his attention to cultural adaptations to the environment in Melanesia. Damon details the intricacies of indigenous knowledge and practice in his sweeping synthesis of symbolic and structuralist anthropology with recent developments in historical ecology. This book is a long conversation between the author’s many Papua New Guinea informants, teachers and friends, and scientists in Australia, Europe and the United States, in which a spirit of adventure and discovery is palpable.

In order to move global society towards a sustainable “ecotopia,” solutions must be engaged in specific places and communities, and the authors here argue for re-orienting environmental anthropology from a problem-oriented towards a solutions-focused endeavor. Using case studies from around the world, the contributors—scholar-activists and activist-practitioners— examine the interrelationships between three prominent environmental social movements: bioregionalism, a worldview and political ecology that grounds environmental action and experience; permaculture, a design science for putting the bioregional vision into action; and ecovillages, the ever-dynamic settings for creating sustainable local cultures.