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Harvesting A Knowledge Commons: Collective Action, Transparency, And Innovation At The Portland Fish Exchange, Jennifer F. Brewer
Harvesting A Knowledge Commons: Collective Action, Transparency, And Innovation At The Portland Fish Exchange, Jennifer F. Brewer
Geography
While localist visions of alternative food systems advocate for the expansion of local ecological knowledge through more proximate producerconsumer relationships, globalized seafood supply-demand chains persist. Moving beyond this dichotomy, commons scholars recognize that collective action among resource users at the local level can shape cross-scalar producer relations with government and more capitalized firms operating in regional and global markets. In the case of the New England groundfishery, a quasi-public fish auction not only transformed the scalar, logistical, and financial parameters of harvester-buyer relationships, it altered the production and use of local knowledge among some harvesters, and their technological choices. Resulting …
Revisiting Maine’S Lobster Commons: Rescaling Political Subjects, Jennifer F. Brewer
Revisiting Maine’S Lobster Commons: Rescaling Political Subjects, Jennifer F. Brewer
Geography
Calls for cross-scalar theoretical and methodological approaches are not new to commons scholarship. Such efforts might be hastened by channelling poststructuralist and critical theory perspectives through the geographic subfield of political ecology, including attention to political scales and subjects. Toward this end, this paper reconsiders Maine’s lobster fishery. This case has provided rich material for watershed commons scholarship, demonstrating the ability of social groups to conserve resources independent of government or markets, and it continues to offer new findings. Recent fieldwork shows that as lobster boat captains advance collective interests through state-supported co-management governance arrangements, concerns of crew and non-fishing …
Polycentrism And Flux In Spatialized Management: Evidence From Maine's Lobster (Homarus Americanus) Fishery, Jennifer F. Brewer
Polycentrism And Flux In Spatialized Management: Evidence From Maine's Lobster (Homarus Americanus) Fishery, Jennifer F. Brewer
Geography
Spatial approaches to fisheries management hold great promise but require continued conceptual and policy development. Polycentrism and flux emerge as useful concepts, drawing lessons from more customary, informal resourceuse patterns to produce more innovative “spatialized” policies within existing governance architectures. Empirical evidence from Maine shows that pioneering efforts have been limited by the single-species focus of conventional management hierarchies. As entry limits have consolidated the fishing fleet and eliminated flexible, diversified, and adaptive business strategies, cross-species and habitat externalities have become problematic. State lobster (Homarus americanus Milne- Edwards, 1837) comanagement zones have achieved some successes, including trap limits and improved …
Above And Below The Water: Social/Ecological Transformation In Northwest Newfoundland, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Richard L. Haedrich, Cynthia M. Duncan
Above And Below The Water: Social/Ecological Transformation In Northwest Newfoundland, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Richard L. Haedrich, Cynthia M. Duncan
Sociology
Marine fisheries and fishing societies develop around the resources provided by a particular ecosystem. As they exploit these resources, fisheries transform the ecosystem, which pushes fishery and society to adapt in turn. This process is illustrated by fisheries, ecological and social data tracking dramatic changes on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula and its adjacent marine ecosystem, the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence. There a longstanding fishery for cod and other groundfish collapsed in the 1990s, and was replaced by fisheries targeting invertebrates. The new invertebrate fisheries have different socioeconomic characteristics than the former groundfish fisheries. The shift in target species reflects deep …
Outport Adaptations: Social Indicators Through Newfoundland's Cod Crisis, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Melissa J. Butler
Outport Adaptations: Social Indicators Through Newfoundland's Cod Crisis, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Melissa J. Butler
Sociology
The 1992 moratorium on fishing for Northern Cod marked a symbolic end to the way of life that had sustained Newfoundland's out ports for hundreds of years. It also marked the completion of an ecological regime shift, from an ocean ecosystem dominated by cod and other predatory ground fish, to one in which such fish are comparatively scarce, and lower-trophic-level invertebrates more common. We examine patterns of change seen in large-scale social indicators, which reflect the smaller-scale adaptations of individuals and communities during this ecological shift. Trends in population, migration, age, unemployment and dependency suggest declining conditions in rural Newfoundland …
Apprenticeship And Conservation Incentives, Robin Alden, Jennifer F. Brewer
Apprenticeship And Conservation Incentives, Robin Alden, Jennifer F. Brewer
Geography
Apprentice programs offer a method to encourage responsible individual behavior by laying the foundation for successful collective property rights. Apprenticeship has three purposes: to restrict the rate of entry, to affect the quality of the participant, and to create the conditions for collective action for sustainability. Apprenticeship could be an important fishery management tool, particularly in decentralized, adaptive management regimes that require ongoing, multi-party negotiation for success. It is not vocational training; instead it serves a public purpose: to create the conditions for stewardship and participation in management. This perception of collective property right mimics customary practice in some successful …