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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Navigating Over Space And Time: Fishing Effort Allocation And The Development Of Customary Norms In An Open-Access Mangrove Estuary In Ecuador, Christine M. Beitl
Navigating Over Space And Time: Fishing Effort Allocation And The Development Of Customary Norms In An Open-Access Mangrove Estuary In Ecuador, Christine M. Beitl
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Fisheries are increasingly understood as complex adaptive systems; but the cultural, behavioral, and cognitive factors that explain spatial and temporal dynamics of fishing effort allocation remain poorly understood. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a visualization tool, this paper combines catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) and ethnographic data about the Ecuadorian mangrove cockle fishery to explore patterns in fishing effort and the social production of fishing space. I argue that individual decisions about where, when, and how to fish result in spatial and temporal patterns in effort allocation, ultimately regulating open-access fisheries that typically operate on a first-come, first-serve basis. These emergent patterns …
Adding Environment To The Collective Action Problem: Individuals, Civil Society, And The Mangrove-Fishery Commons In Ecuador, Christine M. Beitl
Adding Environment To The Collective Action Problem: Individuals, Civil Society, And The Mangrove-Fishery Commons In Ecuador, Christine M. Beitl
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Research on the commons suggests a more robust understanding of human-resource interactions is needed to strengthen theories about collective action and sustainable governance. I combine ethnographic and fishery data to explore how resource characteristics and institutions influence people’s behavior toward common pool resources in coastal Ecuador. This comparative study of the commons at two levels (mangroves and the cockle fishery) highlights how trust, communication, and social obligation depend on social histories of resource systems and types of collective action problems, largely explaining why local institutions encourage individuals to uphold mangrove forest conservation but have little effect on cooperation in fisheries.