Fisheries Privatization and the Remaking of Fishery Systems

Abstract

Th is article draws on directed ethnographic research and a review of lit- erature to explore how the commodifi cation of fi shing rights discursively and materi- ally remakes human-marine relationships across diverse regions. It traces the history of dominant economic theories that promote the privatization of fi shing access for maximizing potential profi ts. It describes more recent discursive trends that link the ecological health of the world's oceans and their fi sheries to widespread privatization. Together, these economic and environmental discourses have enrolled a broad set of increasingly vocal and powerful privatization proponents. Th e article provides spe- cifi c examples of how nature-society relationships among people, oceans, and fi sh are remade as privatization policies take root in fi shery systems. We conclude with an over- view of several strategies of resistance. Across the world there is evidence of alternative discourses, economic logics, and cultures of fi shing resistant to privatization processes, the assumptions that underlie them, and the social transitions they oft en generate.