The 'nature' of fisheries governance: narratives of environment, politics, and power and their implications for changing seascapes

Noëlle Boucquey

Abstract


This article responds to recent calls for more engagement from political ecologists in ocean and coastal governance concerns, and employs a controversy over the practice of gill netting in North Carolina as a lens into questions about how narratives of nature and power affect fisheries policymaking processes. The article analyzes commercial and recreational fisher narratives about marine 'nature,' including perceptions of resource health, expressions of blame or responsibility, and storylines about the different roles of fishers and managers in the process of governing fisheries. The article focuses particularly on how fishers perceive the politics of fisheries management and where they believe power lies in negotiations about the 'right' ways to steward and allocate fishery resources. Fisher narratives are then compared to those of fishery regulators themselves. The article asks how the perceptions of different groups about politics and power in fisheries management affect their levels of trust and engagement with each other and with the policymaking process. It offers insights into the complex negotiations over the meaning of terms like 'conservation,' 'endangered,' and 'livelihood,' and analyzes the implications of these narratives for stimulating material changes in the coastal seascape and the lives of fishers.

Key Words: political ecology, governance, fisheries, nature, narrative analysis


Full Text:

PDF

References


Adger, W.N., T.A. Benjaminsen, K. Brown and H. Svarstad. 2001. Advancing a political ecology of global environmental discourses. Development and Change 32(4): 681–715.

Agrawal, A. 2005. Environmentality: technologies of government and the making of subjects. Durham: Duke University Press.

Ahab's Journal. 2010. Carteret county woman writes Jean Beasley a letter. Ahab's Journal. The Outer Banks Sentinel. February 25, 2010.

Ahlborg, H. and A.J. Nightingale. 2018. Theorizing power in political ecology: the where of power in resource governance projects. Journal of Political Ecology 25: 381-401.

Anderson, B. and C. McFarlane. 2011. Assemblage and geography. Area 43(2): 124–127.

Arribas-Ayllon, M. and V. Walkerdine. 2017. Foucauldian discourse analysis. In Rogers, W.S. and C. Willig (eds.). The Sage handbook of qualitative research in in psychology. London: Sage.

Banks, M. 2001. Visual methods in social research. London: Sage.

Bennett, N. J. 2019. In political seas: engaging with political ecology in the ocean and coastal environment. Coastal Management 47(1): 67-87.

Berkes, F., J. Colding and C. Folke. 2008. Navigating social-ecological systems: building resilience for complexity and change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bixler, R. P. 2013. The political ecology of local environmental narratives: power, knowledge, and mountain caribou conservation. Journal of Political Ecology 20: 273–285.

Blaikie, P. and H.C. Brookfield. 1987. Land degradation and society. London: Methuen.

Boucquey, N. 2016. Actors and audiences: negotiating fisheries management. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 18(4): 426–446.

Boucquey, N. 2017. 'That's my livelihood, it's your fun': the conflicting moral economies of commercial and recreational fishing. Journal of Rural Studies 54: 138–150.

Boucquey, N., L.M. Campbell, G. Cumming, Z.A. Meletis, C. Norwood and J. Stoll. 2012. Interpreting amenities, envisioning the future: common ground and conflict in North Carolina's rural coastal communities. GeoJournal 77(1): 83–101.

Braun, B. 2005. Environmental issues: writing a more-than-human urban geography. Progress in Human Geography 29(5): 635–650.

Bryant, R. 1992. Political ecology: an emerging research agenda in third world studies. Political Geography 11(1): 12–36.

Buijs, A.E., B.J.M. Arts, B.H.M. Elands and J. Lengkeek. 2011. Beyond environmental frames: the social representation and cultural resonance of nature in conflicts over a Dutch woodland. Geoforum 42(3): 329–41.

Büscher, B. 2018. From biopower to ontopower? Violent responses to wildlife crime and the new geographies of conservation. Conservation and Society 16(2): 157-169.

Cadieux, K.V. 2016. Possible moral ecologies, the function of everyday curation, and the experience of regions. Journal of Political Ecology 23: 134–146.

Callon, M. 1986. Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (ed.). Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge? London: Routledge. Pp. 196-233.

Campbell, L.M. 2007. Local conservation practice and global discourse: a political ecology of sea turtle conservation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97(2): 313–334.

Campbell, L.M., N. Boucquey, J. Stoll, H. Coppola and M.D. Smith. 2014. From vegetable box to seafood cooler: applying the community-supported agriculture model to fisheries. Society and Natural Resources 27(1): 88–106.

Campbell, L.M. and Z.A. Meletis. 2011. Agreement on water and a watered-down agreement: the political ecology of contested coastal development in Down East, North Carolina. Journal of Rural Studies 27(3): 308–321.

Castree, N. and B. Braun. 2001. Social nature: theory, practice, and politics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cavanagh, C.J. 2018. Political ecologies of biopower: diversity, debates, and new frontiers of inquiry. Journal of Political Ecology 25: 402–425.

CCNT. 1956. Fine weather joins sport fishermen in trophy quest. Carteret County News-Times, September 14, 1956.

Chambers, C., G. Helgadóttir and C. Carothers. 2017. 'Little kings': community, change and conflict in Icelandic fisheries. Maritime Studies 16(10).

Charmaz, K. 2006. Constructing grounded theory. London: Sage.

Clayton, T. and N. Radcliffe. 2018. Sustainability: a systems approach. London: Routledge.

Coastal Fisheries Reform Group. 2010. New restrictions on gill nets not working! NCDMF director shuts down core sound large mesh gill net fishery; too many sea turtles entangled, 4 killed. Coastal fisheries reform group website. [accessed March 23, 2020]. http://cfrgnc.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-restrictions-on-gill-nets-not.html.

Cornwell, M.L. and L.M. Campbell. 2012. Co-producing conservation and knowledge: citizen-based sea turtle monitoring in North Carolina, USA. Social Studies of Science 42(1): 101–120.

Cronon, W. 1996. Uncommon ground: rethinking the human place in nature. New York: WW Norton and Co.

Crosson, S. 2007. A social and economic analysis of fisheries in North Carolina: Core Sound. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

Daniel, L. and NCDMF. 2011. Application for an individual incidental take permit under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, Atlantic sea turtle populations of: Loggerhead (Caretta Caretta), Green (Chelonia Mydas), Kemp's Ridley (Lepidochelys Kempii), Leatherback (Dermochelys Coriacea), Hawksbill (Eretmochelys Imbricata). Available: www.nmfs.noaa.gov.

Denzin, N.K. and Y.S. Lincoln (eds). 2011. The SAGE handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Derrida, J. 2001. Writing and difference. London: Routledge.

Derrida, J. 2016. Of grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dryzek, J.S. 2005. The politics of the earth: environmental discourses. New York: Oxford University Press.

Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. 2010. Settlement agreement. [accessed May 13, 2010].

Ebbin, S.A. 2011. The problem with problem definition: mapping the discursive terrain of conservation in two Pacific salmon management regimes. Society and Natural Resources 24(2): 148–164.

Escobar, A. 1998. Whose knowledge, whose nature? Biodiversity, conservation, and the political ecology of social movements. Journal of Political Ecology 5: 53–82.

Escobar, A. 1999. After nature: steps to an antiessentialist political ecology. Current Anthropology 40(1): 1–30.

Fabinyi, M., S. Foale and M. Macintyre. 2013. Managing inequality or managing stocks? An ethnographic perspective on the governance of small-scale fisheries. Fish and Fisheries 16(3): 471–485.

Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fairclough, N., J. Mulderrig and R. Wodak. 2011. Critical discourse analysis. In Van Dijk, T.A. (ed.). Discourse studies: a multidisciplinary introduction. London: Sage.

Fina, A. D. and A. Georgakopoulou. 2019. The handbook of narrative analysis. Chichester: John Wiley.

Fisheries Moratorium Steering Committee. 1996. Final report of the fisheries moratorium steering committee to the joint legislative commission on seafood and aquaculture of the North Carolina general assembly. UNC-SG-96-11.

Flyvbjerg, B. 2011. Case study. In Denzin, N.K. and Y.S. Lincoln (eds.). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Pp. 301-316.

Foucault, M., G. Burchell and C. Gordon (eds.). 1991. The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. and C. Gordon. 1980. Power/Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Press.

Gabriel, N. 2014. Urban political ecology: environmental imaginary, governance, and the non-human. Geography Compass 8(1): 38–48.

Gee, J.P. 2010. An introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. London: Routledge.

Glaser, B.G. and A.L. Strauss. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. New Brunswick: Aldine.

Gray, B. 2003. Framing of environmental disputes. In Lewicki, R. J. and B. Gray (eds.). Making sense of intractable environmental conflicts: concepts and cases. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Pp. 11-34.

Gray, B. 2004. Strong opposition: frame-based resistance to collaboration. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 14(3): 166–176.

Grove, K. and J. Pugh. 2015. Assemblage thinking and participatory development: potentiality, ethics, biopolitics. Geography Compass 9(1): 1–13.

Hammersley, M. and P. Atkinson. 2007. Ethnography: principles in practice. London: Routledge.

Head, L. and J. Atchison. 2009. Cultural ecology: emerging human-plant geographies. Progress in Human Geography 33(2): 236–245.

Hecht, S.B. 1985. Environment, development and politics: capital accumulation and the livestock sector in eastern Amazonia. World Development 13(6): 663–684.

Herbert, S. 2010. A taut rubber band: theory and empirics in qualitative research. In DeLyser, D., S. Herbert, S. Aitken, M. Crang and K. McDowell (eds.). The SAGE handbook of qualitative geography. London: Sage. Pp. 69-81.

Hiner, C.C. 2016. Chicken wars, water fights, and other contested ecologies along the rural-urban interface in California's Sierra Nevada foothills. Journal of Political Ecology 23: 167–181.

Ingram, M., H. Ingram and R. Lejano. 2015. Environmental action in the Anthropocene: the power of narrative networks. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 21(5): 492-503.

Jamouneau, M. and M. Hibbs. 2006. Coastal growth puts pressure on waterfronts. The Carteret County News-Times, June 7, 2006, Front Page.

Jørgensen, M. and L.J. Phillips. 2002. Discourse analysis as theory and method. London: Sage.

Kosek, J. 2006. Understories: the political life of forests in northern New Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press.

Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Leach, M. and R. Mearns. 1996. Environmental change and policy: challenging received wisdom in Africa. In Leach, M. and R. Mearns (eds.). The lie of the land: challenging received wisdom on the African environment. Oxford: James Currey. Pp. 1-33.

Lees, L. 2004. Urban geography: discourse analysis and urban research. Progress in Human Geography 28(1): 101–107.

Legg, S. 2011. Assemblage/apparatus: using Deleuze and Foucault. Area 43(2): 128–133.

Leslie-Bole, H. and E.P. Perramond. 2017. Oyster feuds: conflicting discourses and outcomes in Point Reyes, California. Journal of Political Ecology 24: 144–166.

Lincoln, Y.S. and E.G. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic inquiry. London: Sage.

Lorimer, J. 2010. Elephants as companion species: the lively biogeographies of Asian elephant conservation in Sri Lanka. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35(4): 491–506.

Loring, P.A. 2017. The political ecology of gear bans in two fisheries: Florida's net ban and Alaska's salmon wars. Fish and Fisheries 18(1): 94–104.

Luebke and Justice. 2009. House Bill 918, designation of coastal game fish. [accessed June 24, 2012]. https://www.ncleg.gov/.

Mansfield, B. 2003. From catfish to organic fish: making distinctions about nature as cultural economic practice. Geoforum 34(3): 329–342.

Mansfield, B. 2004. Neoliberalism in the oceans: 'rationalization,' property rights, and the commons question. Geoforum 35(3): 313–326.

McCarthy, J. and J. Thatcher. 2019. Visualizing new political ecologies: a critical data studies analysis of the World Bank's renewable energy resource mapping initiative. Geoforum 102: 242-254.

McCormick, D., R. Glazier, D. Ingle and R. Samuelson. 2011. House Bill 353, designation of coastal game fish. [accessed June 27, 2011]. https://www.ncleg.gov/.

McGoodwin, J.R. 1990. Crisis in the world's fisheries: people, problems, and policies. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Murry, T., M. Wray, T. Moffitt and J. Bell. 2013. House Bill 983, Fisheries Economic Development Act. [accessed April 25, 2013] https://www.ncleg.gov/.

NCDMF. 2019. Stock overview. North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries Website. [accessed July 18, 2019]. http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/mf/stock-overview#StateSpecies.

Neumann, R.P. 2003. The production of nature: colonial recasting of the African landscape in Serengeti National Park. In Zimmerer, K.S. and T.J. Bassett (eds.). Political ecology: an integrative approach to geography and environment-development studies. New York: Guilford. Pp. 240-255.

Neumann, R.P. 2004. Moral and discursive geographies in the war for biodiversity in Africa. Political Geography 23(7): 813–837.

Patterson, M. and K. Renwick Monroe. 1998. Narrative in political science. Annual Review of Political Science 1(1): 315–331.

Paulson, S., L.L. Gezon and M.J. Watts. 2003. Locating the political in political ecology: an introduction. Human Organization 62(3): 205–217.

Peet, R. and M.J. Watts (eds.). 2004. Liberation ecologies: environment, development, social movements. London: Routledge.

Peluso, N.L. 1992. Rich forests, poor people: resource control and resistance in Java. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pink, S. 2007. Doing visual ethnography. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Potter, J. and M. Wetherell. 2004. Discourse and social psychology: beyond attitudes and behaviour. London: Sage.

Prudham, S. 2005. Knock on wood: nature as commodity in Douglas-Fir country. London: Routledge.

Reeves, R.R. and E. Mitchell. 1988. History of whaling in and near North Carolina. NOAA Technical Report NMFS 65. [accessed June 6, 2011]. https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/content/tr-65-history-whaling-and-near-north-carolina.

Ribot, J.C. and N.L. Peluso. 2003. A theory of access. Rural Sociology 68(2): 153–181.

Rich, B. 1991. Oyster season winding down: another poor one. The Carteret County News-Times, February 8, 1991, Front Page.

Rich, B. 2006. Mounting shellfish closures alarm experts. The Carteret County News-Times, January 11, 2006, Front Page.

Roe, E.M. 1991. Development narratives, or making the best of blueprint development. World Development 19(4): 287–300.

Roe, E.M. 1994. Narrative policy analysis: theory and practice. Durham: Duke University Press.

Schroeder, R.A. 1999. Geographies of environmental intervention in Africa. Progress in Human Geography 23(3): 359–378.

Smith, S. and M. Jepson. 1993. Big fish, little fish: politics and power in the regulation of Florida's marine resources. Social Problems 40(1): 39–49.

St. Martin, K. 2001. Making space for community resource management in fisheries. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(1): 122–142.

St. Martin, K. 2005. Mapping economic diversity in the first world: the case of fisheries. Environment and Planning A 37: 959–979.

Stoll, J.S., B.A. Dubik and L.M. Campbell. 2015. Local seafood: rethinking the direct marketing paradigm. Ecology and Society 20(2): 40.

Svarstad, H. and T.A. Benjaminsen. 2017. Nothing succeeds like success narratives: a case of conservation and development in the time of REDD. Journal of Eastern African Studies 11(3): 482–505.

Svarstad, H., T.A. Benjaminsen and R. Overa. 2018. Power theories in political ecology. Journal of Political Ecology 25: 350–363.

Swyngedouw, E. 2004. Social power and the urbanization of water. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Symes, D. 1999. Alternative management systems for fisheries. Malden: Fishing News Books.

Tannen, D., H. Ehernberger Hamilton and D. Schiffrin (eds.). 2015. The handbook of discourse analysis. Hoboken: Wiley.

Veland, S. and A.H. Lynch. 2017. Arctic ice edge narratives: scale, discourse and ontological security. Area 49(1): 9–17.

Walsh, D. 2004. Doing ethnography. In Seale, C. (ed.). Researching society and culture. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Whatmore, S. 2006. Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world. Cultural Geographies 13(4): 600–609.

Whittemore, R., S.K. Chase and C.L. Mandle. 2001. Validity in qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research 11(4): 522–537.

Williams, A. and P. Le Billon (eds.). 2017. Corruption, natural resources and development: from resource curse to political ecology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2458/v26i1.23248

Copyright (c) 2020 Noëlle Boucquey

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.