There is now widespread agreement that fish stocks are severely depleted and fishing activity must be limited. At the same time, the promise of the green economy appears to offer profitable new opportunities for a sustainable seafood industry. What do these seemingly contradictory ideas of natural limits and green growth mean in practice? What do they tell us more generally about current transformations to the way nature is valued and managed? And who suffers and who benefits from these new ecological arrangements? Far from abstract policy considerations, Patrick Bresnihan shows how new approaches to environmental management are transforming the fisheries and generating novel forms of exclusion in the process.
Transforming the Fisheries examines how scientific, economic, and regulatory responses to the problem of overfishing have changed over the past twenty years. Based on fieldwork in a commercial fishing port in Ireland, Bresnihan weaves together ethnography, science, history, and social theory to explore the changing relationships between knowledge, nature, and the market. For Bresnihan, many of the key concepts that govern contemporary environmental thinking-such as scarcity, sustainability, the commons, and enclosure-should be reconsidered in light of the collapse of global fish stocks and the different ways this problem is being addressed. Only by considering these concepts anew can we begin to reinvent the ecological commons we need for the future.
By:
Patrick Bresnihan
Imprint: University of Nebraska Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781496206404
ISBN 10: 1496206401
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 01 April 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments1. Introduction: Ecological Crises and Beyond2. The End of the Line: Scarcity, Liberalism, and Enclosure3. Stewards of the Sea: Neoliberalism and the Making of the Environmental Entrepreneur4. Community-Managed Resources: A “Third Way” for Environmental Governance5. The More-Than-Human Commons: From Commons to Commoning6. Conclusion: Neoliberalism and the CommonsNotesBibliographyIndex
Patrick Bresnihan is an assistant professor in environmental geography at Trinity College, Dublin.
Reviews for Transforming the Fisheries: Neoliberalism, Nature, and the Commons
Transforming the Fisheries is a milestone in current debates on the commons. It not only offers an insightful discussion of the many radically divergent approaches to the commons and their complex relations to politics, but also provides a framework for rethinking and expanding the commons beyond its intense liberal and humanist entanglements. It introduces an understanding of the commons as a shared practice of socio-material experimentation. -Dimitris Papadopoulos, associate professor at Leicester University and coauthor of Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the Twenty-First Century -- Dimitris Papadopoulos A gracefully written and analytically powerful account of the crisis of European fisheries. Bresnihan's Transforming the Fisheries ranks among the most insightful of a new wave of political ecology, ably weaving together work, power, and capital. It is must reading for anyone concerned about ecological crisis and global capitalism. -Jason W. Moore, associate professor at Binghamton University and author of Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital -- Jason W. Moore Eloquently written, deeply researched, deftly argued. This is a brilliant, critical reappraisal of capitalism's relationship with the sea and should be read by anyone concerned with environmental crisis more generally. -Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence -- Christian Parenti This is an original and systematic piece of work, but what distinguishes Bresnihan's contribution, from other studies in different places addressing different environmental resources, is a wide array of theoretical reflections that deepen and flesh out his points. -G. Taylor Aiken, International Journal of Justice and Sustainability -- G. Taylor Aiken * International Journal of Justice and Sustainability * A must read. -Antipode * Antipode *
