Managing Complexity: Ecological Knowledge and Success in Puerto Rican Small-Scale Fisheries
Carlos G. García-Quijano
This paper examines the interrelationship between Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) and success in the small-scale fisheries of Southeastern Puerto Rico (SE PR). Using mixed qualitative-quantitative ethnographic methods over 18 months of fieldwork, I investigated what constitutes success for small-scale fishers and what role LEK plays in helping them achieve success. SE PR fishers’ models of success are geared towards socially beneficial goals such as resource sustainability and social household reproduction rather than towards profit maximization. For SE PR fishers, to be successful is to manage social and ecological complexity enough so they can make a living from fishing. Their LEK enables them to do precisely that and find predictable catches of fish in a heterogeneous, rapidly changing coastal and marine environment; at the same time, drawing on their LEK, they question and evaluate the actions of competing stakeholders for access to coastal and marine resources. Shared cultural models of success, as well as systems of LEK, are shaped by strategies to manage complexity and maximize predictability in sociocultural, economic, and ecological contexts.
Key words: local ecological knowledge, Caribbean, small-scale fisheries, cultural models, success, complexity
Of Droughts and Flooding Rains: Local and Institutional Perceptions of Environmental Change in an Australian Estuary
Simone L. Blair
In 2003 when the commercial catch of Acanthopagrus butcheri (black bream) dropped to its lowest point since the 1970s, the commercial fishers of the Gippsland Lakes in Australia’s southeast maintained that it was too soon to tell if the stock was in trouble. The fishers did not consider the decline fundamentally different from other changes that had occurred over the last 100 years. It seemed to the representatives of the fisheries department, however, that fishers were denying that a change had occurred. The divergent interpretations were, in part, a result of divergent frameworks through which the passage of time was conceptualized. I show that the temporal frames of reference that commercial fishers use to judge the state of the environment are out of sync with institutional orientations that focus on smaller temporal intervals.
Key words: commercial fishers, fisheries management, time scales, communities of practice, environment
Fisheries Co-Management and Legal Pluralism: How an Analytical Problem Becomes an Institutional One
Svein Jentoft, Maarten Bavinck, Derek S. Johnson, and Kaleekal T. Thomson
This paper addresses two issues pertaining to legal pluralism in capture fisheries, particularly with regard to the South. First there is the problem of analysis. If legal pluralism is a common phenomenon, how is it to be discerned and understood? Secondly, there is the matter of institutional design: given the pervasiveness of legal pluralism, which management institutions are better suited to represent and resolve inter-legal system differences? The authors argue the case of co-management. Drawing on examples and insights from a comparative research project in South Asia, four basic types of legal pluralism and co-management are distinguished. The authors conclude that co-management is a process that brings legal systems, and their constituent organizations and groups, together within a single framework. For fisher organizations, which frequently have distinct legal perspectives, co-management is an essential path to legitimacy. For the state, other legal systems are a resource that management can draw upon.
Key words: fisheries, legal pluralism, co-management, legitimacy, South Asia
Institutional Legitimacy and Co-Management of a Marine Protected Area: Implementation Lessons from the Case of Xcalak Reefs National Park, Mexico
David M. Hoffman
This paper is an exploration of the relationship between a conservation intervention and the quest for local institutional legitimacy and conservation success through co-management. More precisely, this paper will employ the case of Xcalak Reefs National Park (PNAX) to illuminate the interaction between contextual and procedural elements of co-management implementation, how these variables affect the production of legitimacy in the minds of local resource users, and how resultant attitudes can subvert both management devolution and resource conservation. The failure to produce co-management will be related to the mismatch inherent in attempts to map co-management onto a histories and institutions that do not align with the morality and practicalities necessary for its implementation. The case reiterates the necessity for conservation managers and practitioners to have an understanding of local history and context. Lastly, Xcalak demonstrates the dangers for the success of conservation and development programs inherent in management processes that are inconsistent with built expectations. In so doing, this paper highlights critical assumptions made in the real-world application of co-management, as well as inherent conflicts found between local and extra-local moralities that guide conservation work.
Key words: co-management, conservation, legitimacy, marine protected areas, Mexico
Critical Reflections: Confessions from the Director of a 15-year Agroforestry Research and Development Project in the Philippines
Ben J. Wallace
The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the errors in judgment made over a 15-year period of directing a small research and development project on agroforestry (Good Roots—Ugat ng buhay) in the Philippines. In addition, it explores how certain goals and methods may be modified to correct for errors in judgment, so that there is a benefit to the project and to the people the project is designed to help. By reflecting critically on its failures and mistakes, the argument is that the Good Roots Project has demonstrated its accountability to science, shown its commitment to the people it is dedicated to serve, and made the project more effective.
Key words: applied, development, forestry, agriculture, Philippines
Anthropological Perspectives on Disasters and Disability: An Introduction
Lakshmi Fjord and Lenore Manderson
Natural disasters and disasters that directly derive from human actions, both evolving and sudden, trace the structural fault lines of the societies that they affect. Disaster outcomes disproportionately impact those with the least access to social and material resources: women and children, and people who are elderly, disabled or impoverished. Using a disability conceptual framework, the essays in this volume focus on disasters within their social and environmental ecologies, with particular attention to the ways in which conventional disaster planning and responses ensure that existing social inequalities will be perpetuated as consequences of disasters. We argue that by foregrounding the needs of those with the fewest resources, an applied anthropology of disaster points to potential benefits to all when disaster preparedness, response, and recovery plans include the expertise of disabled people.
Key words: disability, disasters, inclusive design, special needs, vulnerability
Describing Tragedy: The Information Access Needs of Blind People in Emergency-related Circumstances
Elaine Gerber
Audio description is a technique used for “translating” visual material to aural readers/blind people. In this article, exploratory research on audio description (AD) is presented, which raises important questions in the field of applied anthropology and emergency planning: How does one translate visual material for a non-seeing audience? From the point of view of blind consumers, what constitutes “good” description? What specific information access needs do they have in event of emergencies? Selected results are presented from three telephone focus groups on AD, conducted with 39 blind or visually impaired people nationwide in the United States during September/October 2005. This paper addresses emergency planning, audio description, and the need for more accurate information access for blind people during public warning broadcasts and in delivering the news. Further, it examines existing guidelines for the inclusion of blind people in the provision of emergency information and concludes that successful emergency preparedness must include first-hand expertise of disabled people themselves.
Key words: emergency preparedness, audio description, visual culture, blindness
Disability, Destitution, and Disaster: Surviving the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Japan
Karen Nakamura
On the morning of January 17, 1995, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck the port city of Kobe, Japan. 6,400 people died and over $80 billion in property damage occurred. Among those rendered homeless was a small group of people with severe disabilities. Over the next decade, this group leveraged discourses surrounding civil society, disability, poverty, and the role of government in natural disasters, to become one of the most powerful and vocal proponents of disability rights in Japan. What lessons can we learn to make disability advocacy a leading, rather than trailing, element of social policy?
Key words: advocacy, disability, civil society, social welfare, government
Whose Logic? The Local Redistribution of Food Aid Targeting Old and Chronically Sick People in Zambia
Sonja Merten and Tobias Haller
In 2002-2003, the agro-pastoralist groups in the Kafue Flats of the Southern Province of Zambia were severely affected by famine. Livelihood changes due to an economic crisis decreased the ability of many families to support dependants, and those who were old or chronically ill were often regarded as a mere burden by their relatives. These developments were taken into account by aid agencies that set up criteria to identify the most vulnerable households. Such indicator targeting for food aid resulted at the local level in prioritizing households headed by an old or chronically ill person, regardless of whether the household was in other ways categorized as poor. As a consequence, households headed by less impoverished elder people, particularly if they had political power, were also able to gain access to relief food for their own benefit. Meanwhile, other elderly persons were expected to share relief food (voluntarily or not) with their relatives due to the increasing destitution of the poorer strata of the population. Local priority setting rarely accorded with the logic of the aid organizations, but instead prioritized firstly those who had to work hardest, then children. Ultimately, local power structures and notions of entitlement determined the distribution of food aid irrespective of official targeting aims.
Key words: Drought, food aid, food security, institutional analysis, Zambia
Food Insecurity and HIV/AIDS in Low-income Households in Urban Zimbabwe
Pauline Gwatirisa and Lenore Manderson
Contemporary Zimbabwe illustrates the complex ways in which economic, political, social, environmental factors, combined with high levels of illness and early mortality as a result of HIV infection, produce a food crisis. In both rural and urban areas, people are increasingly dependent on national and international food aid agencies for survival. The criteria used by relief agencies to define vulnerability, however, provide little or no flexibility in dynamic and fluid situations. Drawing on research conducted in the east Zimbabwe city of Mutare, we describe the combined impact of drought, unemployment, and inflation on food security and the policy context affecting access to food. In particular, we describe the experiences of primary caregivers of people living with HIV/AIDS in low-income salaried households, who are ineligible for food aid, and the mechanisms they use to meet basic household needs. By drawing attention to the potency of the combination of economic, political, and natural disasters, we illustrate the importance of context in defining and responding to disaster.
Key words: food insecurity, HIV/AIDS, inflation, urban households, Zimbabwe
