Becoming groundfishers in an era of depletion in the Northeastern United States

Around the globe, governments and environmental organizations are working to halt ocean fisheries degradation through territorializing the ocean and privatizing access to fish. Concurrently, groups of fishers and community-based organizations are working to craft ocean territories and redefine the relationship between fishers and the environment in ways that accommodate diverse local practices of production and consumption. By examining the processes and practices of ocean fisheries re-organization that is currently underway, the dissertation argues that the efforts of resource managers and environmental NGOs to conserve fisheries generate not only innovative responses but also simultaneously reveal contradictory and contested practices and claims to community, commons and economy.;While the U.S. Government deployed territory and markets to extend the reach of governance, local fisher groups and community-based NGOs negotiated to develop alternative forms of governance. I document the work of two groups of fishers and community-based natural resource management advocates working for alternative visions of management; the Area Management Coalition and the Midcoast Fishermen's Association, both based on the coast of Maine. By describing the work of these groups I show how alternative ideas of territory and governance are produced through the coming together of multiple practices, including territory, local history, ecologies, and politics.;This analysis derives from eight years living on the coast of Maine between 2002 and 2010 and three years of intermittent fieldwork between 2006 and 2009. The methodology included structured and unstructured interviews and participant observation with groundfish fishers, their families, and leaders in the NGO community focused on influencing fisheries management. During this time I worked for the non-profit Island Institute, highlighting the importance of discussing positionality as a component of the overall approach to this dissertation.;The theoretical framework of cultural politics provides a productive analytical entry for this research. Through emphasizing power, process and practice, this perspective suggests ethnographic inquiry that reveals the complex relations of interest groups. Furthermore, cultural politics suggests careful attention to the intended and unintended consequences of practices, processes and discourse. In addition, cultural politics enables an exploration of how resistance emerges from within neoliberal economic and regulatory discourses and practices.;Debates over the need to territorialize the ocean off of the shores of the Unites State were initially driven by the post World War IT exploitation of the codfish fishery by foreign fleets off of the Northeast U.S. coast. These concerns led to the creation of a two hundred mile line off of all U.S. territories with the passing of the Magnuson Stevens Act of 1976. The question of how to govern this newly territorialized ocean commons, while not central to political debates prior to 1976, had been a point of discussion among natural resource economists since the 1950s. While the question of ocean commons is a critical theme discussed in the dissertation, it also examines how governance decisions that favor privatization have been addressed over time and the effects of these decisions on communities. Juxtaposing the history of these debates against an ethnography of changing practices of livelihood and governance, the dissertation explains how the U.S. government, since the seventies, territorialized the ocean and relied on privatization to produce governable resources and people.;This dissertation highlights the importance of looking to fishers for ideas about how to better manage our oceans. It draws attention to the creativity and innovations that come out of the move toward privatizing resources, and in doing so, suggests that greater attention should be given to understanding how these innovations emerge. Furthermore, the dissertation shows how NGOs might work with fishers to identity and support innovative solutions to ocean fishery degradation.