David Griffith

Fishers at work, workers at sea : a Puerto Rican journey through labor and refuge

Preface Divided Selves: Domestic Production and Wage Labor in Puerto Rico and Anthropology Palatable Coercion: Fishing in Puerto Rican History Puerto Rican Fisheries Chiripas: Working-class Opportunity and Semiproletarianization Injury and Therapy Roads Less Traveled: Proletarianization and Its Discontents Power Games: Work Versus Leisure Along Puerto Ricos Coast Fragments of a Refuge References Index Photographs

Pollution, food safety, and the distribution of knowledge

Human perceptions of the relationship between pollution and food safety are often haphazard and contradictory, based on a variety of sources of information. Recent media events concerning seafood and coastal pollution have generated concern that an otherwise healthy food— fish and shellfish—has become dangerous. We assess consumer knowledge about seafood safety and coastal pollution using several methods, including tests of cultural consensus. We find that consumers view seafood as far more threatened by pollution than scientific analysis suggests, due in part to their perceptions about the dynamics of the marine environment. Finding variation in perceptions within our population based on income and other factors, we explore the use of the cultural consensus approach in large and heterogeneous populations.

Applications of social science theory to fisheries management: Three examples

Abstract Funding support, and the realization by fishery managers that social science research has much to offer in the management process, have combined to create a framework for important research activity in recent years. This paper describes three projects of varying breadth, depth, and scope in which social scientific scholarship has both theoretical and applied value. The first project was a research effort in which funding first allowed for the construction of an appropriate theoretical model and hypotheses, and then supported the research, application, and evaluation. The second project illustrates how available theory and methods can be adapted to the solution of a basic problem in fisheries management, namely how to involve those who are affected by policies and regulations in the formation of those policies and regulations. The third project addresses the issue of conflict of fisheries management and locates marine resource conflicts within a larger conceptual context. This is also an area in w...

Interpreting environmental change in coastal Alaska using traditional and scientific ecological knowledge

Humans who interact directly with local ecosystems possess traditional ecological knowledge that enables them to detect and predict ecosystem changes. Humans who use scientific ecological methods can use species such as mollusks that lay down annual growth rings to detect past environmental variation and use statistical models to make predictions about future change. We used traditional ecological knowledge shared by local Inupiaq, combined with growth histories of two species of mollusks, at different trophic levels, to study local change in the coastal ecosystems of Kotzebue, Alaska, an area in the Arctic without continuous scientific monitoring. For the mollusks, a combination of the Arctic Oscillation and total Arctic ice coverage, and summer air temperature and summer precipitation explained 79-80% of the interannual variability in growth of the suspension feeding Greenland cockle (Serripes groenlandicus) and the predatory whelk (Neptunea hero) respectively, indicating these mollusks seem to be impacted by local and regional environmental parameters, and should be good biomonitors for change in coastal Alaska. The change experts within the Kotzebue community were the elders and the fishers, and they observed changes in species abundance and behaviors, including benthic species, and infer that a fundamental change in the climate has taken place within the area. We conclude combining traditional and scientific ecological knowledge provides greater insight than either approach alone, and offers a powerful way to document change in an area that otherwise lacks widespread quantitative monitoring.

Peasants in reserve: temporary West Indian labor in the U.S. farm labor market.

In the past 10 years, the British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program has received widespread judicial and legislative support and criticism. While sugar and apple producers who import West Indians argue that domestic labor is insufficient to harvest their crops, labor organizations and their supporters maintain that domestic labor is adequate. The resulting labor disputes focus primarily on the issue of whether or not West Indians are displacing US workers or undermining wage rates and working conditions. This article examines the relationships among legal issues surrounding the program, the US farm labor market, and the Jamaican peasantry. It argues that continued imports of foreign labor during times of high domestic unemployment, as well as the varied factors which underlie the continued willingness and ability of Jamaican peasant households to supply workers to US producers, can be most clearly understood from an international and historical perspective, rather than focussing on the needs and problems of any 1 nation.

Preliminary Characterization of the North Carolina Autumn Recreational Shrimp Trawl Fishery

Abstract Several states in the USA have proposed or implemented new regulations to monitor recreational fishing more closely. One regulatory tool, the saltwater recreational fishing license, has been adopted in several states, yet in other states it is opposed heavily by fishers. One difficulty in developing new types of saltwater licenses in North Carolina is that part-time fishers use commercial gear but straddle recreational and commercial fishing motives and behaviors. In North Carolina, over 20,000 people hold commercial fishing licenses, but fewer than 10% of those (1,747) sell more than US

Enforced Economics: Individual Fishery Quota Programs and the Privileging of Economic Science in the Gulf of Mexico Grouper-Tilefish Fishery

10,000 worth of seafood annually. North Carolinas undocumented recreational trawl fishery for shrimp (Penaeidae) often harvests significant fishery resources but has inadequate or loosely enforced restrictions. To investigate the nature of the recreational shrimp trawl fishery in coastal North Carolina waters, we conducted an intercept interview survey in the fall of 1995. Slightly more than half of those inter...

Meeting National Standard 8: Ground-truthing Social Indicators of Fishing in South Atlantic Coastal Communities

Individual Fishery Quota (IFQ) programs allocate shares of an established quota of specific species of fish to individual fishermen based on their history of participation in the fishery, effectively privatizing the fishery even though government agencies maintain the right to alter the shares, species covered, or other attributes of the program. Fishery managers typically use economic arguments about efficiency, planning, and avoiding tragedies of the commons, along with safety issues, to justify IFQ programs, suggesting they professionalize fisheries. Embedded in these arguments is the implication that fishermen have not been using their human, fixed, or other forms of capital efficiently, and that they need to begin thinking more like businessmen—that is, more like neoclassical economists would like them to think. Based on research on the Gulf of Mexico Grouper-Tilefish IFQ program, this article argues that IFQ programs, while encouraging fishermen to behave more like businessmen, do not reflect histor...

A preference for amiable drunks

National Standard 8 of the reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management Act mandates that fi sheries managers consider a community’s dependence on fi sheries when crafting regulations. This article compares fi ndings regarding dependence on commercial and recreational fi sheries from direct observations and interviews in 21 U.S. South Atlantic communities to fi ndings from publicly available data sources such as the U.S. census. The comparisons revealed that, in over 80% of the 21 ports examined, data developed from direct observations and interviews and those developed from publicly available data sources yielded similar National Standard 8 and South Atlantic Fisheries Based on fi eld research in 21 South Atlantic coastal communities reaching from Wanchese, N.C., to Palm Beach Shores, Fla., this article compares data from direct observations and interviews in the communities to data from publicly available sources such as fi sheries statistics and the U.S. census, providing baseline information for social impact assessments, fi sheries management plans, and other policy initiatives. The study emerged from ongoing attempts to meet the mandate of National Standard 8 (50 CFR Ch. VI (01 Oct 10 Edition: §600.345:60): “Conservation and management measures shall...take into account the importance of fi shery resources to fi shing results. Where there were large discrepancies between the two sets of fi ndings, in most cases, the ports were located in large metropolitan areas where fi shing constituted a small proportion of the economy. These fi ndings indicate that the use of publicly available data sources is an effi cient way for fi sheries managers and others to meet the mandate of National Standard 8 in a timely fashion, yet they also suggest that rapid ethnographic procedures can aid in characterizing fi shing communities that differ in terms of size, rural vs. urban settings, gentrifi cation, resilience, and other features that could assist fi shery managers in evaluating the impacts of fi shing regulations. communities by utilizing economic and social data that are based upon the best scientifi c information available...” While concern for fi shing communities is secondary to the concern for rebuilding and maintaining healthy fi shery resources, National Standard 8 (NS8) nevertheless demands that social and economic data be developed to address questions such as a community’s dependence on or engagement with fi shery resources, its ability for sustained participation in fi sheries, and whether or not a Fishery Management Plan or policy initiative will adversely affect the community. National Standard 8 defi nes a fi shing community as “a community that is substantially dependent on or substantially engaged in the harvest or processing of fi shery resources to meet social and economic needs, and includes fi shing vessel owners, operators, and crew, and fi sh processors that are based in such communities. A fi shing community is a social or economic group whose members reside in a specifi c location and share a common dependency on commercial, recreational, or subsistence fi shing or on directly related fi sheries-dependent services and industries (for example, boatyards, ice suppliers, tackle shops)” (50 CFR Ch. VI (1 Oct 10 Edition: §600.345:61). The 21 fi shing communities we profi led range from small, unincorporated communities like Wanchese and Sneads Ferry, N.C., to large metropolitan areas like Wilmington, N.C., Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., or the heavily populated strip of south Florida coast around Palm Beach Shores. In addition to those just mentioned, the others were: Hatteras Village, Beaufort, Morehead City, Atlantic Beach, and Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina; Little River and Murrells Inlet in South Carolina; Brunswick, St. Simons Island, and St. Marys in Georgia; and Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, Cape Canaveral, Sebastian, Ft. Pierce, and Palm Beach Shores in Florida (Fig. 1).

Experiencing refugees: A review essay

Roberts, Glenda S. Staying on the Line: Blue‐Collar Women in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. x + 198 pp. including appendix, notes, references, and index.