Gísli Pálsson

Nature and society : anthropological perspectives

The contributors to this book focus on the relationship between nature and society from a variety of theoretical and ethnographic perspectives. Their work draws upon recent developments in social theory, biology, ethnobiology, epistemology, sociology of science, and a wide array of ethnographic case studies -- from Amazonia, the Solomon Islands, Malaysia, the Mollucan Islands, rural comunities from Japan and north-west Europe, urban Greece, and laboratories of molecular biology and high-energy physics. The discussion is divided into three parts, emphasising the problems posed by the nature-culture dualism, some misguided attempts to respond to these problems, and potential avenues out of the current dilemmas of ecological discourse.

Figuring fish and measuring men: the individual transferable quota system in the Icelandic cod fishery

Abstract This article discusses inequality in the Icelandic cod fishery, focusing on changes in the actual distribution of fishing quotas and the ways in which Icelanders currently talk about equity and ownership. The individual transferable quota (ITQ) system, introduced in 1984 , divided access to an important resource among those who happened to be boat owners at that time. Statistical findings with respect to the cod fishery - based on a database (the ‘Quotabase’) constructed using detailed information on all vessels that have been allotted ITQs from the onset of the system - show that ITQs have been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the biggest companies. Many of the small-scale boat owners that still hold ITQs are increasingly compelled to enter into contracts that involve fishing for larger ITQ holders. It is suggested that the distribution of ITQs, as well as their evaluation in social discourse, represents an important field of research. In Iceland, public discontent with the concentration of fishing rights and the ensuing social repercussions is increasingly articulated in terms of loaded metaphors, including ‘profiteering’, ‘tenancy’ and ‘lords of the sea’. It is argued that the ultimate efficiency of management programs may be jeopardized if managers ignore the history and culture of the fisheries involved and the likely social and ecological consequences of their programs.

To Dream of Fish: The Causes of Icelandic Skippers' Fishing Success

Contrary to the folk image that skippers are important in determining fishing success, we conclude that the skipper effect is a myth. We reach this conclusion by three converging analyses: (1) we show that the size of fishing boats and the number of trips account for most of the variance in catch, leaving very little unexplained variance to be explained by a skipper effect; (2) we show that there is no relationship between experience and success; and (3) we suggest that skippers in fact avoid risky hunting strategies and fish where they can count on a catch, even if only a small one. We argue that skippers use the myth of skipper effect in a rhetoric of impression management to enhance their prestige and hence their access to larger boats and better crews, which are the real determinants of success. Competition for prestige is not just a game; it is of critical economic importance.

The Icelandic genome debate

Three of the central issues in contemporary debates about the commodification of the human body are those of property, ownership, and access. This article uses the case of the central medical database on Icelanders to discuss contesting claims about the ownership of the human genome, with respect to the rapid development of biotechnology, human genome projects and DNA collections. We emphasize the contrast between commercial and communitarian perspectives and to illustrate our argument we explore debates about the Icelandic database. These debates have been intense, focusing on a range of issues, including ethics, academic freedom, public health and, last but not least, the control and ownership of medical records, genetic information and genealogical data. This article should be seen primarily as an anthropological commentary on ongoing developments.

Beyond boundaries : understanding, translation and anthropological discourse

Introduction - beyond boundaries, Gisli Palsson mediations in the global ecumene, Ulf Hannerz doves, hawks, and anthropology - the Israeli debate on Middle Eastern settlement proposals, Shlomo Deshen foreign myths and sagas in Japan - the academics and the cartoonists, Halldor Stefansson the anthropologist as shaman - interpreting recent political events in Armenia, Levon H. Abrahamian household words - attention, agency, and the ethnography of fishing, Gisli Palsson acting cool and being safe - the definition of skill in a Swedish railway yard, Birgitta Edelman interpreting and explaining cultural representations, Dan Sperber beyond the words - the power of resonance, Unni Wikan the art of translation in a continuous world, Tim Ingold.

The Textual Life of Savants: Ethnography, Iceland, and the Linguistic Turn.

Part 1 From life to text: the factual, the fictive and the fabulous - novel and ethnography the metaphor of cultural translation. Part 2 Times, lives and medieval texts: sagas, history, and social life the power of words and the context of witchcraft. Part 3 Lives, texts and modern realities: fetishized language, symbolic capital, and social identity enskilment and Sea - from rules to practice fast fish and loose talk - beyond textualist appropriation towards a theory of living discourse.

Biosocial Relations of Production

Nowadays, life itself is one of the most active zones of capitalist production. Not only has biology been upgraded to Big Science, biological material and information are increasingly the subject of engineering, banking, reproduction, and exchange. The description and broad implications of the refiguring of life itself and its intrusion into economics and politics represent some of the most important issues on the academic agenda at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Palsson 2007). Foucaults works on biopolitics (see, for instance, Foucault 1994) have obviously contributed critical insights with respect to the current refashioning of the human body, illuminating the political and governmental dimensions of these developments (Inda 2005; Rose 2006; Gottweis and Peterson 2008; Nowotny and Testa 2009; Lock and Nguyen 2009). Recently, a series of scholars have revisited the early writings of Marx, sometimes in combination with Foucauldian perspectives, in their attempt to make sense of the political economy of modern biotechnology, including the fragmenting of body parts and the labor process involved. One of the emerging themes in current discussions relates to the conception and role of labor in the reproduction of bodies and body parts. While Marx may not be an obvious source of innovative perspectives on the modern production of human biovalue, a somewhat unique industry that had not arrived in his time, his early works offer useful insights into contemporary developments.

Riddles of Herring and Rhetorics of Success

We test the speculations of Barth (1966) and Heath (1976) about the success of Norwegian herring skippers against ethnographic and statistical data and conclude that their analyses are incorrect on virtually every point. We then show that the individual differences among skippers are not significant. Although we can account for virtually all of the variance in catches of cod, we cannot account for some 60 percent of the variance in herring catches. Having ruled out the skipper effect as an explanation, we explain the high residuals, or unexplained variance, of the statistical model as a consequence of the randomness of herring behavior. Finally, we suggest that our analysis of the rhetorics of success in fishing may be relevant for the wider discussion of leadership and entrepreneurs.

The life of family trees and the Book of Icelanders

This article discusses the tracing of family histories and competing assumptions about identities and relatedness in the era of biotechnology and biopower. Although the fascination with genealogical trees and family histories is common throughout the West, in Iceland this attraction is extreme. A genealogical database for most of the Icelandic population, the so-called Book of Icelanders, is being constructed as part of a larger biogenetic enterprise that seeks to establish the presumed genetic causes of common diseases for the purpose of developing pharmaceutical products. The discussion explores the changing implications of family trees as they become enmeshed in biomedical projects and political debates. Genealogical records, I suggest, are never innocent phenomena; this is because they have a social life of their own, a biography informed by the contours of the cultural landscapes to which they belong.

How Deep is the Skin? The Geneticization of Race and Medicine

Abstract‘Racial’ or ‘ethnic’ drugs, a product of the new genetics and its mapping of genomes and populations, are now being developed and manufactured on a large scale. This article focuses on the conceptualization and identification of genetic signatures at the population level, many of which, I argue, evoke the ancient and quite common folk idiom of bodily inscription—in particular, fingerprints and birthmarks. The current geneticization of ‘colour’ and the biosociality engendered by it, I suggest, invite critical rethinking of the concept of insular populations and the distinction between bodily surface and deep structures (phenotype and genotype). While the new genetics has shifted the conceptual ground for discussions of human variation, moving away from phenotypic traits such as markings of the skin, drawing attention to what some molecular biologists refer to as the ‘universe within’, the notion of racial difference is repeatedly reinvented along familiar lines, under the banner of populations studies. I argue that, although human variation is both a legitimate and important subject in its own right and some approaches to variation do a better job than others, researchers need to be attentive to their assumptions about sampling. Circularity and subjectivity seem to be inevitable parts of the exploration of human diversity, and sampling cannot take place without a subjective, pragmatic judgment about how to proceed.