Transforming the Fisheries

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Transforming the Fisheries

Neoliberalism, Nature, and the Commons

Patrick Bresnihan

240 pages
Index

Hardcover

April 2016

978-0-8032-5425-1

$45.00 Add to Cart
Paperback

April 2018

978-1-4962-0640-4

$25.00 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

April 2016

978-0-8032-8584-2

$25.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
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April 2016

978-0-8032-8586-6

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About the Book

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.

Author Bio

Patrick Bresnihan is an assistant professor in environmental geography at Trinity College, Dublin.
 

Praise

  "A must read."—Antipode

"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

“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

“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

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 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Ecological Crises and Beyond
2. The End of the Line: Scarcity, Liberalism, and Enclosure
3. Stewards of the Sea: Neoliberalism and the Making of the Environmental Entrepreneur
4. Community-Managed Resources: A “Third Way” for Environmental Governance
5. The More-Than-Human Commons: From Commons to Commoning
6. Conclusion: Neoliberalism and the Commons
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Awards

2018 Geography Society of Ireland Book of the Year award 

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