Postscript: Everyday Life and Mediated Fisheries

Abstract

Two waypoints were identified at the beginning of this book. The first was a reflection on the different ways social sciences have conceptualized, criticized, and worked with market-based fisheries management. The second was a promise to show diversity and complexity in the social and cultural material. The two were related insofar as social diversity and cohesion are often emphasized by one branch of social science, particularly in the disciplines of ethnology and anthropology in response to more reductionist perspectives in economics and political science. In this book, I have argued that, in general, the two approaches had diverging views on market-based fisheries management, and I have suggested that these originate in the different research objects, instruments, and assumptions that underlie the social sciences. In this postscript, I reflect on the two waypoints, and I discuss the wider perspectives concerning the strong and international currents favoring market-based fisheries. In addition, I suggest mediated fisheries as a possible alternative management principle instead of distribution based purely on market mechanisms.