Funded research

Karen Hebert, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan

Contradictions of Consolidation: Debating Fishery Restructuring in Bristol Bay, Alaska

Abstract

How do efforts to improve industry efficiency in market terms affect experience in workers' terms—their own economic realities, notions and practices of work, and senses of self and community? How do workers negotiate the often contradictory demands and ideals of industry competitiveness that are established by new global economic orders, local industry cultures, and tight-knit communities alike? Do workers' designs for and responses to regulatory change serve to support, resist, or transform dominant economic paradigms? My dissertation examines these questions through an ethnographic analysis of fishing practice and policymaking in the rural southwest Alaskan region of Bristol Bay.

Like many other resource industries worldwide, the Alaskan salmon industry has experienced volatile economic shifts in recent years as a result of the broad market transformations associated with globalization. Yet unlike many other commodities, Alaskan salmon is a highly regulated natural resource: the state of Alaska is charged with ensuring that its harvest is equitable, sustainable, and even commercially viable; and fishers themselves are participants in the regulatory process. The status of salmon as both commodity and public good, then, means that fishery policy must respond to the conditions of shifting global markets at the same time it addresses those in rural fishing regions, where identities and social relationships are closely bound to longstanding conceptions and practices of fishing work. For this reason, the Alaskan salmon industry presents an ideal case for studying how policies geared to make industries more competitive in a changing global economy both affect and are potentially renegotiated by workers' lived experience. nt observation to ethnographically analyze how flexible work scheduling practices affect the organization of low-income single mothers’ home lives, the challenges single mothers face in coordinating home lives with flexible work schedules, and the expectations for that coordination within less-skilled workplaces. Employer’s expectations that workers coordinate their home and work lives relatively seamlessly affect evaluations of work performance. Consequently, the ability of low-income single mothers to calibrate their domestic responsibilities to their flexible schedules has significant repercussions for their work outcomes, such as job retention, wage increases, and opportunities for promotion. This dissertation project fills a gap in existing research by providing a rich, qualitative analysis of how low-income single mothers’ paid work experiences impel particular family management strategies and the consequences these strategies then have for women’s work outcomes.

My project focuses on the effects of and debates over policies that aim to increase salmon industry profits by cutting costs through the reduction of fishing effort. Variously conceived as fishery "restructuring," "rationalization," or "consolidation" measures, these regulatory changes are inspired by the conviction that the Alaskan salmon industry suffers from inefficiency and overcapitalization. As economists have argued, Alaskan salmon could be harvested by a much smaller fishing fleet than currently exists, and a smaller fleet would mean reduced overhead costs and higher industry profits. From this perspective, effort reduction seems a highly desirable goal; yet when these policies are implemented on the ground, they translate into the elimination of opportunities for meaningful work in persistently poor communities. In rural fishing regions across Alaska, this makes for conditions fraught with contradiction: in order to save their livelihood, fishers must first sacrifice it.

In follow-up research supported by the National Poverty Center, I will return to my primary field site of Dillingham, Alaska, in order to examine the establishment and effects of a particular consolidation policy: a "permit-stacking" proposal that was recently instituted over the objections of many Bristol Bay-area fishers. I will conduct semi-structured interviews of industry participants as a means of answering the following questions: 1) How was the permit-stacking proposal differently understood by its proponents and detractors? 2) How did this debate influence the construction and implementation of the policy, if at all? 3) How did stakeholders’ views about the policy and their ability to influence it change, if at all, along with its implementation? The data I collect through these interviews will thus speak to larger questions about how and to what extent policies of industrial restructuring might be shaped by workers’ own practices and ideals.

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