LAUSR

How nature interfaces with markets, influences technology and in turn conditions the way humans organize their lives is not a common theme dealt with by economists or sociologists. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that most studies of market, technology and institutions deal with sectors of the economy and society where the determining influence of nature per se is not of much consequence. Nature may be present, but is very much in the backdrop. Marine fisheries is one sector where nature is central to the dramatic interplay of humans, technology, markets and institutions and therefore cannot be wished away so easily. This is not to make a case for a deterministic role for nature. However, the reality is that the vicissitudes of the fluid ocean and its fugitive resources, as well as the inability to bring them under the total control of humans or technology, make for keeping nature as a central actor in any worthwhile academic rendering of marine fisheries. Alexander Dobeson’s treatise on Iceland’s small boat fishery is a fine relational ethnographic account of the multiple human and non-human actors and sites in the Icelandic fishery while it was undergoing a tumultuous change—after the unprecedented financial crash of the Icelandic economy in 2008. Dobeson’s book vividly describes the time between 2012 and 2014 when small-scale fishers could either move out of the fishery or find new ways of coping, staying in and staying afloat. The sea, its vagaries and moods, what it gives and takes, are mainstreamed in the narrative. Dobeson’s book is a ‘must read’ for the now increasing number of academicians and researchers who are showing enormous interests in small-scale fishers and other rural producers in order to understand how they are negotiating their economic, social and cultural transitions in the rapidly changing global economy. The book is rich in theoretical references and frames which adds to its scholarly standing in the field of economic sociology. The narrative of the book is largely seen through the eyes of a fisher named Bjartur (meaning ‘the bright’). He lives in the remote Westfjords of Iceland. He gave up the lucrative job of being a first mate on a large trawler and chose to become an independent fisher and his own master in his home community. Today, he manages his own smábátar (small boat) trying to realize his childhood dream of making a hard but honest living from it for himself and his family. As the background to Bjartar’s decision, we have the controversial, much researched and discussed individual transferable quota (ITQ) system in marine fisheries which Iceland gradually began to implement from the early 1990s. This was part of a larger global neo-liberal agenda of privatization and commodification of fishery resources world over in the wake of increased global demand for cheap protein. Initially the small boat (below 15-m length) coastal fishery was insulated from the ITQ system. However, with growing ‘technology stuffing’, small boats were able to fish round the year and beyond the coastal waters as well, and by 2004 the full-fledged ITQ system was also introduced into the coastal fishery. Quotas were allocated according to historical catch records of the small boats in the community. However, as quotas could be bought and sold across geographic locations, the concept of a self-reliant and largely self-contained village community, dependent on a few small boats, could be put in jeopardy. Dobeson’s book is about how Bjartar, and others like him, in the new and emerging context of capitalist neoliberal inclusion, cease to be just skilled coastal fishers. Their world goes far beyond the ‘locally bound fishing community to a broader globalised web of markets, property rights, international financial markets, scientific discourses and technological developments’. However, they are firm in their resolve to remain small-scale, independent and community-oriented. * John Kurien [email protected]