(Re)Creating identities, place and time through fishing laws

Many of the rules and assumptions in fishing laws contrast with local traditions. Yet it is still under-researched how local communities respond to them and whether, in turn, the laws are able to create spaces of reflexivity... [ view full abstract ]

Many of the rules and assumptions in fishing laws contrast with local traditions. Yet it is still under-researched how local communities respond to them and whether, in turn, the laws are able to create spaces of reflexivity in which new meanings, actions and identities may emerge. A psychosocial model for the analysis of policy-legal frameworks in ecological conservation is presented, characterizing how rules and assumptions in the laws can be considered when examining the dynamics between the policy and the community spheres. As each of these components may be more or less in conflict with current local actions and desires for change, their detailed examination contributes for a better understanding of why support to conservation laws is highly variable within communities and across contexts.

To illustrate this model, a comparative case study design, still uncommon in the literature, is presented. The study examines the sense-making of recent laws regulating fishing practices in two communities with distinct histories of contesting the new fishing laws: a coastal one, where some of the new laws have been successfully contested and changed, and an inland riverine community where the new laws remained unchanged. Interviews (n=34) in two communities in protected areas in the South of Portugal explored the contents and discursive formats used for making sense of the rules (who, where, when people can fish) and and the (epistemic and value-based) assumptions in the laws. The analysis focused specifically (1) on the prevalence, in each community, of accounts of opposition, negotiation and acceptance of the rules and assumptions in the laws; (2) on whether and how local knowledge and norms were mobilized for position-taking.

The findings indicate a higher acceptance of the assumptions of fish scarcity in the laws in the coastal community, while in the inland riverine area the laws are still being debated and negotiated, in a combination of resistance and reflexive questioning to its assumptions. Concerning the rules in the laws, only the definition of closed no-fishing periods had some acceptance in the coastal area. Local norms and knowledge were often used to contest and resist the distinctions created by the rules and to defended old (now illegal) fishing practices as legitimate. Few new actions were presented as already being part of fishers’ local norms. Yet, local norms of excessive fishing were sometimes criticized and the limits ruled by the laws endorsed based on local knowledge about the species.

It is discussed how local knowledge and norms are flexible cultural resources of sense making mobilized both for resisting and endorsing specific aspects of fishing laws. This is linked to how laws sometimes are able to create spaces of reflexivity in the community, in which new meanings, actions and identities may emerge. The results suggest also that the debate of the laws in the public sphere (as happened in the coastal area) can lead to a faster integration of policy sphere/science-based assumptions with local knowledge and norms.