Resilience in the English small-scale fishery: Small fry but big Issue
29/12/21 09:24AM
Rebecca Korda, Tim Gray, Selina M. Stead. Springer, Cham, 2021, 196p. Hardcover ISBN 978-3-030-54244-3 Softcover ISBN 978-3-030-54247-4 eBook ISBN 978-3-030-54245-0
This book is a contribution to our understanding of the worrying
situation of small-scale fisheries (SSF) which face marginalisation in
most coastal countries. The authors explain why SSF are so pressured;
how there has been a powerful backlash against this marginalisation
during the last 30 years; what are the main ideational currents
supporting this backlash; and what is the enduring value of SSF that
justifies that support. The authors discuss the major contemporary
interpretations of SSF; the challenges facing SSF globally and in
England; and SSF’s coping strategies in response to those challenges
through the framework of resilience theory. In an innovative analysis,
the authors show how there are three kinds of resilience: passive
resilience (where fishers are resigned to their adverse fate), adaptive
resilience (where fishers make the best use of the opportunities that
are available to them), and transformative resilience (where fishers
attempt to change the system that faces them). The authors draw on an
extensive range of interview data to provide rich insights into the
world of SSF, and they discuss a variety of proposals for improving
their conditions. The book will appeal to the growing academic and
public community that is following with increasing concern the debate
about the future of SFF, and to the environmental movement which has
committed itself to support SSF as a greener form of fishing than the
large-scale industrial sector.