Sociology & anthropology

Environment, labour and capitalism at sea

'Working the ground' in Scotland

Penny McCall Howard. Series edited by Alexander Smith

Description

This book explores how fishers make the sea productive through their labour, using technologies ranging from wooden boats to digital GPS plotters to create familiar places in a seemingly hostile environment. It shows how their lives are affected by capitalist forces in the markets they sell to, forces that shape even the relations between fishers on the same boat. Fishers frequently have to make impossible choices between safe seamanship and staying afloat economically, and the book describes the human impact of the high rate of deaths in the fishing industry. The book makes a unique contribution to understanding human-environment relations, examining the places fishers create and name at sea, as well as technologies and navigation practices. It combines phenomenology and political economy to offer new approaches for analyses of human-environment relations and technologies. It contributes to the social studies of fisheries through an analysis of how deeply fishing practices and social relations are shaped by political economy. It will be read in universities by social scientists and anthropologists and also by those with an interest in maritime Scotland.

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Author Biography

Penny McCall Howard is National Research Officer for the Maritime Union of Australia. Alexander Smith is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Huddersfield.

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Series Part

Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date February 2017
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781784994143 / 1784994146
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatHardback
  • Primary Price 75 GBP
  • Pages288
  • ReadershipCollege/Tertiary Education
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions234 x 156 mm
  • Illustration44 black & white illustrations, 5 graphs
  • Biblio NotesIntroduction Part I: A metabolism of labour and environment 1. 'Working the ground' 2. From Wullie's Peak to the Burma: naming places at sea Part II: Techniques and technologies 3. Techniques to extend the body and its senses 4. From 'where am I?' to 'where is that?' Rethinking navigation Part III: Capitalism and class 5. 'You just can't get a price': the difference political economy makes 6. Capitalism, subjectivity and violence in ecological systems Conclusion: labour, class and anthropology Index
  • SeriesNew Ethnographies

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