Reworking Regimes of Value: Fishery Restructuring and Globalization in Bristol Bay, Alaska (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)

Summary

This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

In the fishing town of Dillingham, Alaska, poet Gary Snyder once found the raucous epitome of “the working bars of the world” (1983:91). These days, however, Dillingham’s mood is decidedly dimmer as its workers develop and debate plans to restructure the Bristol Bay salmon industry, which has swung from unprecedented profitability to near insolvency in little over a decade. Although the collapse of the Alaskan salmon industry is a clear consequence of “globalization” (Knapp 2002), the conditions of Bristol Bay restructuring defy many pat assumptions about how globalization operates: a strong state and a diverse set of local resource users are the primary agents driving regulatory change in this remote corner of southwest Alaska. Yet the various restructuring options that circulate in the region’s bars, boats, and boardrooms bear a strong resemblance to the downsizing, privatizing policies that mark economic reconfiguration worldwide. How is it that the measures generated by participants’ grassroots action are so surprisingly similar to those advanced by globalization’s supra-national avatars? How do the workers of the world come to pursue policies not unlike those of the World Bank, even as they register concern about the effects of these policies on their livelihoods and communities? In what ways might this tension shape—rather than simply stymie—restructuring processes? The proposed research will answer these questions through an ethnographic examination of the Bristol Bay salmon fishery and its participants’ designs for and responses to prospective industry restructuring.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WGF - Support for Research Projects   •
• Wenner-Gren Foundation

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Contact(s): Wenner-Gren Foundation

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

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