This book is a passionate, sometimes
critical and frustrated intervention into the current dominant politics of
food. Public campaigns, and journalistic writing often dumb down complex
questions into banal slogans: eat local, eat seasonally, etc. In terms of the
global-local configurations of fishing, it is hard to “eat local” fish. If you
want a slogan for fish it would have to be eat small.
Within marine the “simplification of the
sea” refers fishing down the web – how we are eliminating the top predators,
and then ever downwards. This allows for exploding populations of crustaceans
and other invertebrates, which is good for lobstermen. But in the (not so) long
run, this destroys ecosystems and threatens trophic collapse whereby we are
back to the jellyfish scenario with seas filled with medusoza, and
gelatinous zooplankton that nothing wants to eat. I hijack this scientific term
and use it to talk about how in public debate the sea is being simplified.
Numerous well-meaning NGO campaigns resort to simplistic devices such as the
traffic light system, whereby red is bad. Even these have been further dumbed
down now to only “green” ticks.
As a longtime feminist, and writer, my turn
to fish has disconcerted many. It does, however, follow from my many studies of
various aspects of eating. I also challenge how in current discussions about the
Anthropocene, “age of the human,” gender seems to be passé. From a discussion
of mermaids through to the lives of fisherwomen, I seek to elevate gendered and
queer matters of human-fish entanglement. At a conceptual level I grapple with
how gender and sexuality, as well as ethnicity and class, have been squeezed
out of academic discussions about the Anthropocene, climate change and the
more-than-human. I seek to recover the lost stories of the women who have
followed fish, and to hear what happens to human-fish settlements when the fish
disappear.
Two instances of this ground the chapter in
history – the rise and fall of the herring industry in Scotland that lasted
from the nineteenth century until post WW II, and the collapse of the cod fisheries
of the Great Banks off Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. The women who form
the overwhelming workforce in fish processing, as well as the fishwives who
kept the books of family fish businesses could see that a crisis was looming.
In the male-dominated world of scientists and fisheries managers, their voices
weren’t counted; they didn’t matter.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
The wide angle
This book is a passionate, sometimes critical and frustrated intervention into the current dominant politics of food. Public campaigns, and journalistic writing often dumb down complex questions into banal slogans: eat local, eat seasonally, etc. In terms of the global-local configurations of fishing, it is hard to “eat local” fish. If you want a slogan for fish it would have to be eat small.
Within marine the “simplification of the sea” refers fishing down the web – how we are eliminating the top predators, and then ever downwards. This allows for exploding populations of crustaceans and other invertebrates, which is good for lobstermen. But in the (not so) long run, this destroys ecosystems and threatens trophic collapse whereby we are back to the jellyfish scenario with seas filled with medusoza, and gelatinous zooplankton that nothing wants to eat. I hijack this scientific term and use it to talk about how in public debate the sea is being simplified. Numerous well-meaning NGO campaigns resort to simplistic devices such as the traffic light system, whereby red is bad. Even these have been further dumbed down now to only “green” ticks.
As a longtime feminist, and writer, my turn to fish has disconcerted many. It does, however, follow from my many studies of various aspects of eating. I also challenge how in current discussions about the Anthropocene, “age of the human,” gender seems to be passé. From a discussion of mermaids through to the lives of fisherwomen, I seek to elevate gendered and queer matters of human-fish entanglement. At a conceptual level I grapple with how gender and sexuality, as well as ethnicity and class, have been squeezed out of academic discussions about the Anthropocene, climate change and the more-than-human. I seek to recover the lost stories of the women who have followed fish, and to hear what happens to human-fish settlements when the fish disappear.
Two instances of this ground the chapter in history – the rise and fall of the herring industry in Scotland that lasted from the nineteenth century until post WW II, and the collapse of the cod fisheries of the Great Banks off Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. The women who form the overwhelming workforce in fish processing, as well as the fishwives who kept the books of family fish businesses could see that a crisis was looming. In the male-dominated world of scientists and fisheries managers, their voices weren’t counted; they didn’t matter.