At Home on the WavesStudies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology
General Editor: Roy Ellen, FBA
Professor of Anthropology, University of Kent at Canterbury
Interest in environmental anthropology and ethnobiological knowledge has grown steadily in recent years, reflecting national and international concern about the environment and developing research priorities. Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology is an international series based at the University of Kent at Canterbury. It is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes, places or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture, and the environment.
Recent volumes:
Volume 24
At Home on the Waves
Human Habitation of the Sea from the Mesolithic to Today
Edited by Tanya J. King and Gary Robinson
Volume 23
Edges, Fringes, Frontiers
Integral Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainability in Guyana
Thomas B. Henfrey
Volume 22
Indigeneity and the Sacred
Indigenous Revival and the Conservation of Sacred Natural Sites in the Americas
Edited by Fausto Sarmiento and Sarah Hitchner
Volume 21
Trees, Knots, and Outriggers
Environmental Knowledge in the Northeast Kula Ring
Frederick H. Damon
Volume 20
Beyond the Lens of Conservation
Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another
Eva Keller
Volume 19
Sustainable Development
An Appraisal from the Gulf Region
Edited by Paul Sillitoe
Volume 18
Things Fall Apart?
The Political Ecology of Forest Governance in Southern Nigeria
Pauline von Hellermann
Volume 17
Environmental Anthropology Engaging Ecotopia
Bioregionalism, Permaculture, and Ecovillages
Edited by Joshua Lockyer and James R. Veteto
Volume 16
Weathering the World
Recovery in the Wake of the Tsunami in a Tamil Fishing Village
Frida Hastrup
Volume 15
Urban Pollution
Cultural Meanings, Social Practices
Edited by Eveline Drr and Rivke Jaffe
For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website:
http://berghahnbooks.com/series/environmental-anthropology-and-ethnobiology
At Home on the Waves
Human Habitation of the Sea
from the Mesolithic to Today
Edited by Tanya J. King and Gary Robinson
First published in 2019 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
2019 Tanya J. King and Gary Robinson
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78920-142-0 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-143-7 ebook
To Elliotte and Olivia: my home
Tanya J. King
To Genevive and Maxime
Gary Robinson
Contents
Bonnie McCay
Tanya J. King and Gary Robinson
Hannah Cobb and Jesse Ransley
Penny McCall Howard
Daniela Klokler and MaDu Gaspar
Caroline Wickham-Jones
Sophie Ccilie Elixhauser
Cristin Simonetti
Gary Robinson
Bentley James
David Guilfoyle, Ross Anderson, Ron Doc Reynolds, and Tom Kimber
Margaret Willson and Helga Tryggvadttir
Pelle Tejsner
Olivia Swift
Nolle Boucquey and Lisa Campbell
Natasha Stacey and Edward H. Allison
Tanya J. King
Tim Ingold
Figures
Tables
Foreword
Bonnie McCay
People who do not work at sea often think of the sea as a frontier, not yet peopled and civilizedas a watery playground for surfing and sailing; as a handy wasteland capable of lapping up and dispersing all that is discarded; or as a fragile source of biodiversity to be protected from human action. Marine scientists rely on fisheries harvest data for clues to fish populations but until recently did not see why one should collect data on the people who catch those fish. Social scientists, in their studies of fishing communities or coastal communities, are intrigued by the livelihoods and cultures of people who live by and on the sea, but tend to focus on the implications of going to sea from family and community life on shore rather than acknowledging the extent to which people actually live with and within the realm of the ocean.
This volume, strongly influenced by the thinking of environmental anthropologist Tim Ingold (2011), explores the mutually constituting interactions between people and fishing places. The notion of mutually constituted relationships is a way that social scientists problematize all sorts of received oppositions, including nature and culture, land and sea. We sometimes use the term seascape as distinct from landscape, but even these terms can distract from appreciation of the complexities (in Ingolds term, the meshwork) of a world that is, as the editors write, simultaneously earthy and watery. In the book, this is shown vividly in chapters that concern people who dwell and work in estuarine areas, the ever-dynamic littoral. Throughout, the authors explore the shifting dynamics and permeable boundaries that constitute the ecosystems, fishing grounds, and marine zones of the seas as places that are lived in and created by people.
Human actions affect the abundance and balance of marine species, the quality of marine waters and habitats, and even now, we learn, the acidity of the ocean; in another vein, we can talk about the social production of marine ecosystems (Olson 2011), as evocatively shown in this books chapter on the creation of named fishing grounds in Scottish waters. In turn, people are dependent on and shaped by the oceans in so many ways, not least of which is their role in maintaining the climate that has made life possible. Oceans provide food and ways of traveling from one place to another, and for those who have most directly worked with and on the seasthe main actors in this volumeoceans and their inhabitants are simply part of life, part of ones identity and dreams, a focus of ones social and private worlds.
The worlds seas have become the marine components of the Anthropocene, an Earth transformed by human action, and human activities must be constrained and regulated to protect valued and essential parts and processes. But forgotten in that perspective is the notion that the very sources of overharvesting, pollution, and carbon dioxide emission are also thinking, responding actors. It can be more productive to think of people as active parts of marine ecosystems rather than solely as external, intruding forces (McCay 2012).
