North Atlantic fishy feminists and the more-than-human approach: a conversation

Abstract

Fisheries and aquaculture have been the subject of feminist research and activism globally for decades. The result is a rapidly expanding body of literature examining women and fisheries and gender relations from oceans to plate. This body encompasses diverse and substantive critiques of mainstream fisheries research, policy and practice that ignore women’s contributions showing how local practices, political economies and state policies (re)produce gender inequalities around access to fisheries resources and related wealth. Their work has had positive results. Some fishy feminist work draws on ecofeminism and feminist political ecology to explore links between resource degradation, neoliberal capitalism and patriarchy, but more needs to be done. This paper places existing North Atlantic feminist fisheries research in conversation with an emerging body of feminist scholarship interrogating human-fish relations. It makes the case for applying an ecofeminist lens in future work foregrounding how relations among humans, fisheries and fish are shaped by intersecting capitalist, colonial, speciesist and patriarchal systems of oppression. This lens would highlight the multiple oppressions that arise from altered fishery and aquaculture arrangements and dynamics in the age of the Anthropocene. Putting these bodies of work into lively conversation contributes to both the feminist fisheries/aquaculture and the more-than-human literatures.

Keywords:

• Aquaculture
• ecofeminism
• feminist theory
• fisheries
• more-than-human

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Research funding was provided by the Ocean Frontier Institute, through an award from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

Notes on contributors

Christine Knott

Christine Knott (Ph.D.) is a postdoctoral fellow with the Ocean Frontier Institute. Her research focuses on the social-ecological aspects of fisheries using feminist analysis to investigate labour and its significance within the interactions among resource-dependent communities, government policies, global corporate capitalism, ecological and economic mobility regimes, and animal enclosure and commodification.

Nicole Power

Nicole Power (Ph.D.) is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Memorial University. Her work has examined the gendered impacts of fisheries restructuring on workers, and young people’s experiences and understandings of mobility, work, and life in fisheries communities. Currently, she is a co-investigator with the Ocean Frontier Institute examining issues related to recruitment and equity in fisheries, and the intersection of systems of oppression and fish ontologies.

Barbara Neis

Barbara Neis (Ph.D., C.M., F.R.S.C.) is John Lewis Paton Distinguished University Professor recently retired from the Department of Sociology, Memorial University. For more than four decades, her research has focused broadly on interactions between work, environment, health and communities in rural and remote maritime contexts, including on gender and fisheries. Professor Neis is currently working with the Ocean Frontier Institute leading interdisciplinary research on fisheries, aquaculture and marine safety.

Katia Frangoudes

Katia Frangoudes (Ph.D.) is a Senior Researcher and a member of the research team of the UMR AMURE at the University of Brest. For many years she acted as a facilitator of the European fisher’s women network AKTEA and has led many research programs relating to the role of women in fisheries and aquaculture, in terms of governance, and economic and social contributions.