Environment, labour and capitalism at sea : 'working the ground' in Scotland / Penny McCall Howard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Howard, Penny McCall, author.

Series:

New ethnographies.

New ethnographies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fisheries--Social aspects--Scotland.

Fisheries.

Fisheries--Environmental aspects--Scotland.

Fisheries--Economic aspects--Scotland.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 227 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Ethnographies of labour at sea must examine the experience of that labour, rather than contemplate the commodities that are produced, or resort to trite metaphors about watery 'flow' and 'immersion' This book takes up a labour-centred Marxist approach to human-environment relations, place and language, human-machine relations, technique and technology, political economy and violence. It 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. While most analyses of navigation assume that its purpose is orientation, virtually all navigation devices are used in techniques to solve the problem of relative position. 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 lives of fishermen are affected by capitalist forces in the markets they sell to, forces that shape even the relations between fishers on the same boat. The book also discusses techniques people used to extend their bodies and perceptual abilities, the importance of controlling and delicately manipulating these extensions and the caring relationships of maintenance boats and machines required. A 'new anthropology of labour' and a 'decolonised anthropology dispenses with the disciplinary emphasis on the "outside" of capitalism and encompasses the dynamism and interconnections of global society'.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Series Information

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

Figures

Series editor's foreword

Acknowledgements

Map

Introduction

'How are you going to write about this?'

Anthropology at sea

Constraints and opportunities in fieldwork

Histories of the present

Histories of the Inner Sound

Fishing today

Notes

Part I A metabolism of labour and environment

1 'Working the ground'

Developing grounds

Personal relationships to grounds

'Feeling the ground'

Making grounds productive: results mattered

Labour, capitalism, environments

Anthropology, labour, environments

Labour at sea

Contradictory experiences of labour

Labour and human-.environment relations

2 From Wullie's Peak to the Burma: Naming places at sea

Places at sea

The collective development of affordances

Naming places

People and places

Places are not just local

When affordances change

'The lochs were teeming with fish then'

Conclusion: labour and the production of places

Part II Techniques and technologies

3 Techniques to extend the body and its senses

Techniques for extending the body

Sound, vibration, feeling and sounding

The familiar sea

Extension and over-.extension: the delicate balance of control

Care and maintenance of tools and machines

Losing control: machines and social relations

Conclusion

4 From 'where am I?' to 'where is that?': Rethinking navigation

Western/.European navigation?

Orientation: through movement, to affordances

Techniques for finding relative position: a history

GPS chartplotters: mapping affordances

The GPS chartplotter and social relations

Part III Capitalism and class.

5 'You just can't get a price': The difference political economy makes

Making seafood commodities

The pressures of commodity markets

Who owns what? Boat ownership

Who gets what? Owners

Who gets what? Crew

Migrant crew: 'two men for half the price of one'

Conclusion: commodities and ecologies

6 Structural violence in ecological systems

Kathryn Jane

Seamanship, and being a safe mariner

The logic of the market, and being a 'good fisherman'

Multiple subjectivities

Structural violence: a state of emergency?

The ideologies that obscure the 'state of emergency'

The ideology of nature

The ideology of accidents

Coping with the 'state of emergency'

Angus: recognising the emergency

The nature of the job (revisited)

Conclusion: Labour, class, environments and anthropology

Note

References

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 27 Mar 2026).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 214-222) and index.

ISBN:

9781526114570

1526114577

9781526128478

1526128470

9781526114563

1526114569

OCLC:

1119632302