Harris, C.K., D.S. Wiley, and D.C. Wilson 1995 "Socioeconomic Impacts of the Introduction of Foreign Species into Lake Victoria Fisheries" in Pitcher, T.J. and P.J.B. Hart (Eds) The Impact of Species Change in African Lakes Chapman and Hall, The Fish and Fisheries Series, Volume 17

This paper explores the social and economic impacts of the changing Lake Victoria fishery. Distributional and redistributional impacts of changes in the fishery are felt at the individual and household level. These include changes in: the distribution of roles in the fishery; scales and patterns of income; ease of entry into the fishery; quality of a fisher's working life; geographic mobility; employment opportunities; the availability of fish for household consumption; and health. Changes at the community, organizational, national, and international levels are also described.

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Haraldsdottir, G. "Report on a Study in Malawi." in ICEIDA-NEWSLETTER, no. 6, November 1995, The Study was funded by ICEIDA.

Abstract: This is a report from a study done during three months period in 1994, as a preparation for a Ph.D. proposal in anthropology at the University of Iowa. The goal was to gather data about the fishery in Malawi for the purpose of writing a focused Ph.D. research proposal and decide on a research site. I visited thirteen villages alongside Lake Malawi and Lake Malombe, from the Mangochi district in the south to the Karonga district in the north, and talked to up to ten people in each village. In my discussion with the fisherfolk I asked, on the one hand, about fishing, fish processing and trading, and, on the other hand, I asked about various social aspects, the role of different social groups and the socioeconomic situation. The conclusion from the study indicates that the beach villages in Malawi are anything but homogeneous communities of fishermen and their families. The people who live in the villages have a range of different livelihood objectives and are involved in the fishery to various extent. Their social and economic position are very different, depending on whether they are owners of boat and gears; crew members; traders; women; or men.  

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Abstract: International and national literature on fisheries policy and management indicates that, in recent years, increasing emphasis has been placed on the involvement of 'local communities' in fisheries research and development projects. Policy makers and planners increasingly recognize the importance of involving resource users in conservation and managment plans. Anthropologists have drawn attention to existing community systems of resource management and emphasized the importance of integrating these systems into formal managment policy. However, these systems are not universal, and, where they do not exist, other forms of organization must be developed to give fishing communities a voice in policy making and management. In this presentation, I will use a scale of user participation in research and management to review FAA documents concerning inland fisheries in sub-Saharan Africa over a ten years period. The analysis will show the type of involvement these documents suggest fishing communities presently have in fisheries managment, and what kind of community participation is envisioned for the future. Furthermore, I will review three recent fisheries projects in Malawi, to show the evolving kinds and degrees of user participation in fisheries management in a context without local systems of community regulation. While earlier fisheries projects in Malawi depicted fishers as threats to fish stocks and in need of education, more recent projects have sought to introduce greater community participation. The nature of this participation will be analyzed.  

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Medard, M. and D.C.Wilson 1996 "Changing Economic Problems for Women in the Nile Perch Fishing Communities on Lake Victoria"  Anthropoligica XXXVIII (2):149-172

Large-scale changes in the ecology of Lake Victoria have had a number of implications for the women in riparian households. It has proven difficult for them to take advantage of the economic opportunities that have arisen while their access to the lake fisheries has been diminished. This paper reviews these changes at the levels of the lake, the community, and the household. Fish-related economic activities are particularly important for women who are heads of households. These activities also afford married women greater independence than other activities. Women are responding to changes in access to the lake by working together at a community level.

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Wilson, D.C. 1991 "The Theory of Communicative Action and the Problem of the Commons" the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 26-29 September

Habermas' theory of communicative action offers a new way to understand the problems that lie at the heart of the commons dilemma. This paper begins an exploration of the different angle this theory offers on how people can work together to manage their own resources. It is also a simple introduction to Habermas' complex theory.

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Wilson, D.C. 1993 "Fisheries Management on Lake Victoria, Tanzania" paper presented at the African Studies Association, Boston, 7-11 December

This paper is a broad overview of the fisheries management situation on Lake Victoria based on data gathered in 1992 and 1993. It describes the fisheries and reviews such issues as the arrival of the Nile perch processing plants, trawling, the organization of the Tanzanian fisheries management agencies. Initial survey data is reported, as well as the results of initial qualitative interviews with key actors. The main points appear in the JARUS paper.

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Wilson, D.C. 1993 "Fisher's Attitudes towards Management on Lake Victoria: Preliminary Findings" paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society, Portland OR 31 August - 4 September

As the name implies, this paper focuses on the attitudes toward management of the small-scale fishers on Lake Victoria in Tanzania. The main points appear in the JARUS paper.

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Wilson, D.C. 1998 Markets, Networks, and Risk: an Analysis of Labor Remuneration in the Lake Victoria Fishing Industry Sociological Forum 13(3):425-456

This study applies concepts from Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action to the problem of identifying the circumstances under which networks replace markets as the primary governance mechanism for economic activities. The suggestion derived from this theory is that markets govern economic activities tied to material phenomena, while networks control such activities when they are tied to social relationships. This suggestion is subjected to an empirical test. Labor transactions in the Lake Victoria fishing industry are used to test the hypothesis that risk factors arising from natural contingencies will distribute according to a risk market model, while those arising from social relationships will be distributed through a logic of social power tied to networks and identities. The hypothesis is generally supported by data on the effects of kinship and, more strongly, ethnicity.

Key words: fishing, Lake Victoria, Tanzania, risk, networks, Habermas, markets

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Wilson, D.C. and M. Medard 1996 "The Implications for Fisheries Management of the Changing Situation in Lake Victoria Fishing Communities: Preliminary Findings" forthcoming in the Journal of African Rural and Urban Studies

This paper reports findings from the first four beaches visited by the Tanzanian survey. It combines qualitative and quantitative data to give a comprehensive picture of what small-scale fishers think about: the lake resource, the future of the fishery, fisheries management options, and the role of the government. In spite of the fact that the paper reports only initial findings, most of what it reports were confirmed by later findings on the seven other beaches where the research took place.

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Wilson, D. C. 1996 The Critical Human Ecology of the Lake Victoria Fishing Industry Michigan State University Dissertation

The theoretical tradition of Human Ecology provides tools for the holistic and comprehensive understanding of human society's interaction with its natural environment. The tradition has been weakened, however, by an inadequate specification of the boundary between the social and the natural. Critical Theory, particularly that of Jurgen Habermas, offers concepts which address this inadequacy and allow these two disparate traditions to inform one another.

In this dissertation, Habermas' systems theory is presented and critiqued, and then used as the basis of a new approach to Human Ecology. This critical Human Ecology describes how the social system finds itself in contradiction with its natural environment and how such contradictions must be addressed by adaptive changes in economic institutions. These adaptive changes are related to the ways actors construct their environment, the constraints on potential change, and the bargaining processes which implement the needed changes. The extent to which changes in institutions can be legitimated, monitored, and enforced determines the degree to which the changes can be maintained.

Critical Human Ecology is contrasted with New Institutional Economics which is the dominant paradigm currently used to understand natural resource issues. These two approaches agree in many ways, but do make diverse predictions about some empirical outcomes, making a comparative test possible. Such a test is made using data on labor transactions on Lake Victoria. The critical Human Ecology perspective is found to more accurately predict outcomes in these labor transactions.

After meeting this empirical test, critical Human Ecology is used to organize a description of the fishing industry on Lake Victoria in Tanzania which illuminates the key fisheries management issues. The biological situation in the fishery, and proposed changes in fishing regulations and practices are reviewed. Then the key groups that must be involved in any bargaining to create these changes, and their economic and social relationships, are described. Finally, the attitudes of the main groups toward potential changes in fisheries regulations are reported.

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Harris, C.K., D.S. Wiley, and D.C. Wilson 1996 "Tensions in the Management of the Lake Victoria Fisheries" forthcoming in the Journal of African Rural and Urban Studies

this is where an abstract will go.

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Theaodo, D. P. 1996 The Economic Sociology of Kenya's Lake Victoria Beach Communities: The Intersection of the Economy, Gender, and Communal Social Relations Dissertation: Michigan State University

Across societies, individuals determine which method of economic participation in their social system is most accessible to them within the challenging social situation of their everyday existence. An important, essential, but frequently overlooked and usually unarticulated factor of these economic strategies is the function which communal social relations, (that is, the interpersonal connections between individuals and/or groups within and across social enclaves), play in facilitating or inhibiting the economic success of those strategies for survival. As Swedberg and Granovetter state:

Economic action is a form of social action

Economic action is socially situated; and

Economic institutions are social constructions

These framing parameters have been infrequently applied to empirical research efforts, and are particularly lacking in research which has explored individuals' economic livelihoods (e.g. Ferber and Nelson, 1993; Swedberg et al., op cit.; Smelser et. al, 1994). Aglietta (1988) states:

[dominant economic theory has an] inability to express the social content of economic relations, and consequently [it fails] to interpret the [social] forces and consequences at work in the economic process

To highlight the critical role that communal social relations play in those universally pursued strategies, this research conducted at almost 20 of Kenya's Lake Victoria beaches communities, focuses on the socioeconomic activities of those involved in small-scale and micro-sized economies (SSEs and MSEs), usually predominated by women (Downing, 1991), in the fishery markets at the beach level. These conceptual economic delimiters of Swedberg et. al (1992) and Aglietta (1988) combined with a theoretical perspective of gendered sociology frame this work.

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Wilson, D. C. and S. Jentoft Structure, Agency and Embeddedness: Sociological Approaches to Fisheries Management Institutions Forthcoming in Symes, D. (Ed) Alternative Management Systems Oxford: Blackwell Science

We relate fisheries management institutions to sociological theory in terms of one of its central debates - agency and structure. This is the question of whether society is best conceptualized as the product of the interaction of atomized individuals (agency) or as supra-individual social facts that are irreducible to individual actions (structure). Structural approaches are less adequate than agency approaches in both the clarity of their basic concepts and the elegance of their models. Agency approaches, however, have never succeeded in defining and modeling many consequential social phenomena such as culture, norms, organization and power. Sociologists have begun to use the concept of embeddedness to bridge this gap. Approaches to fisheries management have emphasized either agency or structure and produced two quite different accounts. Studies emphasizing agency define the management problem as how best to design institutions to avert the tragedy of the commons. Studies emphasizing structure focus on how management decisions more often reflect social power than rational institutional arrangements. We seek to combine the two through an embeddedness-based strategy. We define embeddedness as primarily a cultural phenomenon: the breadth of shared understandings drawn upon in communicative interactions. We suggest that management can be analyzed by tracing five forms of meaningful communications that differ in their degree of embeddedness: rational communication, prestige, influence, money and authority. We illustrate this approach using examples drawn from Atlantic coast fisheries management.

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Participation by stakeholders in fisheries management has become widely accepted. It is argued to increase both the  effectiveness and the legitimation of management. Many empirical studies of fisheries management, however, have found that political struggles over the profits from fishing are what drives management decisions. The present paper looks to sociological debates over agency, structure, and embeddedness for guidance about how to theorize the social dimensions of fisheries management in a way that considers both the need for participation and the political economy of the fishery. It argues that focusing on the effect that economic and political structures have on communications between stakeholder groups is one way to link participation and political economy. The political economy the Lake Victoria fishing industry is analyzed by comparing areas that are deeply involved with the international fish  market with areas that are still isolated. The paper evaluates  potentials for participatory management by asking how these changes in economic and political realities affect: stakeholders' claims about the resource; social distances that affect communications; and blocks to participation of various groups. The paper conclude that management measures are undercut when they ignore the needs of groups who are being excluded from the resource. Effective management is possible, but would require changes in the current approaches of the agencies responsible.

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D. C. Wilson and B. J. McCay 1998 "How the Participants Talk About "Participation" in Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management"  Ocean and Coastal Management  41(1):41-61  

The present paper asks how participants in the management discourse refer to industry participation. The analysis is based on 173 documents including interviews with participants, transcripts of the meetings of management agencies, articles, letters, memos, and postings on a recreational fisheries Internet chat room. Six groups of interpretations are suggested. "Working Together" draws on the idea that participation means pulling together to make management work. "Source of Accountability" means that because of participation people must be ready to explain their actions. "Mobilization" consists of the ways people talk about participation as mobilizing people who share their management goals. "Distrust" suggests that participation is a source of obstruction to the management process or, conversely, it is the co-optation of the industry by the management system. "Proper Process" suggests that participation should involve open communications or, conversely, that participation comes through proper channels. Finally "Representation" suggests that participation should mean that the "will of the majority" prevails or, conversely, participation is the activity of those who have established credible claims to speak on behalf of interest groups. The paper outlines each of these categories in detail and provides illustrations. It concludes with a discussion of the relationship between participation and legitimacy.

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Wilson, D.C. and B.J. McCay 1998 "A Governance Model for Environmental Policy" paper presented at  Crossing Boundaries, The Seventh Common Property Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Vancouver, B.C. 10-14 June

This paper outlines a theory of institutions based on cultural embeddedness that draws on concepts from Habermas' theory of communicative action. It specifies critical dimensions of institutions as a unit of analysis that can be used in empirical work. We begin with a concept of agency and structure in which institutions play a mediating role between individuals and the social structure. We then differentiate between a social structure that reflects conflict and competition between groups and a social system which emerges from actors' needs to coordinate action. To coordinate action, all institutions must be embedded to some degree in shared cultural meanings. The social system is made up of five "governance mechanisms" that are characterized by different degrees of cultural embeddedness. These mechanisms contribute to the maintenance of institutional patterns in specific ways and partly determine the effectiveness of institutions in different situations. Based on these governance mechanisms, we suggest a number of testable hypotheses about how institutions function in different situations.  

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The present paper is based on a collation of information, through both a literature review and an internet search, on North American programs that involve some kind of scientific collaboration between fishers and fisheries scientists. It identifies four basic models of such collaboration and offers examples of collaborative activities that seem to fit into each of them. The first model defers to the expertise of the scientist for all major decisions and creates a strong programmatic distinction between what is science, and shall be done by scientists, and what are other, related activities that can be carried out by others. Various kinds of tagging programs, fisher advisory boards, at-sea research collaboration and many other activities fit this model. The second model, traditional ecological knowledge, recognizes that fishers have available to them a unique, local knowledge of the resource that can make a supplementary contribution to fisheries science.  Several government, community and environmental groups are engaged in finding, recording and using this knowledge. The third model, competing constructions, sees collaborations on science as part of an ongoing contestation about the nature and condition of the resource that cannot help but be a part of and expresses the political and legal aspects of management. This is the model that most accurately describes the day-to-day activities of the various stakeholder groups that work with scientists. The fourth model, community science, is beginning to emerge through efforts at fisheries co-management. These programs involve aspects of the three other kinds of programs. They recognize and seek to incorporate the leadership of scientists, the importance of fisher’s knowledge, and the inherently political nature of management-related fisheries science.

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Fisheries management policies on Lake Victoria in Tanzania make an interesting case study of the environmental state.  Economic globalization and structural adjustment pressures have lead to the encouragement and protection of the fish export industry. This has contributed to the expansion of export processing plants to the point where they are capable of utilizing 87 percent of the estimated maximum sustainable yield of the Nile perch. The state agencies responsible for fisheries research and management are more directly affected by a second kind of globalization. Intense interest in the lake from international scientific and development groups, and the funding that has followed it, has meant that a very large portion of these agencies' budgets, including a most of the money used to support personnel, stem from external sources. These sources have their own competing ideas of what should be done with the management of the lake. Finally, local and regional fish traders, consumers, and fishers that are not tied to the export industry, resist fisheries management measures that are designed to respond to external demands. This paper relates the response of the Tanzanian government to these pressures to sociological theories of the state. The case study suggests that seeing the state as enabling the treadmill of production is the best approach to explaining its response. The paper draws on Habermas’ communicative system theory as a complementary approach to the treadmill of production that helps explain the role and mechanisms of ecological modernization.

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