ABSTRACT
Today, rural fisherfolk confront a number of challenges in making a sustainable and fulfilling living from aquatic environments, including: climatic shifts which lead to a series of changes in the presence and behavior of marine resources, market fluctuation in the price of supplies and materials necessary to carry out variously scaled fishing operations, market fluctuation in the prices they receive for their products, and what are increasingly viewed as arbitrary and onerous rules which increasingly restrict the tools and timing of operations. It is the latter that is the primary concern in this chapter. This chapter focuses on the impacts of the state and its various policies on multi-generation fisherfolk. It begins with a consideration of key anthropological concepts from the anthropological literature that are necessary to any cross-cultural comparison or engagement (cultural relativism and ethnocentrism) and provides background information on the interrelated historical roots and state justification for management of local populations. These conceptual and historical understandings are then applied to the contemporary management of rural, small-scale fisheries, and hence peoples/communities in Canada and the United States. The chapter concludes with potential ramifications of this comparative analysis for contemporary and future fisheries management in both countries given the current political and legislative climate in each.
