Stigma and separation: parian status and community persistence in a scottish fishing village
This paper addresses the problem of how and why a small, dependent, and stigmatized occupational community may maintain its social identity long after the material basis for its existence has disappeared. It examines the life history of Ferryden, an east coast Scottish "fishing village" which does not fish. It will argue that the ideology ofthe fisherfolk, who have historically been marked as a distinct and low-prestige occupational, residential, and kin-based group, has been used to redefine and preserve village unity in the face of drastic ecological change. It argues further that this means of cultural adaptation contains the seeds of its own destruction and will, in the long run, prove fatal for community identity. Studies of occupational communities in complex societies suggest a strong link between work, residence, and social image (Horobin 1957; Dennis, Henriques et al. 1969; Lummis 1977). The example of Ferryden suggests the possibility ofa consider? able lag between the ecological and the symbolic transformation ofa community's status. The dynamics of boundary-making between fisherfolk and nonfisherfolk will be placed within a context of economic and political dominance and dependency in eastern Scotland. The discussion is based upon data collected during a year of fieldwork and archival research in Ferryden and Montrose in 1975 and 1976. Villages may now have surpassed tribes as archetypal anthropological units of study. They have become our preserve in the sociological wilderness of complex societies. There is even some concern that villages, like tribal societies, might be endangered (Mead 1980). However, the term "village" suffers from very nearly the same epistemological ambiguity as "tribe" (Fried 1975). That is, everyone uses it, and few bother to define it. Villages may be large or small, isolated or enmeshed in an urban matrix. Villages may house semi-autonomous rural cultivators or industrial wage-slaves. They may be found in tribal, capitalist, or socialist economies (Halpern 1967:122-123). Often, however, it is assumed that villages share a crucial attribute which is often considered to be lacking in the urban setting: a sense of community, of emotional as well as interactional boundedness. Cohen (1982) stresses this affective component in the introduction to his edited volume on rural British communities, which he aptly titles Belonging. However, the literature on British communities also informs us that not all who live in villages "belong" (Fleming 1979; Strathern 1981; Elias and Scotson 1965; Jenkins et al. 1960). As Strathern (1982:249) points out, "an unwarranted
Who owns the fish?Participatory Approaches in Puerto Rico?s Fisheries
This dissertation explores why Puerto Rico?s primary stakeholders? participation in fisheries management is tokenistic at best. While participation discourses are present in Puerto Rico?s fisheries management, a parallel discourse about ?overfishing? and the ?tragedy of the commons? has created an irreconcilable gap between primary stakeholders and the management institutions. As part of this study I collected data in an arena where various key actors (commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen and agency experts) face each other in the consultation processes, i.e. scoping meetings and public hearings. These encounters proved to occur on an (un)common ground where participation in fisheries policy-making was nearly impossible due to: 1) knowledge conflicts between users and institutional experts/scientists, where each party claimed to possess a more reliable body of knowledge about the marine resource, and 2) a generalised distrust based on different conceptualisations about marine resources and different views of whom, how and why it should (or should not) be managed. I argue that the tensions between the actors involved have led to at least two mechanisms to give the fisheries management apparatus an appearance of stability: 1) the institutionalisation of ignorance and 2) the use of fisheries regulations as a ?boundary object? to align the actors, and to fix their identities and responsibilities. In short, participation praxis has been reduced to a minimum given the fissures between scientific knowledge and the primary stakeholders? knowledge and between marine resource conservation and fishing activity. But above all, participation has been restricted because primary stakeholders distrust institutions that restrict small-scale/artisanal fishing while at the same endorsing construction development in vital coastal habitats. Such development, as understood by the fishermen, is against sound environmental management, given that it impacts negatively on essential ecosystems that are crucial to the fisheries well-being.The majority of the ethnographic research was done in a fishing community in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, over an eleven-month period. I collected qualitative data about commercial fishermen?s views on the marine resource and its management. I also documented how these fishermen negotiated ?space to manoeuvre? in the non-participatory environmental management scenario outlined above. The ?greening? of commercial fishermen?s discourses is a formidable example.Three months of ethnographic research were also conducted on nearby Culebra Island in an attempt to understand the Marine Protected Area (MPA) of El Canal Luis Pe�a (CLP) that is ?marketed? as a community-based natural reserve and a no-take zone. Although the MPA does not necessarily fulfil all the requirements to be considered a community-based environmental management programme, its creation was definitely a breakthrough in marine resource management participation processes when compared to the main island. Culebra?s MPA is an interesting and challenging case-study that not only contributes to the understanding of how environmental management and policy-making is done and transformed, but also contributes to the question of how, if at all, to put together the pieces when informants disagree.
Researches on Structural Factor Involvement in Oral Tribology
This study is focused on two ceramic materials, D.SING (Ivoclar) and VM13 (emphasis the VITA TN), frequently used in restorative dentistry practice and it comes to complete a full set of results obtained by the authors over several years of research on oral tribology with main influence on oral health. In this way there are involved more specific structural aspects of dental restorative ceramic materials quality as is shown in [1].