Captains of Finance: An inquiry into market-based fisheries management

Jeppe Engset Høst

Captains of Finance: An inquiry into market-based fisheries management

Jeppe Engset Høst

SAXO-Institute - Archaeology, Ethnology, Greek & Latin, History

Abstract

In just ten years the majority of fish resources around Denmark have been privatized and allocated to individual vessel owners. The radical novelty in market-based fisheries management is that the central management object ”fish quotas” can be traded and leased through a market. With the new market for fish quotas as the central management principle, the Danish fisheries sector has witnessed a drastic socio-economic and cultural transformation. This transformation is analyzed, discussed and documented in this thesis. In that regard, the thesis is an ethnological contribution to a research field dominated by economists and resource managers, and the thesis point out a significant and persistent gap between the managers and what they manage.
For the fishers the new market-based system introduced a new kind of freedom. After decades of being “clients of science”, a number of vessel owners reemerged as “captains of finance”. With the new market-based system these “captains of finance” have expanded and reorganized their fishing operations on the account of many others closing down and selling their “quotas”. However, fish quota is no ordinary commodity, and environmental fluctuations, political decisions and growing monopolies pose just as big a risk as opportunities to gain.

Original language	English

Place of Publication	Købenahvn
Publisher	Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet
Number of pages	203
Publication status	Published - Mar 2013

Keywords

Faculty of Humanities
Fisheries managment

Cite this

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abstract = "In just ten years the majority of fish resources around Denmark have been privatized and allocated to individual vessel owners. The radical novelty in market-based fisheries management is that the central management object ”fish quotas” can be traded and leased through a market. With the new market for fish quotas as the central management principle, the Danish fisheries sector has witnessed a drastic socio-economic and cultural transformation. This transformation is analyzed, discussed and documented in this thesis. In that regard, the thesis is an ethnological contribution to a research field dominated by economists and resource managers, and the thesis point out a significant and persistent gap between the managers and what they manage. For the fishers the new market-based system introduced a new kind of freedom. After decades of being “clients of science”, a number of vessel owners reemerged as “captains of finance”. With the new market-based system these “captains of finance” have expanded and reorganized their fishing operations on the account of many others closing down and selling their “quotas”. However, fish quota is no ordinary commodity, and environmental fluctuations, political decisions and growing monopolies pose just as big a risk as opportunities to gain.",

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