Overview

Peru's fisheries are in crisis as overfishing and ecological changes produce dramatic fluctuations in fish stocks. To address this crisis, government officials have claimed that fishers need to become responsible producers who create economic advantages by taking better care of the ocean ecologies they exploit. In Coastal Lives, Maximilian Viatori and HÉctor Bombiella argue that this has not made Peru's fisheries more sustainable. Through a fine-grained ethnographic and historical account of Lima's fisheries, the authors reveal that new government regimes of entrepreneurial agency have placed overwhelming burdens on the city's impoverished artisanal fishers to demonstrate that they are responsible producers and have created failures that can be used to justify closing these fishers' traditional use areas and to deny their historically sanctioned rights. The result is a critical examination of how neoliberalized visions of nature and individual responsibility work to normalize the dispossessions that have enabled ongoing capital accumulation at the cost of growing social dislocations and ecological degradation. The authors' innovative approach to the politics of constructing and degrading coastal lives will interest a wide range of scholars in cultural anthropology, environmental humanities, and Latin American studies, as well as policymakers and anyone concerned with inequality, global food systems, and multispecies ecologies.

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9780816542390

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Reviews

Coastal Lives presents both a brilliant ethnography of the boom and bust faced by the fishing industry in Peru and a historical analysis of the events and policies that led to this unstable industry. --Isaac Barclay, Anthropologica Coastal Lives is a welcome addition to the literature on fishing in Peru, providing insight into two understudied factors: the history of the fishing industry after the expropriation of 1973, when most existing histories stop, and the experiences of artisanal and small-scale fishers. --Nathan Clarke, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Through a compelling account of the contemporary state of Peruvian fisheries, Coastal Lives reveals the significance of the experiences of artisanal fishers to thinking about nature, class, politics, and climate change. Viatori and Bombiella have written an engaging and valuable ethnography of great interest to students and scholars of anthropology, Latin American studies, and political ecology. --Shaylih R. Muehlmann, author of When I Wear My Alligator Boots While there have been multiple books demonstrating the problems with the tragedy of the commons paradigm, this one takes the analysis to a new level with its historical detail and the way the authors never lose sight of the complexity of the relationships among natural resource fluctuations, state regulations, political ideologies, and the fisheries' participants. --David Griffith, East Carolina University

Through a compelling account of the contemporary state of Peruvian fisheries, Coastal Lives reveals the significance of the experiences of artisanal fishers to thinking about nature, class, politics, and climate change. Viatori and Bombiella have written an engaging and valuable ethnography of great interest to students and scholars of anthropology, Latin American studies, and political ecology. - Shaylih R. Muehlmann, author of When I Wear My Alligator Boots While there have been multiple books demonstrating the problems with the tragedy of the commons paradigm, this one takes the analysis to a new level with its historical detail and the way the authors never lose sight of the complexity of the relationships among natural resource fluctuations, state regulations, political ideologies, and the fisheries' participants. - David Griffith, East Carolina University

"Through a compelling account of the contemporary state of Peruvian fisheries, Coastal Lives reveals the significance of the experiences of artisanal fishers to thinking about nature, class, politics, and climate change. Viatori and Bombiella have written an engaging and valuable ethnography of great interest to students and scholars of anthropology, Latin American studies, and political ecology."" - Shaylih R. Muehlmann, author of When I Wear My Alligator Boots ""While there have been multiple books demonstrating the problems with the tragedy of the commons paradigm, this one takes the analysis to a new level with its historical detail and the way the authors never lose sight of the complexity of the relationships among natural resource fluctuations, state regulations, political ideologies, and the fisheries' participants."" - David Griffith, East Carolina University"

Author Information

Maximilian Viatori is an associate professor of anthropology and associate chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University. He is author of One State, Many Nations: Indigenous Rights Struggles in Ecuador. HÉctor Bombiella is a lecturer of anthropology in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University.

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