Braving Troubled Waters: Sea Change in a Dutch Fishing Community

339 Pages·2009·3.417 MB·English

by  Rob van Ginkel

4 MARE PUbLiCA tion SERiES 4
This ethnographic study is about Dutch fisher folk’s engagements with erratic marine R Rob van Ginkel
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living resources, capricious markets and the vicissitudes of political interventions in the
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fishing industry from the early 18th century until the present day, with an emphasis on n

post-war developments. More specifically, it focuses on the owner-operators, deckhands, G
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fishermen’s wives and others involved in the fisheries of Texel, an island in the north- k
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western part of the Netherlands.
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The book attempts to situate their occupational community at the interface of local and
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(supra)-national processes and aims to show how the latter affect the socio-cultural a
fabric of the island’s fishing villages and prompt particular responses in the fishermen’s v
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perceptions and modes of action. It elucidates how they have been braving treacherous n
waters, in both a real and a metaphorically sense, for many decades. g

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Rob van Ginkel is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. r
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Braving Troubled Waters
4
Sea Change in a Dutch
ISBN 978 90 8964 087 1
Fishing Community
www.aup.nl
A         U          P     A         U          P    
BravingTroubledWaters
MARE PUBLICATION SERIES
MAREisaninterdisciplinarysocial-scienceinstitute studyingtheuseand
managementofmarineresources.Itwasestablishedin2000bytheUni-
versityofAmsterdamandWageningenUniversityintheNetherlands.
MARE’s mandate is to generate innovative, policy-relevant research on
marine and coastal issues that is applicable to both North and South. Its
programmeisguidedbyfourcorethemes:fisheriesgovernance,maritime
workworlds,integratedcoastalzonemanagement (ICZM),andmaritime
risk.
In addition to the publication series, MARE organises conferences and
workshops and publishes a social-science journal called Maritime Studies
(MAST).VisittheMAREwebsiteathttp://www.marecentre.nl.
Series Editors
SveinJentoft,UniversityofTromsø,Norway
MaartenBavinck,UniversityofAmsterdam,theNetherlands
Previously Published
LeontineE.Visser(ed.),ChallengingCoasts.TransdisciplinaryExcursionsinto
IntegratedCoastalZoneDevelopment,2004(isbn9053566821)
Jeremy Boissevain and Tom Selwyn (eds.), Contesting the Foreshore. Tour-
ism,Society,andPoliticsontheCoast,2004(isbn9053566945)
JanKooiman,MaartenBavinck,SveinJentoft,RogerPullin,(eds.),Fishfor
Life.InteractiveGovernanceforFisheries,2005(isbn9053566864)
Braving Troubled
Waters
Sea Change in a Dutch Fishing
Community
Rob van Ginkel
MARE Publication Series No. 4
Amsterdam University Press
Coverillustration:RobvanGinkel
Coverdesign:Neon,designandcommunications,SabineMannel,Amsterdam
Lay-out:japes,Amsterdam
isbn9789089640871
e-isbn9789048508136
nur741
©AmsterdamUniversityPress,Amsterdam2009
Allrightsreserved.Withoutlimitingtherightsundercopyrightreservedabove,no
partofthisbookmaybereproduced,storedinorintroducedintoaretrievalsystem,
ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans(electronic,mechanical,photocopying,
recordingorotherwise)withoutthewrittenpermissionofboththecopyrightown-
erandtheauthorofthebook.
Contents
Preface 7
Introduction 11
1. TheGoldenKnoll:People,PlaceandHistory 35
2. TrimmingtheSailstotheWind 55
3. BetweentheDevilandtheDeepBlueSea 105
4. BoomingBusiness:TheRiseofBeamTrawling 147
5. CatchKingsandQuotaBusters 187
6. CommissionedCooperation:PlentifulandLeanYears 241
Conclusions:SeasofTrouble 291
Appendices 307
Notes 311
References 317
Index 333
5

Preface
‘How did you become so interested in doing research among fisherfolk?’
This has been a recurring question ever since I began developing an
anthropological interest in the occupational world of commercial fishing
in the early 1980s. The answer is ‘by sheer coincidence’. Before enrolling
as an anthropology student at the University of Amsterdam in 1982, I
knew little about ‘fishing cultures’. For one of the courses I took, I hap-
penedtoreadafascinatingstudyonfolkreligioninaNorthYorkshirefish-
ing village (Clark 1982). It captured my imagination and I started to read
more ethnographic literature on fishing and fishing villages. That got me
hooked,touseanappropriatemetaphor.IdecidedthatIwouldeventually
conductresearchinafishingcommunitysomewhereinEurope.Through
a series of contingencies, I ended up doing so in 1986, close to home in
the Netherlands. An ongoing conflict in an occupational community of
shellfishplantersattractedmyattentionanddrewmetothevillageofYer-
seke to conduct fieldwork. While working on my MAthesis, it struck me
that maritime anthropologists did not have a journal of their own, which
meant that their publications were widely scattered in scholarly journals.
Perhaps naïvely, I thought that this void should be filled. WithJojada Ver-
rips, I founded and edited the journal Maritime Anthropological Studies
(MAST), the first issue of which appeared in 1988. By then, I was firmly
committed to the field of fishing cultures. After graduation, I conducted
research for my PhD thesis in the fishing villages of the Dutch island of
Texelfromlate1989untilearly1991,obtainingmydegreewithadisserta-
tion that was published in 1993. It focuses on the local fishermen’s long-
term adaptive strategies in view of ongoing debates concerning common
pool resource use. Although I subsequently ended up doing mostly non-
fisheries-related scholarly work, I also continued to occupy myself with
maritime studies and taught undergraduate courses in maritime anthro-
pology.Whentheoccasionarose,IreturnedtoTexelinAugust2005fora
second stint of prolonged fieldwork in the local community of fishermen
withtheaimofexaminingtheiroccupationalcultureandpracticeorwhat
theFrenchdub‘métier’.Thisnotionreferstomuchmorethanjustajobor
anoccupation.Itconjuresupanimageofanactivityatwhichoneexcels,a
vocation,anencompassingandexistentialwayoflifeandmakingaliving.
This ethnography details Texel fisherfolk’s engagements with erratic
marine living resources, capricious markets and the vicissitudes of politi-
cal interventions in the fishing industry from the early 18th century until
7
thepresentday,withanemphasisonpost-wardevelopments.Thebookis
empirically grounded, historically specific and theoretically informed. It
attempts to situate the occupational community at the interface of local
and (supra-)national processes and shows how the latter affect the socio-
cultural fabric of the island’s fishing villages and prompt particular re-
sponses in the fishermen’s perceptions and modes of action. Thus,
althoughthisisacommunitystudy,Iwilloccasionallywanderofftoevents
occurring at other levels of integration that impinged upon the local fish-
ingindustry.Nevertheless,thebook’sproponentsareTexel’sowner-opera-
tors, deckhandsand others involved inthe island’sfishingarena past and
present. Even though women often play important roles in family firms,
fishing per se is a male world. I dodevote attention to fishermen’swives,
but I am aware that there is a gender bias in this book. In my defence, I
canonly saythatwomenare conspicuouslyabsent from theofficialmeet-
ingsinwhichfishingandfishingpoliticsarediscussedandthattheytend
tostrongly underplaytheirowncontributionstothefirmsandtotherun-
ning of households. Despite this lacuna, I am confident that the present
bookilluminatesthebuildingblocksoffishingasanoccupation.
Many people have supported my work and helped me in various ways.
To the fisherfolk of Texel, I owe much gratitude. They generously shared
theirknowledgewithmeandmademefeelwelcomeintheirmidst.Ifelt
at ease, which made it easy to empathize with them. Many of them sup-
pliedmewithpublishedandunpublisheddocuments,photographs,video-
tapes and other materials. Special thanks are due to the skipper-owners
whowerekindenoughtotakemeaboardtheirbeamtrawlersforfourfish-
ing trips. These occasions provided invaluable information on work, fish-
ing tactics and relations and the atmosphere on board ship. I was per-
mitted unrestricted access to the archives of the local fishermen’s
association, the Fishery Cooperative, the local Producer Organization and
the Texel co-management group. This is indicative of their leadership’s
open-mindedness. Additional support came from a number of local insti-
tutions, including the municipal archive in Den Burg and the Maritime
and Beachcombers Museum in Oudeschild, which gave freely of their in-
formation, facilities and coffee. Librarians, archivists and museum staff
elsewhere were also helpful. The Netherlands Organization for Scientific
Research (NWO) enabled the conducting of research on Texel (project
numbers 500-276-202 and 400-04-702), and the Amsterdam School for
SocialScienceResearchco-sponsoredmyfieldwork.NWOalsoprovideda
publication grant. I gratefully acknowledge their generous financial sup-
port. Two anonymous peer reviewers, and the series editors Maarten Ba-
vinck and Svein Jentoft, made it very clear that I needed to reduce the
length ofthe original manuscript considerably to dispose of excess detail.
Althoughthisinvolvedthelossofmanyadarlingparagraph,Imustadmit
that they were right. I am also indebted to Harriet Impey, who cheerfully
fashionedmyEnglish.
8 BravingTroubledWaters
Zeewijk,ourresidenceduringmysecondstintofresearch,providedasti-
mulating environment for writing and simultaneously conducting field-
work. My partner Margreeth and I, and our daughters Emma and Mette,
thoroughlyenjoyedlivingontheislandandmakingnewfriends.Wetruly
felt at home. Owing to a stroke of good luck, we were able to extend our
stayonTexelforanotheryear,and,subsequently,wedecidedto‘gonative’
completely.Thisbookisatributetotheisland,itsinhabitantsandparticu-
larlyitsfisherfolk,whoforgenerationshavebeenbravingtroubledwaters.
Preface 9