The Intersection of Global Trade, Social Networks, and Fisheries

“The intersection of global trade, social networks, and fisheries”

Kenneth A. Frank

Katrina Mueller

Ann Krause

William Taylor

Nancy Leonard

Direct correspondence to

Ken Frank

Associate Professor of

Measurement and Quantitative Methods

Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education

And

Associate Professor of

Fisheries and Wildlife

Room 460 Erickson Hall

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824-1034

phone: 517-355-9567 fax: 517-353-6393

http://www.msu.edu/~kenfrank/

Globalization and Networks

In this chapter we explore globalization through networks. Of course globalization can be described in terms of networks of trade between countries and as executed by multinational corporations (Breiger 1981;Chase-Dunn and Grimes 1995;Kim and Shin 2002). And fisheries ecosystems have long been characterized in terms of networks of predator and prey relationships between taxon or species (e.g., Cohen, Beaver, and Cousins 1993a;Gaedke 1995;Krause, Frank, Mason, Ulanowicz, and Taylor). But here we will explore how human social networks mediate between global economic exchanges and the dynamics of aquatic ecosystems. Thus we extend critiques of the globalization literature for lack of attention to individual agency (e.g., Schechter 1999, page 62) by calling attention to the effects of human relationships in globalization. Ultimately our focus allows us to integrate theories related to social networks (e.g., social capital) as well as inform policy and management of, and research on, fisheries and their associated ecosystems.

What is globalization?

We define globalization as an increase in the rate of exchange of resources and information across geographic regions and cultures. Though communities have been interdependent through trade as long as people have traversed the oceans, our current awareness of globalization suggests that we are increasingly globalized – that the resources and related actions in distant regions of the world have an unrivaled immediacy in the lives of most people (One World? 1997; Harrison 1996; Kim and Shin 2002). That is, exchanges across vast regions increasingly are realized more rapidly, occur more frequently and require fewer middlemen. Furthermore, actions affecting the environment in one region of the world have increasing implications for those in locales previously considered distant.

With globalization comes an increased distribution of aquatic species (e.g., cod, salmon, tropical fish). This is attributed to increased demand associated with population increases and recognition of aquatic species as a healthy dietary staple or valuable economic resource or status symbol, and with increased technology for preserving and shipping that reduce transportation costs. Furthermore, globalization is associated with increased global trade of non-aquatic resources that can then affect local aquatic ecosystems.

Globalization has generally been associated with changes in aquatic ecosystems (Safina 1998). Many have noted that with globalization, habitats have been destroyed (e.g., the pacific northwest -- Gilden 1999), exotic species have been introduced (e.g., zebra mussels in the Great Lakes – Vanderploeg, Nalepa, Mills, Holeck, Liebig, Grigorvich, and Ojaveer 2002), and fish stocks have been depleted (e.g., cod -- Finlayson and McCay 1998). On the other hand, others argue that changes in ecosystems are primarily due to increased population, and that increases in technology and resource sharing are benefits of globalization because they facilitate more efficient use of aquatic resources (Harding 1969).

In some sense, aquatic systems are no different from land resources, political governance, and other social and biological systems affected by global changes in economic landscapes. And yet our awareness of the link between globalization and aquatic systems is perhaps pronounced because the ships that transport globalized trade come in direct contact with the resource – water. For example, tankers carrying increased oil exports from the Caspian Sea as part of globalization served as a vector for zebra mussel invasions that altered ecosystems in the Great Lakes (e.g., Ricciardi and Rasmussen 1998).

Critically, the theoretical link between globalization and aquatic ecosystems is strikingly distant and a-social. It is as though global forces directly penetrate aquatic ecosystems with little thought regarding how these processes are mediated by human action (Schechter 1999). Thus the zebra mussel invasion is attributed to ballast water and changes in shipping technology and patterns (Ricciardi and Rasmussen 1998), the decline of the cod industry is attributed to increased competition across the Atlantic(Finlayson and McCay 1998), and the decline of the habitats in the Pacific Northwest is attributed to increased demand for salmon and the competition of aquaculture (Finlayson and McCay 1998). In this a-social view, people at best are merely homoeconomicus, rationally reacting en masse to global economic forces beyond their control.

The macro-economic forces described in the preceding paragraph may well cause some changes in aquatic ecosystems. But even when they do so, their effects are transmitted, shaped, and mediated by people. How do the actions of shippers and official monitoring agents contribute to the zebra mussel invasion of the Great Lakes? In the face of global competition and demand, why do some salmon fishers of the Pacific Northwest resort to exploitive fishing techniques such as trawling (Gilden 1999; Vanderploeg, Nalepa, Mills, Holeck, Liebig, Grigorvich, and Ojaveer 2002) and cod fishers wipe out the fisheries on the North American eastern seaboard, while the lobster fishers of Maine preserve their fisheries and livelihoods (Acheson 1988, 2002)?

The answers lie in human action, exchange, and relationships as depicted in figure 1. Some have identified formal political institutions that organized societies can implement to control fishing and preserve fisheries and their ecosystems. For example, the Canadian government engaged in extensive efforts to involve cod fishers in assessing the fishing stock and in educating them as to the effects of their actions on the fishing stock (Finlayson and McCay 1998). These formal institutions are represented by the cylinder that contains human relations in figure 1. Others point to collective values and beliefs that govern engagement with aquatic resources. For example, Maine lobster fishers strongly agree with and adhere to the required release of gravid female lobsters, or notched females (previously found to be gravid), in order to lower potential impact on lobster reproduction and sustainability. Similarly, the Chisasibi Cree (of Northern Ontario) hunter’s code speaks strongly against wastage, and tribal leaders discourage overhunting by claiming it represents a lack of respect for caribou (Berkes 1998). Such collective values are represented by the group thought bubble in figure 1.

Insert Figure 1 about here

To these human elements we add networks. Granovetter (1985) argues that economic action is invariably embedded in social relations. This applies across a range of seemingly economic action, from the cozy gem trade embedded in Jewish enclaves in New York (Coleman 1988) to provision of financial support from kin and friends (Wellman and Wortley 1990) to expectedly arms length transactions such as those of French bankers (Frank and Yasumoto 1998). These networks are represented by the lines connecting the actors in figure 1. A key point here is that networks are ubiquitous, existing wherever a relation between two actors is possible, and, at the same time, they are not as tangible as the written documents of formal political institutions or the aggregate of perceptions defining collective values and beliefs.

If networks are ubiquitous and yet ephemeral, how can we use the metaphor and idea of networks to understand human action? A corollary of Granovetter’s thesis is that the underlying structure of the social network will affect how a social system reacts to external changes and disturbances (e.g., Frank and Fahrbach 1999). As a general example, internal fragmentation is likely to be exacerbated by an increased rate of external disturbances. As a particular example, existing social cleavages based on location and type of gear (trawling versus trolling) among fishers in the Pacific Northwest were exacerbated by increased global competition (Gilden 1999);. As a second general example, highly centralized networks may effectively diffuse information but may be susceptible to extreme variability when central actors are exposed to frequent external changes. In a particular of this example, the tribal leaders of the Chisasibi may be able to disseminate information and control behavior quickly, but rapid changes in the social system can occur with a changeover in tribal leadership. Most generally, the social structure of any system can be understood as one form of systemic response to forces that place uneven stress on the members of the system.

The embeddedness of economic transactions in interpersonal networks plays a particularly important role in light of globalization. When previously local exchange comes to include distant participants the market is expanded beyond the realm of the local social network. As a result, information is critical to new transactions in the market (Granovetter 1985; Burt 2000). And yet information is particularly limited because of the distance between the trading parties and the lack of mediators of information. Furthermore, exchanges between distant parties may be unstable to the extent that there is not a long history of exchange and the parties are of different cultures and are exposed to different economic influences (Krempel and Plumper 2003).

When information is limited and conditions are unstable, exchange tends to become more embedded in social networks because others in the network can provide unique and valuable information or access to resources as a form of insurance in case of catastrophe (Granovetter 1975; Frank and Yasumoto 1998; Lin 2001). This suggests a paradox of globalization; globalization implies economic exchange between geographically, culturally and socially distant parties, yet globalization accentuates the extent to which such exchanges are embedded in interpersonal social networks. This is not to say that exchange will be concentrated within local communities when external opportunities present themselves. Instead how local actors participate in globalized trade will be contingent on local networks.

The link between globalization and local networks follows naturally from the recognition that globalization and ecosystems can be described in network terms. That is, if globalization is a set of international trade and exchange relationships among countries or corporate actors, and if an ecosystem encompasses a set of predatory/competitive relationships among taxon as in a food web, then links between these two networks must be mediated by a set of actors who engage in the relationships associated with globalization and who also interact with the ecosystem. And these actors and their relationships typically consist of people who extract resources from aquatic ecosystems and then enter them into the system of potentially international trade. Thus the network approach can bridge the distinction between ecological and social science (Hollingshead 1940). Pragmatically, the network approach informs management, for which there is an emerging recognition to understand and engage resource users in their social contexts (Berkes and Folke 1998; Blumenthal and Jannink 2000; Conway and others; Holling 1995; Lal, Lim-Applegate, and Scoccimarro 2001; Lee 1993; McDonough, Cobb, and Holecek 1987).

In the next section we will explore in theory how small, local, human networks affect the way in which social systems use and impact aquatic resources in the face of globalization. We will then present three case studies that typify some of the processes we describe. We then present a set of analytic tools that might be applied to study how social capital is manifest through social networks of fishers. In the conclusion we emphasize the need to understand human action in terms of human social networks and draw implications for fisheries managers and scientists.

Social Capital of Human Networks

We use social capital to explore how resources flow through human networks. Social capital can be defined as the potential to access resources through social relations (Bourdieu 1986;Coleman 1988; Lin 2001; Portes, 1998; Putnam 2000; Woolcock 1998)[1]. Thus a new lobster fisher may draw on his family’s longstanding presence in the community to access important information to improve his catch, a fisher’s wife may draw on her relationship for financial support or child care while her husband is at sea (Conway, Gilden, and Zvonkovic), or a cod fisher may draw on kinship ties to share gear (Faris 1972).

Though stated at the level of the individual, the manifestation of social capital has implications for how communities manage common resources. When members of a community share resources through social relations they reduce the need to invest in the infrastructure of other institutions (e.g., a legal system, formal organizations and formal markets) that would otherwise be required to facilitate the flow of resources (Coleman 1990). This is especially important for small fishing communities that may have limited resources.

Because social capital applies at multiple levels of social organization (Bourdieu 1986; Coleman 1990; Gabbay and Leenders, 1999) it has important potential for policy and management. On one hand, social capital attends to the rationality of resource allocations among individuals. But it also speaks to systemic properties that can facilitate such allocations. Thus though the theory of social capital has important value for basic research, in the last section we will draw on the social capital paradigm to help managers help members of communities manage common resources.

Manifestation of social capital also accentuates the value of social relationships. Thus when members of a community access resources through social relations they come to identify more strongly with others with whom they have social relationships, and potentially the community in which the relationships are embedded (Frank 2002; Lawler and Yoon 1998). In turn they are more inclined to extract natural resources with an appreciation for the general value of the resource to the community. Thus communities which cultivate social capital may engage in what Hardin (1968) referred to as “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon” action, and which can reduce potential tragedies of the commons (Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern 2003; Pretty 2003).

Nested in their small communities, fishers are very aware of the functions of social capital, even if they do not call it that by name. For example, the Scarlet family of merchants was highly successful among the cod fishers because John Scarlet valued the social obligation of his customers as much as their immediate cash (Faris 1972, chapter 9, especially pages 122-125). For example, he would forego immediate payment for equipment he lent in exchange for a future favor. This is a critical practice because the vicissitudes of the fishing industry sometimes leave fishers low on cash. Reflecting appreciation for the role of social capital in protecting the common resource, members of lobster gangs who cut the traps of encroaching gangs or individuals are at minimum condoned by others, who recognize that such behavior may help sustain the fishery and lobster stock (Acheson 1988).