Editorial: Literacies, education and development in fishing-dependent communities
Edward H. Allison, Tim M. Daw, Bryan Maddox · 2009
Development narratives on the world’s small-scale fishing communities emphasise the importance of the local, including informal and culturally embedded institutions regulating fishing activities; the local distribution, exchange and consumption of fish; knowledge systems that are learned and transmitted in a local cultural setting, and skills that are acquired by play and work within the community (Pinkerton 1989; Berkes et al . 2000). Beyond the local, state management agencies and their advisors now acknowledge the importance of situated, tacit knowledge for the legitimacy and efficacy of local institutions for fishery governance. However, there are risks associated with a construction of the local that does not integrate the impacts of institutions, technologies and changes that are present on national and global scales, and this is very much the case in the fields of literacy and communication (Brandt and Clinton 2002). The technologies, organisation and management of fisheries exist in a fast-changing world that is also shaped by external, often globalised, social, economic, environmental and political influences. These include state rules on access and management of fishery resources, the increased reach of urban and global markets – both for fishery products, and for the labour of people originating from fishing communities; and new information and knowledge systems. Responding to such change creates new opportunities as well as threats. Opportunities exist for economic development through wider market access, and application of new technologies and systems of collective resource management. However, local autonomy and self-determination may be threatened - increased intensity of resource use may risk ecological overexploitation, and equity and community cohesion can be threatened by technological and educational divides. Within these processes, people’s use of knowledge, literacy and communicative competencies are critical. It is an often repeated statement (but rarely empirically verified) that access to education, schooling and – by inference – literacy levels are lower in fishing communities then they are in the population at large. This is clearly important for the potential and efficacy of fisheries interventions and the