ABSTRACT CLARK, TIMOTHY P. the Sea Is Empty. Fisheries and the Global Seafood Sector in the Age of Capital. a Socio-Historical A
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ABSTRACT CLARK, TIMOTHY P. The Sea is Empty. Fisheries and the Global Seafood Sector in the Age of Capital. A Socio-Historical Analysis. (Under the Direction of Dr. Stefano Longo). Within the broader sub-discipline of environmental sociology, more scholars have begun to focus on the socioecological dynamics of marine systems, coastal communities, and the seafood industry. Environmental sociologists refer to this waxing scholarship as marine sociology, or an area within environmental sociology that examines non-terrestrial socioecological problems (Longo and Clark 2016; Hannigan 2017). Increased attention towards marine issues and seafood systems is necessary because, for example, the ocean sustains food production, environmental stability, and economic security. Over the course of the 20th century, global fisheries underwent historic change due to substantive human driven withdrawals. Prior to the 20th century, many viewed the ocean as a limitless bounty of resources (Bolster 2012). However, within a period of a few decades following the Second World War, overfishing and biodiversity loss have occurred at levels that now threaten global ocean system stability (Clausen and Clark 2005). Indeed, while not all fish populations are overfished, few are what the United Nations Food and Agriculture Association (FAO) would call under-fished, or fished at a level that signals good prospects for long-term sustainability (FAO 2018). As writer and journalist Anna Badkhen (2018: 3) explains in her account of Senegalese fishers: “Entire trips go by during which the captain stares at the limp arms of his crew. The sea is broken, fishermen say. The sea is empty.” It is likely that Atlantic menhaden fishers across the United States’ Eastern seaboard issued similar frustrations as their catch rates plummeted in the late 19th century and, once-again and more damningly, in the mid-20th century. Similarly, fishers and boat captains in the Gulf of Thailand now, in more contemporary times, spend roughly 10 times as much effort to catch the same quantity of fish as they did a generation ago. This dissertation addresses these developmental trends in global fisheries, and unpacks their consequences for communities, labor relations, and ecologies. Three research articles comprise the empirical portions of the dissertation. The first piece utilizes time series regression techniques to analyze a panel data set for most of the world’s nations over time, between 1961 and 2010. Here, the goal was to assess the effects of capitalist-oriented, economic development on fishery footprint in greater empirical and theoretical detail than in prior studies. The second article utilizes methods in historical comparative analysis to assess the mechanisms and processes of development in a global North fishery known as the Atlantic menhaden fishery. The time span of the study begins in the 1850’s—around the industrialization of the fishery—and concludes in contemporary times. The fishery’s developmental history is organized into time periods based on the dominant, market usage of the fish: oil, fertilizer, livestock feed, and aquaculture feed. The conclusions of this study serve as a telling segue into the third and final dissertation article on labor abuses in Thai fisheries. The third article consists of a historical case study of the political economy and ecology of Thai fisheries since the onset of the neoliberal food regime. This study uses two political-economic analytical approaches, the tragedy of the commodity and global labor value chain, to uncover the implications of Thailand’s socioecologically precarious position in the global seafood value chain. The dissertation will conclude with a theoretical synthesis chapter that explicates the importance of my dissertation’s empirical and theoretical advancements for sociological studies of sustainability and marine issues. © Copyright 2021 by Timothy P. Clark All Rights Reserved The Sea is Empty. Fisheries and the Global Seafood Sector in the Age of Capital. A Socio- Historical Analysis. by Timothy P. Clark A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sociology Raleigh, North Carolina 2021 APPROVED BY: Stefano B. Longo Sarah Bowen Committee Chair Anna Manzoni Thomas E. Shriver DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to the late Murray Bookchin, whose essay “What is Social Ecology?” forever changed my outlook on the environment and our place within it. ii BIOGRAPHY Timothy P. Clark is an environmental sociologist with expertise in political economy, sustainability, and food system development. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my family, notably my parents, for supporting and believing in me during this process. I would like to thank my partner, Kristen, who provided love and support throughout these last several years. I am grateful for my friends—especially Matt, Emmy, Dara, Jordan, Anna, Michael, and Andy who have laughed and commiserated with me about this project, grad school, and life generally during my time in this program. I am indebted to librarians at multiple special collections libraries and community museums, many of whom are volunteers who helped me out along the way out of kindness and shared curiosity. I am also thankful for all the scholars and community members who study NC fisheries, as well as those with CEFS who enabled me to get to know local and regional supply chains to a greater extent. Finally, I would like to thank my dissertation committee: Drs. Anna Manzoni, Sarah Bowen, and Tom Shriver, and—my adviser—Stefano Longo. Stefano saw potential in me and is now a friend and colleague, and I am grateful for that. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Dissertation Chapters: Advancing Marine Sociology .................................................................... 1 Summary and Analysis of Sustainable Development .................................................................... 3 Foundations in Environmental Sociology ...................................................................................... 7 An Introduction to Metabolism .................................................................................................... 13 Social Metabolic Scholarship in the 21st Century ........................................................................ 15 Political Economy and Labor Relations ...................................................................................... 19 Research Methods ........................................................................................................................ 20 Overarching Argument ................................................................................................................ 23 Chapter 2: STUDY ONE—EXAMINING THE EFFECT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, REGION, AND TIME PERIOD ON THE FISHERIES FOOTPRINTS OF NATIONS (1961-2010) ........................................................................................................ 26 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 26 Background .................................................................................................................................. 27 Environmental Sociology, Food Systems, and Fisheries ............................................................. 29 Data and Methods ........................................................................................................................ 35 Dependent Variable: Fisheries Footprint of Nations ....................................................... 38 Independent Variables ..................................................................................................... 41 Models.............................................................................................................................. 42 Results .......................................................................................................................................... 45 Discussion .................................................................................................................................... 53 Ecological Impact or Food Security ................................................................................ 53 Comparing Economic Development across Levels of Affluence .................................... 54 Economic Development, Less Affluent Nations, and Fishery Footprint ......................... 56 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 58 Chapter 3: A WITHIN-CASE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ATLANTIC MENHADEN FISHERY IN THE AGE OF CAPITAL Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 60 Theory .......................................................................................................................................... 62 Data and Methods .......................................................................................................................