Fishers and Scientists in Modern Turkey
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Fishers and Scientists in Modern Turkey Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology General Editor: Roy Ellen, FBA Professor of Anthropology, University of Kent at Canterbury Interest in environmental anthropology has grown steadily in recent years, reflecting national and international concern about the environment and developing research priorities. This major new international series, which continues a series first published by Harwood and Routledge, is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes, places or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture and environment. Relevant areas include human ecology, the perception and representation of the environment, ethno- ecological knowledge, the human dimension of biodiversity conservation and the ethnography of environmental problems. While the underlying ethos of the series will be anthropological, the approach is interdisciplinary. Volume 1 Volume 7 The Logic of Environmentalism: Travelling Cultures and Plants: The Anthropology, Ecology and Ethnobiology and Ethnophamacy of Postcoloniality Migrations Vassos Argyrou Andrea Pieroni and Ina Vandebroek Volume 2 Conversations on the Beach: Volume 8 Local Knowledge and Environmental Fishers and Scientists in Modern Change in South India Turkey: The Management of Natural Götz Hoeppe Resources, Knowledge and Identity on the Eastern Black Sea Coast Volume 3 Ståle Knudsen Green Encounters: Shaping to Indigenous Knowledge in Volume 9 International Development Landscape Ethoecology: Concepts of Luis A. Vivanco Biotic and Physical Space Leslie Main Johnson and Eugene Volume 4 S. Hunn Local Science vs. Global Science: Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge Volume 10 in International Development Landscape, Power and Process: Edited by Paul Sillitoe Re-Evaluating Traditional Environmental Knowledge Volume 5 Serena Heckler Sustainability and Communities of Place Volume 11 Carl A. Maida Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Volume 6 Ethnoecological Perspectives Modern Crises and Traditional Miguel N. Alexiades Strategies: Local Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia Roy Ellen Fishers and Scientists in Modern Turkey The Management of Natural Resources, Knowledge and Identity on the Eastern Black Sea Coast Ståle Knudsen Berghahn Books New York • Oxford 54401_Knudsen_pp304-cmh4.qxd:ellen.qxd 12/5/08 9:53 AM Page iv First published in 2009 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2009 Ståle Knudsen All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Knudsen, Ståle, 1963- Fishers and scientists in modern Turkey : the management of natural resources, knowledge, and identity on the eastern Black Sea coast / Ståle Knudsen. p. cm. -- (Environmental anthropology and ethnobiology) ISBN 978-1-84545-440-1 1. Fisheries--Turkey--Black Sea Coast. 2. Fishery management--Turkey--Black Sea Coast. 3. Fishers--Turkey--Black Sea Coast. 4. Black Sea Coast (Turkey)-- Social life and customs. I. Title. SH291.K56 2008 333.95'609561--dc22 2008026636 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper. ISBN: 978-1-84545-440-1 (hardback) Contents List of Figures vi List of Tables vii Preface and Acknowledgements viii List of Abbreviations xi 1. Introduction 1 2. Seafood Consumption and Turkish Identities 19 3. Fisheries and the State 42 4. Fisher’s Knowledges 76 5. Informal Regulations in Small-boat Fishing 98 6. Fishing Careers, Family and Friendships 124 7. State Representatives: Elite Lifestyles and Knowledges 144 8. The Controversy over the Sonar: Does it Harm Fish? 170 9. Water Produce Cooperatives and the Cultivation of Ignorance 193 10. Articulation of Knowledges through Moralities and Politics 215 Notes 240 Bibliography 247 Glossary 267 Index 271 List of Figures 2.1 Football champions: wine, women and fish. 22 2.2 Characteristics of and contrasts between the Istanbul and 24 Trabzon culinary cultures of seafood. 2.3 Contrasting images of the seafood cultures. 25 2.4 ‘Meat and fish’ restaurant. 36 3.1 Map of privileged fishing spots along the Bosporus. 45 3.2 Bureaucratic structure. 56 3.3 ‘Water produce’ production Turkey 1960–2004. 68 3.4 Hamsi catches and amount processed by factories. 69 4.1 Map of coastal region and sea bottom topography Çars¸ıbas¸ı. 85 4.2 Setting a whiting net around a kuyu. 86 4.3 Small-boat fisher’s classification of ‘sea animals’. 95 5.1 Map of Turkey and the Black Sea. 99 5.2 Overview of Çars¸ıbas¸ı. 100 5.3 Positioning of molozma net for catching red mullet. 103 5.4 Map of eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. 111 5.5 Casting a net for ‘Russian’ mullet. 113 5.6 Typical net set for grey mullet. 114 5.7 Alternative ways to set nets for ‘Russian’ mullet. 114 6.1 Purse-seine fishing boat. 131 7.1 Scientist interviewing fishers in Toplu köyü, Samsun. 159 8.1 Knowing the sonar. 178 10.1 ‘Seventh of May’ sea festival. 231 All photographs are reproduced with permission of Ståle Knudsen. List of Tables 6.1 Big boat ownership Çars¸ıbas¸ı 1990 – 2002. 132 9.1 Number of water produce cooperatives. 194 10.1 Level of formal education among fishers. 216 Preface and Acknowledgements This book has been long in the making. I have been engaged in Turkish Black Sea fisheries since I started my first fieldwork in 1990. From the very beginning I had an interest in studying how fishers managed the fishery resources. During that first winter in 1990–91 the Turkish Black Sea fisheries experienced the most dramatic crisis it has ever seen. That brought home to me, as it did to the fishers, how vulnerable both this enclosed sea and the fishers are. Those initial experiences also told me that knowledge was contested, and that the social distance between fishers on the one hand, and marine scientists and managers on the other, was huge. I subsequently set out to get a better understanding of the relationships between fishers, marine scientists and bureaucrats, and increasingly positioned the study of the fisheries within the Turkish modernization process. This brought me to survey the history of fisheries and fishery policies and to explore issues such as identity negotiations through seafood consumption, claims about fishers being ignorant and scientists being corrupt. While this expansion in space, time and thematic certainly is called for to understand complex issues such as the management of modern sea fisheries embedded within a large developing nation state, it becomes a challenge to integrate the diverse topics and materials into one coherent text. This is not a study of a village, of one fishery, not even of fishers and scientists in one region of Turkey. It is about fisheries and fishery management in modernizing Turkey. It is my hope that the analytical focus on knowledge should give some coherence to the discussions through the chapters in the book. Because of the wide scope of the study, data gathering has been composite. Participant observation has formed the groundwork, with longer ethnographic fieldworks in 1990–91 and 1997–98 and frequent briefer visits in between 1991 and 1997 and after 2002. In all I have conducted approximately one and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork among fishers and, to a lesser extent, marine scientists. During these years I have studied closely events in one particular fieldwork site, the small Preface and Acknowledgements | ix town Çars¸ıbas¸ı near the city of Trabzon in the eastern Black Sea region. I have also spent considerable time studying fishers in Samsun and Sinop, and have frequently visited and sometimes stayed for longer spells in Ankara and Istanbul. For the historical narrative I draw upon a range of sources, most of it in the original Turkish, ranging from ministerial reports, laws and marine science textbooks to travel accounts, newspaper articles, encyclopaedic entries and a few published books. Public statistics, my own questionnaire surveys, interviews, cookbooks, and a range of other public expressions of culture and ideology contribute to the mix of data and methodologies applied. No work like this is possible without a lot of people being forthcoming and many actively assisting or encouraging the effort. The fishers in Çars¸ıbas¸ı, too many to name, showed an impressive willingness to share their lives with me, and – once they understood I could endure life at sea – brought me fishing with mutual pleasure. A few individuals in Çars¸ıbas¸ı should be mentioned: Osman Keles¸ for providing me with places to stay, Cemil Kurt for help and assistance, and S¸aban Çag˘lar for unbiased introductions into the social landscape of the township and enthusiastic introduction into marine life of the Black Sea. I also want to thank the following individuals in Turkey for their generousness, hospitality and help: Ahmet Mutlu – the head of the eastern Black Sea association of fishery cooperatives; researcher Dr Mustafa Zengin at the Trabzon Fishery research Institute; Professor Ertu˘g˘ Düzgünes¸ at the Sürmene Faculty of Marine Sciences, Karadeniz University, Emin Özdamar – previously researcher at Sinop Faculty of Marine Sciences, later local expert with Japan International Cooperation Agency. Over the years I have come to know a range of individuals responsible for fisheries within the Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Their willingness to attend to me in between their manifold tasks has been impressive. Last, but not least, Hakan Koçak in Istanbul has through two short periods as assistant become a close personal friend who shares his knowledge and ideas about Turkish society as well as love for Turkish food with me.