Neo-liberal or not? Creeping enclosures and openings in the making of fisheries governance

Abstract

AbstractNeo-liberalism can mean different things from different perspectives. Social scientists tend to use the concept to identify and critique trends of privatization, marketization, commodification and enclosures, and their associated slew of exclusionary, dispossessive, and regressive effects. Counterintuitively, governmentality analyses identify how practices of collaboration, inclusion, participation, and empowerment—practices sometimes cited as means to resist and generate alternatives to neo-liberalism—are not only consistent with neo-liberal governing but also central to its functioning. This paper engages a biopolitics and governmentality analytical perspective to examine different kinds of fisheries policies in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), Canada, where the historic cod collapse created a laboratory for examining social-ecological effects of capitalist overexploitation, resource mismanagement, and knowledge system blind spots. The case is useful because it includes, on the one hand, practices traditionally seen as reinforcing neo-liberal governance, such as property making, resource management access rationalization, and global eco-labels, and, on the other hand, practices where linkages to neo-liberalism require more critical assessment, such as fisher-influenced professionalization policies, license collaboration/consolidation initiatives, and producer-oriented eco-labels. Drawing on a governmentality perspective, this paper examines how governance change in NL fisheries is driven not by a single regulatory logic but, rather, by diverse “technologies of government” and “technologies of agency.” Diverse technologies of agency, with varying degrees of links to neo-liberalism, facilitate “creeping” enclosures and openings for fish harvesters in NL fisheries. The paper finds that multi-faceted social protection and coastal community-oriented rationalities of fisher groups are key explanatory variables in shaping practices for and against neo-liberal governance, suggesting that the relationship of diverse neo-liberal, moral economy and hybrid governmentalities to lived experiences requires more empirical and theoretical attention.