The Price of Fishing
Anthropology has always been fascinating to me. The objective study of human interaction and social structure; two things that can't quite be quantified and I don't even pretend to understand. Perhaps it is because I don't understand human interactions all that well that I like to dabble in anthropology.
I heard a news story this morning on NPR about people illegally fishing off the coast of Louisiana during the ongoing oil spill. I was reminded of an anthropological study that I heard about. A community had a fishing based economy. It was not that the fishing was great or the community was positioned in a good place for distribution it was just that was what people in that community had done...fishing is what they had always done. As the population of the community grew the economy started to fail. So some outside analysis came in and said "this place is a great for growing bananas. Why don't you all stop toiling with your fish and start growing and exporting bananas?" So they started farming bananas and the money flowed in. After a few years though the economy started to stagnate again. It turns out that a large percentage of men of this community had started to go back to fishing for a living. When asked which was the more lucrative banana farming or fishing everyone agreed that bananas were the way to go. So, why where these people risking the the livelihood of their families by fishing...why are these Louisiana fishermen putting their health at risk by fishing in oily water?
For me fishing has always seemed a lot like gambling; you go out hoping for dinner but you may come home hungry (in my experience I will come home hungry). The only difference is that there are no odds, there is no way of know how likely you are to win; you can know where the fish tend to be and you can have the best equipment and still come home empty handed. Fishing like gambling resounds of positive reinforcement training. You cast a line, pull a leaver or push a feeder bar and sometimes we get the euphoric rush that comes with miraculous appearance of food or the sudden confirmation that you will have the means to live another day; a rush you would never get from growing bananas. To some degree fishing looks like an addiction and when it puts the health and/or livelihood of you and your family at risk it probably is addiction. However, there is another factor that is reflected in the demographic of people whole fish...men.
I have been reading a paper about the socioeconomic structures of fishermen around the world. The paper outlines the large financial risks and touches on the large health risk that go hand in hand with earning you living working on a fishing boat. Men Especially young men want, and sometime need a little adventure, risk and sense of freedom in their lives if only to work out the kinks before they settle down.
Further, almost 75% of all recreational anglers are male. I think is because of a kind of camaraderie that comes from fishing. Every man who has gone fishing with their father or a friend or a complete stranger can attest to the fact that there is a connection that forms sitting on the bank or dock waiting for a fish to bite. Where women typically bond over conversation men bond over shared experiences.
These men fishing in the oily waters of Louisiana may seem like they are crazy but they are fishermen it is what they do and no small thing like a sheen of oil on the surface of the water is going to stop them from doing fishing.
I heard a news story this morning on NPR about people illegally fishing off the coast of Louisiana during the ongoing oil spill. I was reminded of an anthropological study that I heard about. A community had a fishing based economy. It was not that the fishing was great or the community was positioned in a good place for distribution it was just that was what people in that community had done...fishing is what they had always done. As the population of the community grew the economy started to fail. So some outside analysis came in and said "this place is a great for growing bananas. Why don't you all stop toiling with your fish and start growing and exporting bananas?" So they started farming bananas and the money flowed in. After a few years though the economy started to stagnate again. It turns out that a large percentage of men of this community had started to go back to fishing for a living. When asked which was the more lucrative banana farming or fishing everyone agreed that bananas were the way to go. So, why where these people risking the the livelihood of their families by fishing...why are these Louisiana fishermen putting their health at risk by fishing in oily water?
For me fishing has always seemed a lot like gambling; you go out hoping for dinner but you may come home hungry (in my experience I will come home hungry). The only difference is that there are no odds, there is no way of know how likely you are to win; you can know where the fish tend to be and you can have the best equipment and still come home empty handed. Fishing like gambling resounds of positive reinforcement training. You cast a line, pull a leaver or push a feeder bar and sometimes we get the euphoric rush that comes with miraculous appearance of food or the sudden confirmation that you will have the means to live another day; a rush you would never get from growing bananas. To some degree fishing looks like an addiction and when it puts the health and/or livelihood of you and your family at risk it probably is addiction. However, there is another factor that is reflected in the demographic of people whole fish...men.
I have been reading a paper about the socioeconomic structures of fishermen around the world. The paper outlines the large financial risks and touches on the large health risk that go hand in hand with earning you living working on a fishing boat. Men Especially young men want, and sometime need a little adventure, risk and sense of freedom in their lives if only to work out the kinks before they settle down.
Further, almost 75% of all recreational anglers are male. I think is because of a kind of camaraderie that comes from fishing. Every man who has gone fishing with their father or a friend or a complete stranger can attest to the fact that there is a connection that forms sitting on the bank or dock waiting for a fish to bite. Where women typically bond over conversation men bond over shared experiences.
These men fishing in the oily waters of Louisiana may seem like they are crazy but they are fishermen it is what they do and no small thing like a sheen of oil on the surface of the water is going to stop them from doing fishing.
posted by The Golden Retirver at 08:15
2 Comments:
This reminds me of some of what I've read about the Pirahã people, which is one of the most conservative of the Amazon tribes. They have one of the simplest and "smallest" languages on earth (in terms of features, grammar, vocabulary), and regard activities like "counting" as somewhat of a novelty. They use boats for fishing and transportation, and actually pretty much rely on them. But even though they know how to make them, they barter for all their canoes from elsewhere, because making boats is "not something they do". It seems like there are often elements to a culture that are valuable to people and fulfill psychological needs long after they become more or less impractical.
Random reward schedules delivered immediately reinforce behavior far more effectively than linear/delayed schedules. Fishing obviously fits this model and therefore represents an addicting behavior. The primary risk/reward for a banana grower is the price of bananas at harvest which is delayed, and the risk of inhospitable weather is purely negative. It isn't addicting. Fun googles on the subject are "skinner box" and reinforcement learning. The skinner box even taught superstitious behavior to pigeons and rats, something I find funny.
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