Post-productivist transformation as a challenge for small-scale fisheries: Changing preconditions and adaptation strategies in the Finnish Archipelago Sea Region

Abstract

This article focuses on changes in the use of fish resources and its interrelationships with societal and natural transformations in the Baltic Sea setting within the last 100 years. The study area, the Finnish Archipelago Sea Region, consists of unique coastal landscape with shallow water areas between thousands of islands and islets. Fishing income was traditionally combined with shipping and small-scale agriculture, but today fishing families’ income combinations are more diverse. The fishing livelihood in the archipelago is typically seasonal operation and targets several fish species with e.g. gill nets.Extraction of fish resources has been of utmost economic and cultural importance in the Archipelago Sea Region: fisheries contributed to habitation of outer parts of the region at the turn of the 20th century. In mid 20th century fishing started to lose its profitability and many islands became desolated. Decline in the fishing employment was due, for instance, to technical development, urbanization and industrialization of the society. In the 1970s a new innovation, fish farming in net cages, compensated for the decline of capture fisheries. At the same time the production landscape of fishing peasants began its change towards one of leisure and nature conservation. This post-productivist transformation contained not only an increase in the competition of space, but also a remarkable change in people’s perceptions and values about the use and governance of fish resources. This analysis is based on a wide collection of published articles, books and documents, together with unpublished interview material illuminating the most recent transformations.