The Framing of Farmed Fish: Product, Efficiency, and Technology

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the ways in which both fish farmers and environmentalists use frames to socially construct the salmon fanning industry in British Columbia. Advertisements and other promotional materials contain movement actors' justifications for promoting or opposing the industry; these rationalizations are good reasons for understanding fish fanning in a particular way. Because salmon farmers and environmentalists must both rely on what people already know, they create frames that direct the viewer's gaze of salmon aquaculture in surprisingly similar ways. We found that frames created by both proponents and opponents of the industry are structured around the inter-related concepts of production, efficiency, and technology. As a result, fanned fish become natural-social hybrids. Fanned salmon are framed in both common-sensical and hyper-real ways as naturally efficient bits of living technology. Resume Cet article examine comment les pisciculteurs et les ecologistes utilisent des cadres pour Ia construction sociale de la pisciculture du saumon en Colombie-Britannique. La publicite resume les justifications. que les divers acteurs utilisent pour promouvoir ou s'opposer a la pisciculture; ces rationalisations sont de bonnes raisons pour comprendre la pisciculture d'une certaine facon. Comme les eleveurs desaumon et les ecologistes doivent chacun compter sur ce que les gens savent deja, ils creent des cadres qui dirigent l'attention de l'observateur de facons tres similaires. Nous avons trouve que les cadres crees a Ia fois par les partisans et par les opposants la pisciculture sont bases surles concepts etroitement lies de production, d' efficacite et de technologie. lien resulte que le poisson d' elevage devient un hybride naturel-social. Les saumons d'elevage sont cadres la fois suivant le sens commun et d'une facon hyper-reelle, comme etant des particules efficaces de technologie vivante. Introduction This paper analyzes the framings of salmon farming as social constructions rather than as objective ways of interpreting the controversy around this industry. Salmon farming in British Columbia has been embroiled in a public relations battle for the past several decades. Environmental and industry groups vie for influence over the social construction of fish fanning by creating and disseminating competing frames. Frames define situations by making them meaningful. They tell us what is going on, by placing an event or issue into a socially understood context. In an effort to communicate meanings to would-be supporters, both salmon farmers and environmentalists engage actively in the framing of the industry through advertisements, brochures, and press releases. Framing, as developed by Goffmann (1974), is a type of social meaning-giving activity that occurs across a wide range of phenomena, from everyday talk to news occurrences, ceremonies, and make-believe events. Benford and Snow (2000) and Snow et al. (1986), developed the framing perspective through their concepts of alignment, in which they argue that certain pre-existing values and beliefs are invigorated for a particular framing purpose. Indeed, there exists a now rich literature on the frame analysis of public discourses that examines how meanings come about and become socially distributed. To name just a few examples, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) examined nuclear power in relation to the culturally available meanings used in constructing frames; Coy and Woehrle (1996) used frames in their discussion of the Persian Gulf War, and Doyle et al. (1997) found the BC Forest Alliance was able to greenwash the practices of forestry companies by framing the industry in terms of environmentalist values. Recently, however, Benford (1997) has critiqued the framing perspective as leading all too often to the treatment of frames as things, rather than as dynamic processes of meaning construction and transformation. …