“We are here to make money”: New terrains of identity and community in small-scale fisheries in Lake Victoria, Tanzania

Abstract

Fishing communities are at the heart of policies of co-management in small-scale fisheries around the world, including Lake Victoria. The assumption is that, fish and the activity of fishing being carriers of locally shared values and identity underlying ‘fishing communities’, devolution of power (to the communities) will initiate a virtuous circle that can minimise exploitation and favour sustainable resource management. This article builds on emerging literature that has questioned these assumptions with an ethnography of community as developed in conjunction with heightened globalizing forces, and examining the effects of local-global linkages of identity. It emerges that fish continues to be central in determining identity and community but in novel ways, that is as a commodity to be exploited for economic success rather than as carrier of local identities. The local-global market linkages that have triggered this transformation have thus created new identities away from identity as ‘fisherman’, and grounded in individual rather than collective experience, but nevertheless leading to new short-term communities that emerge across space around particular business-related agendas. Fisheries policies need to be re-examined in light of this transformation; stronger attention needs to be paid to the broader socio-economic context in which ‘communities’ emerge for more effective co-management of resources. • ‘Fishing communities’ around Lake Victoria today are subject to transformations. • Local-global market linkages impact on the configuration of ‘fishing communities’. • Ethnography can unearth values underlying ‘fishing communities’ today. • Policy implications need to be evaluated for better management of fishing resources.