Introduction
Commercial fisheries of most species of the southern Bering Sea region are considered sustainably managed and harvested. The fish are either a national or state resource in which certain groups have commercial access rights to harvest and earn payment per unit weight. Many of these fisheries are historically significant to coastal communities, providing nutrition and social status, and continue to be the economic activities most available to them. For species such as salmon (Oncorhynchus sp.) and halibut (Hippoglossus sp.), user communities participate regularly in state and federal policymaking forums and contribute to understandings of the resource's change and abundance, climatic and human factors affecting the fisheries, local uses, efficient gear, timing and areas of harvest, marketing options, among many elements and debates about best fishing practices. But in several fisheries, such as crab and pollock (Pollachius virens), indigenous knowledge and community input play virtually no role in the management, ecological modelling, or economic aspects of the fisheries process. These are high value fisheries in which coastal communities have either lost or never had active roles. These differences are partially due to the established ties local communities have made to certain species as opposed to others, but are also related to historical loss and situations where local ties were not encouraged to develop. Generally, fisheries privatisation schemes have increasingly marginalised indigenous and non-indigenous community-based fishermen from access to the main economic activity available, which has allowed transient fleets to expand and has created negative socioeconomic consequences (for example Carothers Reference Carothers2010; Lowe and Carothers Reference Lowe and Carothers2008; Olson Reference Olson2011; Pinkerton and Edwards Reference Pinkerton and Edwards2009). Nevertheless, local people still seek and use many of the fish resources to which they have no commercial harvesting entitlements through subsistence harvesting, purchases, and sharing networks.
Many connections to subsistence foods are subtle, such as snails (Neptunea) incidentally harvested off cod or crab pots that are picked up from the seafloor. Other local connections to food, such as salmon, are obvious, celebrated, and highly visible. But some, such as crab, are highly valued important local foods to which local peoples have limited access. In the recent past, many young men would work on crab boats and bring back boxes of crab (referred to as ‘home-pack’), which was then used as a high status gift served at feasts, holidays, funerals, and to important guests, and for some as an everyday food. Through the rationalisation of king crab fishing, a federal scheme implemented in 2005 for Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab fisheries that shrunk the fleet by two-thirds and assigned crab quota shares to harvesters and processors, access to crab is now embedded in a complex set of property rights allocated to individuals and corporations in which local communities have a peripheral role. Young men are rarely hired from the villages, fewer crab boats have reduced their need to resupply at local businesses, and fewer people now have direct access to this important social food source. Social foods are defined here as foods that one never eats alone, and crab is a perfect example. Cod and pollock fishing, on the other hand, fall between the nearly universal access to salmon and the limited access to crab. For cod especially, some families do participate directly in commercial fisheries, some fish using rod and reel for themselves, while others are co-dependent on processors where they purchase frozen fish.
This paper explores ways in which Alutiiq and Aleut (Unangan) villages maintain access and sociocultural connections to crab and cod in a highly commercialised, changeable environment. Here we track the significance of sharing and purchasing wild fish using social network analysis. Drawing from Sen's entitlement theory (Reference Sen1980), in which community vulnerability is assessed based upon legal and social command of resources, especially obtaining food, we show that the lack of direct legal access to harvesting crab and cod leads to critical co-dependencies on canneries, processors, and fishermen from the Pacific northwest, removing local peoples from having a clear role in their economic future. The problem for Sen was not a lack of food availability, but a lack of access to food. Sen's approach, originally set forth to explain poverty and famine causation, has been criticised by many, including himself (see Devereux Reference Devereux2001), for its limited application and for downplaying sociopolitical and non-market forces determining entitlements. We are not explaining famine in this case, but we are employing Sen's ‘entitlement collapse,’ both its causes and consequences, to evaluate diminishing access to particular key subsistence foods. Entitlement collapse refers to an inability to convert one's endowments, such as legal control or labour power, into commodities, and provides a framework to analyse the loss of direct access to critical foods.
In the Aleutians, food supplies are generally adequate, and the market is ‘meeting’ subsistence needs, yet the market is inhibiting local access to the ‘right’ kind of food. We find that people obtain use of critical foods through two substantially different network structures. A cluster pattern network has many cross-connections throughout its structure: these are sometimes referred to as a decentralised network. A star pattern network has a few key nodes connected to a majority of the individual nodes: these are sometimes referred to as centralised networks. Cluster patterned networks have strong inter-connections of providers and are relatively stable because the loss of a single provider does not have an impact on the overall network since there are other connected providers. Conversely, star-patterned networks are centred on a single provider and are highly vulnerable because the loss of that single provider results in a collapse of a distribution network. Using network analysis, we explore formal and informal entitlements, adding non-legal elements to Sen's entitlement approach, and show how local people manage to gain access regardless of barriers.
The modern context
The impetus for this work was based on prospects for oil and gas development in the north Aleutian Basin region of the southern Bering Sea in which the authors received a contract to perform a quantitative, qualitative, and spatial analysis of subsistence activities in four communities closest to the offshore leasing area (Port Heiden, Nelson Lagoon, False Pass, and Akutan, Alaska) (Fig. 1). The cancellation (or, specifically, moratorium) of this development partway through the project (in 2010) diminished immediate concerns over potential impacts, and the focus of the research shifted towards broader analyses of community subsistence and vulnerabilities. Petroleum development is still highly relevant for these villages and, since it is only under moratorium, will probably become an important topic in the future. Further, villages such as Nelson Lagoon and False Pass are struggling to keep residents, and their leadership is open to many options for economic development, even those that have a potential to threaten fisheries. A continual shift in local opinions about oil and gas development is partially correlated with short and long-term economic changes in the communities. Poor salmon fishing seasons, for example, can renew interest in developing the north Aleutian Basin. More broadly, our research emphasised how contemporary coastal indigenous communities survive in the midst of economic and ecological changes, especially in the fisheries. These four communities are home to strong, tenacious peoples who are entrepreneurial in creating economic opportunities founded on local natural resources (Reedy-Maschner Reference Reedy–Maschner2010). This enterprising spirit includes seeking desirable, valuable fisheries resources to which few clear regulations providing direct access exist.
Fig. 1. Map of the study region showing the communities surveyed, the boundaries of the potential North Aleutian Basin development, and other features
In federal fisheries, catch shares, or property rights approaches to management that emphasise economic efficiency and sustainable management, are now implemented regularly as purportedly logical, value-free plans such that, ‘Once this ideology of rationalization frames the problems and solutions for fisheries management, it often becomes impossible to imagine how things could have been ordered differently’ (Carothers Reference Carothers, Lowe and Carothers2008: 59). These rights-based approaches are, on the one hand, commended for providing reliable harvest data to managers who can responsibly apply these data to address environmental and economic problems in the fisheries (for example Costello and others Reference Costello, Gaines and Lynham2008). On the other hand, they are criticised for neglecting human rights (for example Allison and others Reference Allison, Ratner, Åsgård, Willmann, Pomerory and Kurien2012), social and cultural influences, and marine-dependent coastal communities (for example Carothers Reference Carothers2010; Lowe and Carothers Reference Lowe and Carothers2008; Macinko and Bromley Reference Macinko and Bromley2002; Pinkerton and Edwards Reference Pinkerton and Edwards2009; Wiber Reference Wiber2000) in order to satisfy models of economic efficiency. Despite state and federal programmes meant to ensure that permits and/or quota control remain in village hands to support their lives, such as Limited Entry, Community Development Quota programmes (CDQs), or Community Quota Entities (CQEs), many of these have fallen short of their stated goals of providing for the ‘sustained participation’ in fisheries and ‘minimiz[ing] adverse impacts on such communities’ (United States 1996).
Further, vertical integration of harvesters and processors controlling or cooperating to control production and distribution of locally relevant species is effectively decreasing fisheries access for many local fishermen who do not have alternative economies or winter jobs within or even outside the southern Bering Sea region, yet still need to maintain their homes, vessels, and families. Opportunities to fish a range of species are relatively rare in these villages since the fisheries are expensive to enter and are usually associated with historic access. This diversity, when it occurs, does provide some security to those who are able to participate. Most fishermen, however, are vulnerable through fishing single species or only a few species because they may have lost permits and quota in other fisheries, or were not included in the creation of a fishery access scheme in the first place, since place-based communities generally do not have special rights when fisheries are developed.
The primary income for those in coastal Bering Sea villages may not be in fishing work at all. Instead, a large portion of income comes from reinvested revenues from others doing the actual fishing (such as through Community Development Quota organisations, entities that receive a percentage of all Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands quotas for groundfish and other species and invest earnings into village economies), or tax funding to boroughs and cities based upon weights of fish delivered to processors within their borders, or vessel and harbour fees, for example. In other words, these villages need commercial fishing, but may not participate in it directly because others have gained entitlements.
Still, almost every commercially managed species in the Bering Sea (except, for example, pollock and Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus monopterygius), although a few households consume these too) are harvested or purchased, shared, and consumed in Aleut villages. This gives species such as crab, sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria), rockfish (Sebastes sp.), and Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) an interesting status both theoretically and practically, since their restricted access, quota-based management also places restrictions on how people think about them, and it has restricted the flow of these species within and between communities. For example, commercial crab fishermen are not allowed to eat crab while at sea, to give it away at the dock to a friend or family member, to take some home to their spouses and children. These fishermen, instead, have the right to harvest a certain amount of the right sex and size of a certain species of crab from a specific location in a specific window of time. They are supposed to have neither a relationship with the fish that goes beyond its harvesting for the formal, commercial market, nor any subsistence need/desire. They have the right to make money. They are entitled to be post-processing consumers of the marketed fish just like everyone else.
Subsistence fishermen are ‘allowed’ to have wider relationships with a variety of species, but only certain kinds of relationships. Certain species have become ‘indigenous,’ icons of identity associated with indigenous peoples, while other species have not. This categorisation, however, is treacherous because, as Sahlins (Reference Sahlins1999: 407) urges, the raison d’être that anthropologists assign to groups could easily change. These icons of identity could be the results of long fishing traditions, and the assertion of local attachment and need. For salmon, its role as quintessential subsistence food, its quantity of use, and its broad value have resulted in a strong, unchallenged acknowledgement of the relationship between indigenous peoples and salmon, and dedicated efforts to preserve and protect that relationship at all levels of management (for example Arnold Reference Arnold2008; Colombi and Brooks Reference Colombi and Brooks2012). As for these other ‘money fish,’ as they are sometimes called by fishermen in the region, they are rarely seen as native foods, creating philosophical and structural barriers to their entitlements.
While it is impossible to assess whether there are coordinated efforts to ensure that local people do not identify with certain marine resources, the result of many fisheries policy actions distances indigenous peoples from these high value fisheries as food sources and as economic opportunities. Indigenous peoples are expected to have certain kinds of relationships with certain kinds of species, at the exclusion of the range of other kinds of relationships (economic, for example) with other kinds of species. Alaska natives are not unaware of these expectations; for example, Athabascan communities in the interior region were careful not to identify with agricultural foods for fear that it could negatively affect their ‘customary and traditional’ relationship to other wild fish and game (Loring and Gerlach Reference Loring and Gerlach2010).
Some native peoples and anthropologists express concerns about the appropriateness of commercialising certain species at all, usually marine mammals, or involving cash in the sharing of wild foods. In the Canadian Arctic, commercialisation of many wild subsistence foods was policy and intentionally promoted for Inuit development (Gombay Reference Gombay2005). Limited amounts of cash within Greenland are involved in trade in whale products, yet this creates worry that these behaviours will lead to overexploitation and profit-maximising strategies if the species is fully commercialised (Caulfield Reference Caufield1993). A key concern is that capitalist consumption of these foods will reassign meaning to them, and probably devalue or transform them into something outside the intended cultural matrix. In the Aleutians, generally, the commercialisation of viable marine fish and shellfish is promoted by local people with the desire to get their rightful share. Modern eastern Aleut villages, for example, were founded around shore-based salmon and cod processors, and the region's commercial fisheries and Aleut culture were mutually constructed over the past century (Reedy-Maschner Reference Reedy–Maschner2010). Many of their subsistence fish have been commercialised over time, and local people have had various roles in these developments. This, in itself, is not deemed controversial by local people, but their access to these commercially valuable fish is? In some cases, where commercialisation and rationalisation are occurring, local people may still continue harvesting as ‘an everyday act of resistance’ (Scott Reference Scott1985) when they take fish species in quantities, seasons, or places they are not legally allowed to take.
Bering Sea villages are squarely situated within global marine economies and primarily depend upon fisheries for their survival, but their productive relationship to various species is highly variable and changeable. For example, the primary earnings for the Coastal Villages Region Fund (CVRF, the Community Development Quota entity, or CDQ, of southwest Alaska's Yup’ik coastal communities) come from the Bering Sea pollock fishery. CVRF's slogan is ‘Pollock Provides,’ and revenue from their pollock quota shares are used to support fisheries development in the region. Thereby pollock, a species the residents do not harvest themselves for subsistence, has become an economic foundation.
These recent developments have resulted in differential power relationships within and between people, communities, and fisheries resources. Policies and fleet consolidation have disenfranchised many local peoples from direct participation in fishing, and therefore access to certain foods. Still, this rationalised environment that is shaping (and undermining) how people relate to wild foods can be circumvented at the level of subsistence harvesting and social networking, but only in the context of the power and economic imbalance between community residents and external owners of production and distribution.
Brief historical background
Historic use of crab and cod is fairly widespread, but reflects the frequently volatile nature of both species. The Aleut word for cod translates to ‘the fish that stops,’ meaning that it was unable to be fished periodically (Black Reference Black1981: 332). Both species are part of the subsistence matrix historically, but neither dominated as primary foods.
American ownership of the Aleutian Islands after 1867 was accompanied by control and commercialisation of many fish resources. Some Aleut communities consider this the significant break in their access and loss of control over their traditional food base (Corbett and Swibold Reference Corbett, Swibold and Freeman2000), but most saw this as an opportunity and worked to change their entitlements by joining commercial industries (Reedy-Maschner Reference Reedy–Maschner2010). In the 1870s, commercial cod fisheries began in the eastern Aleutian region in which schooners transporting dories and primarily Scandinavian fishermen from California to Washington arrived for the cod seasons. Men fished using handlines, and dried and salted cod for shipping to market. Shore stations for the salted cod market were built beginning in the 1880s. Fishermen began moving into the communities, marrying local Aleut women, and fishing cod for a living. After 1915, fish began to disappear from the region and by 1930, there were not sufficient to support the fishery. Shore stations began to close, but cod continued to be sporadically fished from offshore vessels in the Bering Sea (Shields Reference Shields2001).
Many Aleut fishermen draw on their Scandinavian cod fishing ancestors and heritage when providing life histories. Elders describe how they missed eating cod and missed out on cod fishing, since the cod were gone from most of this region for most of their youth (Maschner and others Reference Maschner, Betts, Reedy-Maschner and Trites2008; Maschner and others Reference Maschner, Trites, Reedy-Maschner and Betts2013). One elder talking about life on Sanak Island said, ‘One morning the cod were gone. My father moved to King Cove, we were one of the first families [to fish salmon commercially out of King Cove]. There were 18 of us. Salmon fishing was the only thing available to us at the time.’ This loss in cod fishing, although largely human-induced, had longer term consequences in the overall loss in local entitlements. In the early 1970s, cod started to reappear in the waters. As one man said, ‘We were so excited when we pulled that first codfish out of the pot in Unimak Bight.’ Legally they could fish again and join the fisheries that were developing, but they had significant investments in salmon fisheries and their participation was reduced. Cod are in both state and federal waters and are managed separately; fishermen fish both state and federal cod fisheries, and must navigate the rules of these two arenas. There are small fleets of cod fishermen in several of the region's villages now, including the four study villages. Subsistence fishing for cod does not require permits but boats are needed to access many fishing areas. Removals from commercial catches for subsistence are uncommon. Those that eat cod often buy it because the processor de-worms the fish and packages fillets for freezing. Cod are baked, batter fried, and used in soups and chowders. This is a shift in acquisition away from direct harvesting, from removal of fish from the commercial catches for subsistence, and from in-home processing to purchasing. The result is a poverty of cod being used and shared between households.
After the cod disappeared in the late 1930s and the fishery went into decline, crab began to be found in abundance. In the Aleutian region, a generation of elders described the crab as ‘weird bugs’ when they first saw them in the 1930s, having grown up without them, yet the fisheries developed rapidly. The process was similar to the Atlantic in which a cod collapse was followed by increased shellfish landings. Further, this alternative economy was not benefiting the same people who fished for cod, and required new gear, new licensing, and different markets (for example Haedrich and Hamilton Reference Haedrich and Hamilton2000; Hamilton and Butler Reference Hamilton and Butler2001). The Bering Sea crab fisheries intensified after World War II with processors and catcher-processor vessels developing canned meat and frozen meat-in-shell products for export. Fishermen in villages such as Sand Point, King Cove, and False Pass participated in Pacific Ocean crab fisheries starting in the 1950s, with large catches in the 1960s. King and Tanner crab (Chionoecetes bairdi) fisheries continued until the 1980s, with a short-lived Dungeness crab fishery from 1968–1973, and again in 1979. Local women worked in the processors ‘butchering crab’ for cans, which was later replaced with freezing. Crab fishing commanded high prices and became intensely capitalised, requiring large vessels to navigate rough waters, and was fished as a race for the crab until rationalisation in 2005.
Residents of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula have historically had a small role in the total fleet and harvest quantity in commercial king crab fisheries in the Bering Sea, but the role was still highly significant to the communities participating, providing crew jobs, processing jobs, and a few captain opportunities (Lowe Reference Lowe, Lowe and Carothers2008). This participation had declined in recent decades, but crab fishery rationalisation further removed these fisheries from direct local participation, with collateral impacts to local businesses (Lowe Reference Lowe, Lowe and Carothers2008). In King Cove, for example, only 20 of the previous 60 boats delivered crab to the processing plant during the first year of the programme.
Locals would have liked to buy quota in the rationalised fisheries (Lowe Reference Lowe, Lowe and Carothers2008), but it was either too expensive or only offered to larger commercial interests. Today, some fishermen from these villages participate in a state Tanner crab fishery. This fishery is important to several communities but does not open every year unless abundant. Crab, and especially king crab, are high value foods in these villages, but may not be as plentiful as they used to be. One woman, a widow on social security, grumbled, ‘When people get crab, they won't share with their neighbours. We used to take care of each other.’ There are no permits required for most of the Aleutian region for subsistence king and Tanner crab fisheries. In the Alaska Peninsula area, subsistence harvesters are required to carry permits obtained from an office in Unalaska, several islands away. They can harvest only males with certain size restrictions for both species, and daily bag limits, using pots and even SCUBA gear. There is a poverty of this high value food because of the difficulties in obtaining it, even though it is abundant in the ocean. Tanner crab was described as ‘sweet’ and ‘good but a lot of work, they are so small,’ and Dungeness ‘have the most flavour’. Crab legs are baked or steamed and eaten with butter or garlic butter. Crab meat is used in dips and spreads, soups and bisques, melts, salads, casseroles, and to make crab cakes. It is served at special dinners, holidays, and as an everyday food.
Even though there is weaker historical continuity with local involvement in the crab fishery, our network analysis has illustrated that participation in that industry has created dependency on this high status food. The networks are completely co-dependent on the canneries, and to some extent retailers, for their basic structure. Because local men have been largely removed from the fishery through fewer crewing opportunities, and because crab boats no longer spend much time in the villages, regional households no longer have direct, family-based access to the fishery. The resulting networks are vulnerable to market forces, cannery and processor success, and access to salaries proportionate to the price of crab.
Conceptual framework and methods
This article blends entitlement theory with social network analysis to examine the flows of foods between individuals, households, and communities in order to track the production and movements of wild foods, differential access between households or communities, reciprocity, and risk management. The harvest and production of wild foods involve technology, materials, labour, and legal entitlement. The terms value, property, status, social capital, and social immunity are important to understanding the network analysis, and are defined here in turn. Value is meaning assigned to something, and can be expressed monetarily, socially, emotionally, nutritionally, among many other attachments. Value carries subjective elements that differ between individuals and contexts. Crab is high value to all communities. Cod is less so because it is less desired for the majority of households. Property and control of foods may involve ‘sweat equity,’ that is, foods belong to the one who worked for them. They may also involve hierarchical systems in which, for example, elders are always given preference without playing a role in production. Property often involves permits and legal channels of access through production, buying power, and having the equipment and resources to harvest. Social status of the givers and receivers is a critical component as well. In native communities in Alaska, 30 percent of households tend to account for 70 percent of the total harvest and share with others, described by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Subsistence Division as the ‘30/70 rule’ (Wolfe Reference Wolfe1987; Wolfe and Utermohle Reference Wolfe and Utermohle2000). This pattern generally reflects people's capacities, skills, and relative wealth. Social capital is the accumulation of trust, skill, information, and power, among other elements that can be gained or lost through the quality and frequency of sharing (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu and Richardson1986). Social immunity, defined as the ability of a group of people or individuals to mitigate changes and impacts, is here measured by the structure of the networks in which they participate. Individuals exchange resources, goods, and services to deal with problems and respond to opportunities. In order to scrape by or be successful in these communities, one must interact.
Social network analysis is an emerging research tool that allows for the documentation of relationships, exchange systems, and social linkages, with subsequent analyses (Borgatti and others Reference Borgatti, Everett and Freeman2002; Hanneman and Riddle Reference Hanneman and Riddle2005). This tool has only recently been used on data from Alaska native communities applying social networks using expanded Alaska Department of Fish and Game subsistence surveys (Magdanz and others Reference Magdanz, Utermohle and Wolfe2002, Reference Magdanz, Walker and Paciorek2004). While assessing household and community harvest and consumption patterns of numerous species, Magdanz’ team coded the exchanges between individuals and households, resulting in a rich depiction of subsistence dynamics, essentially demonstrating the overlap in sharing networks and the flows of wild foods between households. This project uses the underlying themes of the Magdanz model to explore relationships between harvesting, sharing, and consumption in the four north Aleutian Basin communities. The structure of our survey was oriented specifically towards social network analysis. We include genealogical work, adding a kinship dimension that is important to understanding sharing networks because relationships often drive responsible actions towards one another. Actors and the connecting relationships are defined as nodes and appear in diagrams as networks. Nodes can be key species, individuals, hunting or fishing grounds, households, businesses, communities, et cetera. These nodes can then be manipulated to explore both real and hypothetical circumstances. In this analysis, we analyse network nodes that are actual individuals/households in the region.
Social network analysis depends on identifying the relevant social units and the scale of analysis. Foods, goods, and people are circulating in wider networks; for example, salmon caught by an Aleut fisherman could end up in his neighbour's house, a fine restaurant in Seattle, or in a Japanese market. Households are the default economic unit in anthropology (Wilk and Netting Reference Wilk, Netting, Netting, Wilk and Arnould1984), but households are difficult to define. They are fluid, movable, unbounded and may impose analytical limitations. Arctic households have come under scrutiny, from re-examining the nuclear family unit in the high Arctic (Bodenhorn Reference Bodenhorn2000a, Reference Bodenhorn and Carsten2000b) to circular migration patterns between urban and rural Alaska, showing that the concept of both community and household as static entities raises problems (Fazzino and Loring Reference Fazzino and Loring2009; Lowe Reference Lowe2010). The household is particularly problematic in food security studies where the inputs and outputs of household units are highly variable. Nevertheless, households are important units of analyses as residential spaces that are shared, with common domestic resources and responsibilities between members, and we can map the flow, quantity, and range of subsistence foods and products, people, and cash inputs in and out to examine composition and characteristics, their relative levels of productivity, harvest specializing behaviour, seasonal variations in harvesting, and how households vary.
Household-level surveys were conducted in 92% of all households in Port Heiden (population 102), Nelson Lagoon (52), False Pass (35), and Akutan (80), and we gathered data on all harvested species and quantities, shared species/products and quantities, household economics, equipment owned and shared, crews, and environmental observations. Households are social spaces that are actively changing and reorganising people and resources, and were taken as the basic unit of production and consumption, but individual harvest and sharing data were included in the survey. Networks are organised along both giving and receiving, but here include purchases when those purchases involve subsistence goods.
We created a network analysis tool that displays all of the transactions for all surveys and still maintains genealogical relationships. Analysis can be at the individual, family, household, or community levels. Our network programme also produced all data and summary statistics for the networks created from the recorded transactions, and allowed us to highlight important interactions and relationships. Key to understanding the structure of the transaction networks is the ability to generate data on givers versus receivers for individual species. This is critical to this analysis because we would expect that for species outside of the normal subsistence harvest, transactions would primarily go in a single direction.
An index was created to measure the rate of return on transactions. In all systems of exchange one would expect some reciprocal exchange where one person gives away fresh salmon, for example, and gets smoked salmon or dried salmon strips in return. Or they might get something else in return for salmon, such as gull eggs, octopus, or even beef (we also recorded exchanges that included services such as boat repair or other labour). The return index (RI) is a measure of that return. For example, if a household has 26 transactions out and 15 transactions in, then 15–26 = −11 in return: their return index is −11. If a household has 5 transactions out, but takes in 19, then 19–5 = 14, a much larger return index. This is for measuring inter-household transactions, and transactions between households and commercial entities. Here we are not measuring quantities associated with individual transactions, but the frequencies, and the transactions are often disproportionate. For example, should a commercial fisherman provide salmon to a suite of community elders, he or she might get in return gull eggs, smoked salmon strips, berries, or a great diversity of products. The important point here is that there is a return at all, and because the transaction is largely social, we are unable to quantify economic value in the transactions.
As described above, we explore these relationships through the analysis of two very different network structures: cluster or decentralised networks, and star pattern or centralised networks. To reiterate, the fundamental difference between the two is that a star pattern network is highly vulnerable to the loss of a single provider, while the cluster pattern, because of its greater interconnectedness, is much more stable and resilient.
Analysis
This study tracked harvesting and sharing behaviour for a single year. Thus, this is a snapshot of short-term food sharing acts, not a long-term picture, although the obligations created between individuals were frequently years in the making. While there are a few clear cases of exaggeration, primarily there were memory deficits for all types of harvesting and sharing activities in our surveys, so we assume the harvest and sharing amounts reported are a minimum. In a general sense, we found that the widespread redistribution network of the north Aleutian Basin is equivalent to a circumpacific commodity network (Reedy-Maschner and Maschner Reference Reedy–Maschner and Maschner2012a). From the US northwest of Puget Sound, north to Alaska, and south to the Philippines, the connections are widespread and detailed. Within the Alaska region, 29 communities are connected in the networks described solely in this study.
Household shellfish networks
The network transactions for marine invertebrates, including intertidal shellfish and crabs, exhibit connected star and cluster patterns largely due to the fundamental differences in access between king crab and all other shellfish taxa (Fig. 2). As can be seen in Fig. 2, there are nine identified networks for the redistribution of various shellfish taxa. The two largest networks (numbered 1 and 2) contain 80% of all individuals who had any shellfish transaction, showing that shellfish exchange networks are highly connected (Fig. 3). Each of these networks is composed of individuals who have had transactions with each other, the lines are the transactions, and the sizes of the nodes are scaled with the number of connections (colour is simply for identification). These are independent networks with no individual in more than one. There is a simple positive correlation (r > .93) between the numbers of nodes in these networks and all other categories of analysis including transactions, households, and communities. This means that there is a positive linear relationship between the number of individuals in an exchange network, and the number of transactions completed, the number of households involved, and the number of communities they represent.
Fig. 2. Shellfish networks for households in the study region. Presented are nine independent networks that include all shellfish species included in transactions during this study. The size of the nodes is scaled by the numbers of network connections. Households are identified as H (and are inside a ring to reflect multiple individuals), canneries and other businesses as E (Entity). Colours are random for ease of visualisation of different nodes and connections. Numbers are random identifications for surveyed households. Spatial distance between nodes is also for easier visual presentation.
Fig. 3. Rank order of household shellfish network distribution based on the numbers of transactions in each network. Numbers correspond to rank order of the networks on Figure 4. These data show that most shellfish transactions within, between, and outside the surveyed communities are connected into one large network, with one middle sized network, and eight small networks.
Even though most of the people in the region are connected through two large networks, there are at least seven resources that contribute to these connections, the most important being octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini), king crab (Lopholithodes sp.), and black katy chitons (Katherina tunicata). Tanner crab (Chionoecetes sp.) and various categories of clam are important but less so (Fig. 4). The broad use and exchange of shellfish in this region and the importance of multiple species and taxa in these exchange networks highlight the critical role that shellfish have in these villages.
Fig. 4. Rank order of the most important shellfish species in all regional transactions based on the number of nodes (individuals) involved in those transactions. Octopus and king crab dominate these transactions, with chitons a distant third, and all others much lower.
In Fig. 2, network 1 is by far the largest network based on numbers of nodes and numbers of transactions. There are two sub-sections to this network. There is the octopus and chiton exchange sub-network that is a cluster type (upper right), with strong, active interconnections. This part of the network is least vulnerable to small perturbations in the exchange system because there are so many connected providers. But this is connected to star sub-networks (by individuals who participate in exchanges of multiple species) in which, in this case, everyone gets king crab through either a processor, a store, or directly from crab boats passing by the village (nodes labelled as E). This part of the network is completely co-dependent on the commercial king crab fishery and thus highly vulnerable. Network 2 is also a mixed system, with a small star network (E) connected to a larger cluster network.
When the crab distribution networks are investigated independently from the other taxa (Fig. 5), we find the entire network to be completely co-dependent on either the processors, in the networks 1 and 2, or the large wholesale retailer Costco in Anchorage in network 3. These are extremely vulnerable networks, solely dependent on both the commercial crab fishing industry and on the cash economy. The RI cumulative value is –4.55 for all networks, but the top two providers measure –20 and –12 respectively, which is a direct measure of the regional co-dependency on canneries for access to king crab. Because individuals do not have reciprocal exchange with canneries and stores, all of these transactions are one-way, typical of a cash-based transaction as opposed to a sharing network. The importance of recognising that traditional foods must be purchased through a store or processor will be discussed below.
Fig. 5. King crab networks are all based on access to crab from canneries, labelled as E (Entity) in networks 1 and 2, from the large wholesale retailer Costco in Anchorage (E in network 3), or from a local seafood store in Anchorage (E in network 4). These star pattern networks are extremely vulnerable to perturbations because the loss of a cannery, for example, means a significant loss of access to this social resource. The sizes of the nodes are scaled on the numbers of transactions, the arrows indicate direction of transaction, colour is for identification only.
Household marine fish networks
Marine fish networks are large and integrated; there is one large network (network 1), two medium networks (networks 2 and 3), and seven networks of a single household and attached individual (Fig. 6). Fig. 6 shows that the three largest marine fish networks are each dominated by 1–3 key nodes. These three networks combine to include nearly all those households and transactions involved in marine fish exchange. As shown in Figs. 6 and 7, the majority of the marine fish network transactions are connected into a single large, highly integrated network (network 1). These are highly integrated networks, with the significant correlation coefficients for all categories of data (r > .91). Like the shellfish networks, this means that there is a strong, positive linear relationship between the number of individual nodes in an exchange network, and the number of transactions completed, the number of households involved, and the number of communities they represent.
Fig. 6. Marine fish distribution networks for households in the study region. Presented are ten independent networks that include all marine fish species with transactions during this study. H = Household; E = Entity, such as a processor or other business.
Fig. 7. Rank order of household marine fish network distribution based on the numbers of transactions in each network. Numbers correspond to networks identifiers in Fig. 7. These data show that most marine transactions within, between, and outside the surveyed communities are connected into one large network, with two smaller networks, and seven small networks with only 1–3 transactions.
Fig. 8 demonstrates that more than 90% of the marine fish transactions are cod and halibut. These are the two most important marine fish in all categories of the data. The first two networks in Fig. 6 are cod and halibut combined, and the third largest is primarily cod. What makes network 3 interesting is that the primary source node is labelled ‘E’. This is an entity designation for a cannery/processor. This entire network revolves around individuals who purchase their cod from a processor. We return to this below and address the subsequent similarities with the crab network.
Fig. 8. Rank order of the most important marine fish species in all regional transactions based on the number of nodes (individuals) involved in those transactions. Halibut and Pacific cod dominate these transactions, all others play a very small role in the marine fish networks.
As shown in Fig. 8, halibut is the most important fish in the marine fish transaction networks, followed closely by cod. Other species play only a minor role. Halibut networks are the focus of many household transactions. Cod, on the other hand, is a product of both household production and purchases made at the canneries. This is clearly shown when the cod networks are analysed individually. The cod networks in Fig. 9 show four major networks of fairly even size, each ranging from 6–12 transactions involving approximately 7–13 nodes. The significant difference among them is that the largest network is completely structured around a cannery in which cod purchases provide the critical access to this key species.
Fig. 9. Pacific cod networks are centred on a variety of distribution points. The largest network (network 1) revolves around Peter Pan Seafoods, a cannery in King Cove, Alaska. The second largest network (network 2) is a non-indigenous local resident who provides considerable resources to regional households, labelled P (Person) because this individual was not one of the surveyed households (H). These star pattern networks are extremely vulnerable to perturbations because the loss of a cannery, or if individual 3220 were to leave the area, for example, means a complete loss of access to this recourse. The sizes of the nodes are scaled on the numbers of transactions, the arrows indicate direction of transaction, and colour is for identification only.
It is clear from these data that there are large, integrated networks for both halibut and cod, and the levels of integration (cluster networks) are such that they should be resilient to the loss of individual providers. Certain cod exchange networks may be more vulnerable simply because some households are dependent on the canneries for access.
Our analysis of the top 20 household providers and receivers of marine fish in the region give a negative return index (RI = –4.55), indicating that the top 20 providers have an average of 4.55 more transactions going out than coming in. On the other hand, the top 20 receivers are much closer to zero (RI = 1.95), with only two more transactions coming in than going out. This indicates that more households are producing marine fish, and thus giving more away, than in the shellfish example above. This is another measure of stability because more households have primary access, either through direct harvests or direct access to processed fish. But the high negative RI for the providers is a direct measure of the role of the international seafood processor in providing access to cod. As these are monetary transactions, the canneries do not receive reciprocal giving for providing access to resources.
Discussion
There is extensive evidence that shellfish and other marine invertebrates have played critical roles in the subsistence economies of the Aleut for millennia. Shellfish are found in archaeological sites going back at least 7,000 years. King crab and octopus were important parts the subsistence cycle throughout the last 200 years, yet king crab has made a more recent reappearance, becoming a traditional part of the social economy in the last half century involving a few generations. As such, it can be treated as a newer tradition that has become integrated into modern social constructions as political economies have changed on the global scale. This relatively short-term relationship has limited local entitlements. What is significant for this analysis is that its networks are not organised around key local providers, but rather around the canneries responsible for processing crab for which they are entitled primary legal access.
This was not always the case. Prior to the rationalisation of the crab fishery, which provided access to fewer boats and processors, many young Aleut men from the region worked on the crab boats and brought back ‘home-pack’, large crates of crab that were redistributed to relatives. Home-pack, in concert with income, cemented crab as a critical subsistence resource and part of the social economy, but also the status and social capital of the providers. Since young Aleut males are no longer needed in the labour pool following rationalisation, given that there are drastically fewer active boats fishing and most crew are transients from other fisheries or new hires from out of state, the residents of these communities are largely co-dependent on the canneries for access to crab. The social, emotional, and monetary value of crab is still high, but the legal and physical ability to acquire it and share it has changed for these men. Money must be earned in another fishery or job and spent at the cannery. Secondary receivers must mobilise their social capital to be on the receiving end. This results in the star pattern of network distribution, one that is highly vulnerable because the loss of a single cannery will result in the loss of crab to entire communities. Noteworthy in this analysis is that octopus networks are highly clustered, resulting in network patterns that are much less vulnerable. The loss of a single provider will be mitigated by other providers.
The cod networks, on the other hand, since some local fishermen participate in a that fishery, are a mixture of both cluster networks, which are highly integrated and less vulnerable to small perturbations, and star networks with a single node of distribution, which are highly vulnerable. Many salmon fishermen participate in a near shore cod fishery to supplement their incomes. These fish are integrated into broad networks of exchange that cross the entire region. The star networks are centred on a cannery where processed, frozen cod is purchased by families who do not have a relative participating in the fishery and who are solely reliant on the canneries to access this fish. While cod is perhaps the most traditionally used fish in the 10,000 year history of the Aleut (Maschner and others Reference Maschner, Betts, Reedy-Maschner and Trites2008), and a fish that is critical to all modern communities, changing regulations and limits on access have forced some households into market relationships that are as non-traditional as their current relationship with the king crab fishery.
As we have shown elsewhere (Reedy-Maschner and Maschner Reference Reedy–Maschner and Maschner2012b), commercial fisheries and subsistence fisheries are highly integrated, but primarily in one important manner. Fishermen who participate in the commercial fisheries, be they salmon, cod, halibut, or other species, are often the most important providers in all sharing networks, and are high status members of their communities. But fishermen from outside the region who have proprietary access to certain harvests because of rationalisation, such as in the case of the king crab fishery, provide little to local networks of exchange. This results in the local co-dependency of indigenous peoples on the processors and canneries for this important wild food.
In this context, we see the reinvention and renegotiation of sharing by using the canneries as the nexus for creating networks of exchange. Local peoples have incorporated global commercial enterprises into regional networks, modifying their entitlements and routes to access. Legal entitlements in the crab and cod fisheries are few, but in awarding privilege to extra-legal entitlements to these important wild foods, those exchanges and transfers that are embedded in social relationships (Devereux Reference Devereux2001), individuals expanded their ability to acquire them. In these cases, subsistence harvesting and sharing is a way of gaining or maintaining access to a privatised fishery. Some individuals do not know the full set of legal entitlements to harvest for subsistence, and were concerned that sharing wild foods was illegal. This uncertainty about legalities created a sense by some people to practice their culture with defiance regardless of legal entitlements. The noticeable opportunism, flexibility and creativity in adapting to changing ecological and sociopolitical circumstances in northern fishing communities, which contributes to their resilience, are highlights of these interactions.
Entitlement theory highlights the consequences of people experiencing declines in their legal sources of food acquisition, such as through production, purchasing, subsistence harvesting, and sharing. By illuminating the dimensions of sharing using social network analysis, we analyse transactions between individuals, households, and communities while tracking the production and flows of subsistence foods, measuring differential access of these foods between communities, and investigating reciprocity and risk management. The value of foods in this region can be seen in both the social value, such as status, celebrations, and giving, and in monetary value, such as the income from fisheries that allow access to other goods and services. In this case, crab and cod are abundant, but there is a poverty of certain kinds of foods (especially crab) circulating in the communities because of shrinking entitlements. Property involves control and ownership of these social foods through commercial fishing permits, direct subsistence harvest, and through social status, such as elders being central to distribution networks without an expectation of return on investment. But social capital does imply a return on investment, and it is unclear in our data exactly what the key providers are getting in return, although anecdotal evidence indicates that elders, grandparents, and others not directly involved in production provide social and knowledge-based returns. One of the key factors in this study has been social immunity, and our findings indicate that some distribution networks are more socially resilient than others (especially crab) because the former are clustered and the latter centralised. We have also noted elsewhere that those individuals with the most transactions going out, that is those who give the most, have the greatest social status.
Conclusion
Eastern Aleutian and Alaska Peninsula villages regard and experience commercial fishing as in continuity with past cultural practices in which resources were highly commercialised (Reedy-Maschner Reference Reedy–Maschner2010). The modern coastal villages of the Bering Sea are involved with the major commercial (non-salmon) fisheries in fairly limited ways, yet the residents assign value and consume almost every species regardless of how integrated into, or controlled by, the markets. In general, the salmon permit (or, in the case of Akutan, halibut quota) forms the first level of access to harvesting other fish and marine resources. The permits/quota are property and allows holders to expand the range and variety of subsistence harvesting but also provides purchasing power for those species that are regulated out of their hands. Secondary levels of access include extremely limited crewing positions on commercial vessels, in which crew can sometimes bring home fish from the vessel's catch, and harvest during fishing closures. Yet if commercial fishing were to cease, the villages would probably lose access to these key foods and revenue and be even worse off.
Sharing is another critical level of access, and is frequent within villages. Sharing is also frequent between villages, especially between communities with different access to different species. For example, this request was recently made on Facebook between two women in Port Heiden and Akutan: ‘thinking you need to send me dry fish and salted blubber, haven't had that since last time long time ago and smoked salmon’. Subsistence sharing has become the final way to counterbalance the loss of fisheries entitlement.
Our recent survey of these communities that included data collection to perform more complex social network analysis found wide-ranging differences in the structure of sharing and receiving for different species. We found that specific harvest methods and commercial activities have created co-dependencies that are often outside what are commonly considered traditional subsistence networks. Specifically, the most important transactions for some species are controlled by the distribution of processors, crab fishery rationalization, marine fish processing, and similar factors. King crab distribution networks, which are valuable to family feasts and events, are solely dictated by access to processors because local males’ roles in the king crab harvest, and therefore status in communities, has declined. We further found that marine fish, especially Pacific cod networks, are now partially co-dependent on processors for distribution. As noted by Lowe, ‘The dilemma for coastal communities, therefore, is that the world created by processors can disappear as quickly as the fish’ (Lowe Reference Lowe, Lowe and Carothers2008:151). These communities are vulnerable to corporate decisions made elsewhere and have lost social immunity. Yet if commercial fishing were to cease, the villages would likely lose access to these key foods and revenue and be even worse off. Poverty is the result of processes by which certain groups gain command over certain resources, often determined by social position, in which a range of access to resources has been closed off to others (Sen Reference Sen1980). The structure of commercial fisheries constrains the ability of coastal communities to gain entitlements, especially in cod and king crab fisheries, and they rely on social networks and social capital to extend access to these foods.
