Browsing by Author "Maurstad, Anita"

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Closing the Commons--Opening the 'Tragedy': Regulating North-Norwegian Small-Scale Fishing
(1992) Maurstad, Anita
"The North-Norwegian small scale fishing fleet have face radically changing conditions the last three years. Due to scientific reconsiderations about the size of the cod-stock, fishing was severely reduced in 1989. From partaking in an open access / common property context, fishermen now face a private fishery since th4e introduction of boat quotas in 1990. "Organizational frames influence both the productive ethics and the strategies in exploitation of resources. My studies of the North-Norwegian small-scale fleet indicate that both ethics and strategies change in relation to the new frames. Formerly exploitation and expansion inherent in the small-scale production were curtailed. The leveling of productive effort can be seen as an outcome of: 1) the fishermen's notions of the property ways of production and management of resources, and 2) the organizational features of this particular types of production. After the introduction of boat quotas the same organizational features have a totally new and reversed significance for fishermen's economic strategies; instead of limiting economic expansion, they provide incentives to expand. My studies indicate that this also changed the fishermen's notions of proper ways of production. "My paper will discuss how the organizational context as well as the productive ethics and strategies of fishermen are changing. And how state regulation can have unintended implications; how the suppositions for entering a tragic situation are more present now than before."
Customs in Commons--Commons in Court: Fishermen's Customary Practice and Statutory Law Concerning the Cod-Fishery in North-Norwegian Waters
(1995) Maurstad, Anita
"My main purpose with this paper is to throw light on what I here will call fishermen's practice as an informal system of marine resource rights distribution. In the Commons literature, focus is put on conceptualising social and cultural practices in resource systems, that is customs in commons. As I read the court's decision, it took on the technical juridical task of settling whether a legal commons existed in fishing. The court case then, could be seen as a meeting between the informal and the formal system of rights distribution, as well as a meeting between the commons literature's conceptional use of the word commons and current law's practical use. I will close the paper by discussing the court as an arena for settling disputes between these two rights systems, that is commons in court."
Technical Capacity Versus Capacity in Use: Challenges in Defining Efficient Fisheries Regulations
(1998) Maurstad, Anita
"In Norway, perceived improvements that followed the introduction of quotas and access limitations to secure future fisheries, pose some interesting questions about efficiency. Comparison of small scale fisheries practices before and after the introduction of efficiency regulations, shows that these regulations can change the social system of fishing in unforeseen ways. The economic and biological improvements following the regulations are debatable. Explanations for the lack of efficiency draw upon the politics of knowledge, or how scientific explanations narrowly define and legitimize what efficiency is and how to achieve it. In the case of small boat fisheries, defining fisheries problems by technical measures alone, overlooks two important factors: 1) Variation within that technological category of fisheries and 2) Social incentives and constraints of technology in use. Failure to take these factors into account leads to changes that are actually counterproductive to fishing efficiency in the small boat fisheries. The present longitudinal study draws upon qualitative and quantitative data in the small scale fleet in Troms and Finnmark, the two northernmost counties in Norway. Data were collected intermittently from 1984-1996."