Fishnets, Internets and Catnets: Globalization and Social Movements

Abstract

"In the summer of 1994, a battle between Spanish and French tuna ships occurred in the Bay of Biscay. The Spanish occused the French fishermen of using nets bigger than those permitted by European Union regulations, but the French insisted their nets were legal. The Spanish captured the French ship and towed it to the harbor of Lorien. According to Tarrow, conflicts of this sort (of the multi-national fishing industry) must be seen as part of a global crescendo of warning that there is a global problem of overfishing, rapidly approaching crisis proportions. This paper presents the crisis in the international fishing industry as a problem of transnational collective action, reminiscent of the great tradition of social movements in the West, as a result of globalization."