Coastal Cultures
An Anthropology of Fishing and Whaling Traditions
Description:... Throughout Europe, fishermen have often been portrayed as a ruggedly independent and freedom-loving lot, "a race apart" working relentlessly in perilous pursuit of prey to eke out a parsimonious livelihood. For this reason, fisher folk have often been romanticized in a rather heroic fashion in novels, poetry, pictorial arts, and popular and scholarly writing as a kind of "noble savages" at home. But, both the positive and the negative views were stereotypical and based on exoticism. The imagery of fishermen as folk heroes has changed dramatically over the past few decades. They are currently under increasing scrutiny from environmentalists and public opinion for allegedly being unruly marauders of marine living resources.
This volume of essays throws light on cultural dimensions of fishing and whaling in Europe and the United States.
Rob van Ginkel is an anthropologist and is affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands).
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