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Buoyancy on the Bayou: Shrimpers Face the Rising Tide of Globalization

Online ISBN:
9780801465796
Print ISBN:
9780801450747
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

Buoyancy on the Bayou: Shrimpers Face the Rising Tide of Globalization

Jill Ann Harrison
Jill Ann Harrison
Assistant Professor of Sociology, the University of Oregon
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Published:
1 November 2012
Online ISBN:
9780801465796
Print ISBN:
9780801450747
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

Over the past few decades, shrimp has transformed from a luxury food to a kitchen staple. While shrimp-loving consumers have benefited from the lower cost of shrimp, domestic shrimp fishers have suffered, particularly in Louisiana. Most of the shrimp that we eat today is imported from shrimp farms in China, Vietnam, and Thailand. The flood of imported shrimp has sent dockside prices plummeting, and rising fuel costs have destroyed the profit margin for shrimp fishing as a domestic industry. This book portrays the struggles that Louisiana shrimp fishers endure to remain afloat in an industry beset by globalization. The book offers a portrait of shrimp fishers' lives just before the BP oil spill in 2010, which helps us better understand what has happened since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It shows that shrimp fishers go through a careful calculation of noneconomic costs and benefits as they grapple to figure out what their next move will be. Many willingly forgo opportunities in other industries to fulfill what they perceive as their cultural calling. Others reluctantly leave fishing behind for more lucrative work, but they mourn the loss of a livelihood upon which community and family structures are built. In this account of the struggle to survive amid the waves of globalization, the book focuses the analysis at the intersection of livelihood, family, and community and casts a bright light upon the cultural importance of the work that we do.

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