New article by Sonja Ganseforth analyses Japanese fishery reform
A new, open-access article by DIJ principal researcher Sonja Ganseforth investigating the ongoing reform of Japanese fishery governance and its social and environmental implications has just been published in The Geographical Journal (online first). “Blue revitalization or dispossession? Reform of common resource management in Japanese small-scale fisheries” analyses the growth-oriented reform which challenges successful resource co-management in small-scale fisheries by opening up coastal fishery resources to corporate investors and strengthening top-down regulation. Its analysis offers deeper insights into the transformative as well as dispossessive potential of the global paradigmatic shift towards an intensified industrial exploitation of the oceans against the background of globally proliferating discourses on “blue growth” and the “blue economy”. The article is based on in-depth anthropological field research in rural Japan and an outcome of Sonja’s research project Fishing communities between growth and demise.