New schemes of proprietary control are being considered to recover and improve Alaska's salmon industry, even though the industry is already structured through the nonquota permit-based regulatory regime of limited entry. Most U.S. fisheries are currently being evaluated for new restructuring and privatization plans, which forever change the fisheries and the fishermen. The socioeconomic fates of many coastal indigenous peoples are being determined without finer understandings of potential benefits and ramifications of such policies. The tortoise pace of anthropology will almost certainly never catch up with the rapid policymaking process, but more than three decades of the Limited Entry Permit Plan can provide a useful means of evaluating the lasting effects of programs already in place and predicting future effects of new policies. Based upon multiyear ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative data acquired in four eastern Aleut fishing communities, this paper summarizes and critically examines long-term effects of Limited Entry on the culture and society of Aleut people. From the social structure before Limited Entry through permit allocation to the current fisheries system, this plan was a defining moment for modern social relations and ultimately exaggerated as well as generated other social, economic, and political limited entry systems in Aleut society.
展开▼
