In Cod They Trusted:
Ecological Knowledge, Social Context and the Overexploitation of Marine Resources in
Eastern Canada
11:00 a.m., Friday, Sept. 4, 2009
Corley Auditorium in Webster Hall
Admission: free

Eastern Canada, like many parts of the world, has seen the dramatic overexploitation of natural resources. The local ecological knowledge of the people directly dependent on a resource is obviously a valuable tool to be used in avoiding similar future ecological disasters. However, local ecological knowledge is far more complex than what people say about the environment and the causes of environmental problems. This is because all talk about the environment not only takes place within a specific social environment; it is also aimed at influencing the behavior of people in that social environment. Thus talk about the causes of environmental problems must be interpreted within the social context of that talk. Craig Palmer presents a number of examples of the need for such interpretations from his fieldwork in Newfoundland and Labrador over the past 20 years that included extensive participant observation in the commercial fisheries for cod, lobster, shrimp and other species.

Craig T. Palmer is an associate professor of cultural anthropology and director of graduate studies in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from Arizona State University in 1988. His research focuses on kinship, religion, ritual, cooperation, migration, sports and the ecological adaptations of fishing communities to their environment. His experience working in the commercial lobster fishery of Maine for five years during the 1980s led to his anthropological fieldwork in fishing communities on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, Canada. This research started in 1990 and initially focused on the social consequences of the collapse of the cod stocks that had been the primary economic resource in the area for centuries. More recently his research has followed the residents of Newfoundland as the collapse of the fishery has caused them to have to migrate to western Canada in order to find jobs in the oil industry of northern Alberta. His current research focuses on how these individuals maintain many of their Newfoundland traditions and use these to create networks of social relationships with other Newfoundlanders to help meet the many challenges faced in the new environment of western Canada.