1. Introduction: Fisheries, Quota Management, Quota Transfer and Bio-economic Rationalization

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) were heralded in the 1980s as a market-based solution to the problem of overfishing and were adopted around the world. These neoliberal market mechanisms combined with the fisheries science of stock assessments in diverse contexts to produce a new baseline in fisheries management, albeit one set out in a diverse array of related but not identical bio-economic projects. Appropriately, quota management, quota transfer and bio-economic rationalizations have received attention from social scientists, with some finding that ITQs have produced desirable and effective results while others note the (un)intended, negative social consequences of this private rights regime. Stock assessment has been critiqued for not paying enough attention to ecosystems and for providing insufficient insight into how many fish there are. Further, ITQs are associated with a growing focus on de-centered, self-organizing responses to what are perceived as crises in natural systems. The movement away from centralized state control, towards diffuse, client-centered managerial interventions and assessments has consequences for how fishing communities and property rights are understood, how fisheries investment functions, how enforcement and conservation are carried out, how fisheries are assessed, and what the characteristics of ecosystems are thought to be. Thus economic and policy attention is being shifted to aspects of fisheries besides allocation of access privileges as property among fishing companies, and particularly to new concerns emerging from the achievements, limitations and failures of ITQ regimes. How have fishing places and fishing people been reconfigured by the unique hybrid of science, capital and managerialism that has been ushered in alongside ITQs? This chapter sets out the scope of the field of inquiry.