Emptying Their Nets: Small Capital and Rural Industrialization in the Fishing Industry of Nova Scotia

John Van West is a policy analyst at the Ontario Native Affairs
Secretariat.

This study explores the genesis and persistence of structural
differentiation in Nova Scotia’s industrial fisheries. Apostle and
Barrett, the two principal authors, along with seven other
co-contributors, argue that a constellation of factors, underpinned by
resource, economic, and social influences, have frustrated the attempts
of large capital to concentrate capital in the Atlantic fisheries. The
authors advance the view that these factors have continued to supporting
the dynamic reproduction of small capital, despite predictions to the
contrary of its demise as large capital assumed, in the Nova Scotia
context at least, a position of truncated dominance. Apostle and Barrett
note that an unfortunate consequence of the industrial structure was the
emergence of a populist ideology, central to which is the concept of
rugged individual entrepreneurship; this ideology, the authors suggest,
has compromised the ability of small capital to collectivize in times of
crisis.

This book is not about fishing people and communities per se but
rather, more fundamentally, about the industry’s productive capacities
and its markets, financial characteristics, harvesting technologies, and
labor processes. Thus, aside from the book’s well-crafted theoretical
overview, and those chapters addressing family and community
institutions, there is very little inherently sociological about its
analysis. Indeed, the authors use the language of economics to convey
their points of view, and frequently rely on tables, maps, and
statistical facts to support their arguments. The bewildering level of
detail (maps excluded) tends to obfuscate and overwhelm. In subsequent
editions of the book, the authors might consider, for the sake of
story-line clarity, diverting some of the hard data to footnotes or
appendices.

Apart from these imperfections, the book is well organized
(particularly helpful are the summaries that conclude each chapter) and
sound in its conclusions. East Coast fishers are suffering hardship
because of state mismanagement of the stocks. Federal bureaucrats
struggling to salvage what remains of the East Coast fishery would be
well advised to read this book.