The Fishermen's Frontier: People and Salmon in Southeast Alaska | 
| Author: David F. Arnold
Creator: William Cronon
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $19.95
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New (24) Used (6) from $18.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 200954
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 267
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 029598788X
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.9565609798
EAN: 9780295987880
ASIN: 029598788X
Publication Date: July 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new HB novel offered by Friends of El Toro Library 396-06 (not ex-library copy)
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Product Description
In "The Fishermen's Frontier", David Arnold examines the economic, social, cultural, and political context in which salmon have been harvested in southeast Alaska over the past 250 years. The book is about Native and Euro-American fishermen, local fishing communities, industrialists, and resource managers and the ways in which these various groups have imagined, shaped, exploited, and managed the salmon fishery and its resources, arranging it to conform to understandable patterns of social organization and endowing it with cultural meaning. The transformation of the salmon fishery in south-eastern Alaska from an aboriginal resource to an industrial commodity was fraught with historical ironies. Tribal peoples-usually considered egalitarian and communal in nature-managed their fisheries with a strict notion of property rights, while Euro-Americans-so vested in the notion of property and ownership-established a "common-property" fishery when they arrived in the late nineteenth century.In the twentieth century, federal conservation officials tried to rationalize the fishery by "improving" upon nature and promoting economic efficiency, but their uncritical embrace of scientific planning and their disregard for local knowledge degraded salmon habitat and encouraged a backlash from small-boat fishermen, who clung to their "irrational" ways. Meanwhile, Indian and white commercial fishermen engaged in identical labours, but established vastly different work cultures and identities based on competing notions of "work" and "nature". Arnold concludes with a sobering analysis of the threats to present-day fishing cultures by forces beyond their control. However, the salmon fishery in south-eastern Alaska is still very much alive, entangling salmon, fishermen, industrialists, scientists, and consumers in a living web of biological and human activity that has continued for thousands of years. David F. Arnold is professor of history at Columbia Basin College, Pasco, Washington.
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| Customer Reviews:
 great scholarship, great storytelling November 12, 2008
This book is a high-water mark in the study of the southeast Alaskan salmon fishery. David Arnold intelligently mixes rigorous research with colorful descriptions of Alaska's salmon fishery through ancient to modern times. Arnold explains, with dispassionate fairness, the many opposing factions in the region. By not overreaching his objectivity, Arnold not only educates the reader, but he puts these conflicting viewpoints into conversation.
Having grown up in a southeast Alaskan fishing family, I'm confident I can say Arnold captures many of the passions and concerns borne by those independent fishermen who make their living off the fishery. At the same time, the history of Alaska Natives, environmentalists, federal regulators, fish processors, international sea harvesters, and many others make this book a well-rounded study.
 My opinion of "The Fishermen's Frontier" July 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a beautiful book, with maps, graphs and pictures. It is a well-written history of the salmon industry in Alaska. The author has an impressive bibliography and historical footnotes that lend credibility to the environmental questions posed in this book.
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