Sweden’s good fishers: Skills and values in a transforming social-ecological field

In this article we build on the “good farmer” literature to explore how Swedish coastal fishers represented the “good fisher” in the context of transformations in the social-ecological field of commercial fishing. Anthropological and other social science research on the “good farmer,” “good fisher,” “good crofter” and related life-modes, works against the reductionist models of farmers, fishers, and other livelihood actors as driven by profit or economic need. When such models inform environmental policy, management, and activism, they often lead to unintended and unfortunate consequences. Here, drawing on the Bourdieusian “good farmer” tradition, we use interviews and ethnographic materials to investigate what makes the “good fisher” in Swedish coastal fishing, paying particular attention to how fishers have responded to social and ecological changes by reskilling and developing a new practical sense for their profession. Our interlocutors experienced the transformations in Swedish coastal fishing as significantly modifying the skilled performance of fishing, yet the moral values that undergirded their notions of the “good fisher” closely resemble those described in the social science literature on coastal fishers. We argue that these stable moral values relate to the stakes and interests which animate commercial fishing as a social-ecological field, which non-fishers often misunderstand or neglect. Our study challenges reductionist models of fishers and other livelihood actors, a task that many scholars regard as crucial for making progress toward sustainable food, while reworking Bourdieusian theory deployed in “good farmer” research to include not only social but also ecological dimensions.