Geographies and Histories of Fish and Fishing

Abstract

While many developmental sectors and their communities have sparse historical or geographic records, recent works on environmental history and historical geography have sought to fill in some of the gaps. Work on histories of forests, pollution and some land mammal and reptile species has contributed a great deal in the effort to move the realm of history beyond that of human experience. Fish and fishing, however, are certainly under-researched in both a historical and geographic sense. Even in the field of anthropology, an academic discipline with a concern for the edges and outliers in human development, fishing communities-their societies, traditions and histories-have not received much in the way of exposure or interest. This chapter, therefore, outlines what can only be a partial and incomplete focus on the wider global histories and geographies of fish and fishing.