On the ethnographic categorization of biodiversity in the danube delta biosphere reserve

Abstract

This paper is an interpretative approach of a conflicting state of affairs in the Danube Delta, Romania, where local communities of Russian and Ukrainian fishermen claim their rights of wetland management in the context of (and sometimes against) the government policies of conserving biodiversity. My general assumption is that divergences acting between fishermen and the authorities in the Danube Delta are essentially rooted in a kind of generalized (but not insurmountable) incongruity of two such occupational and institutional worlds and, moreover worldviews.