Cultural Consensus Analysis and Environmental Anthropology: Yellowfin Tuna Fishery Management in Hawaii.

NATURAL resources management; FISHERY scientists; FISHERS; FISHERIES; CONSENSUS (Social sciences)

HAWAII; UNITED States

Natural resource policies in the United States are implemented with a social technology of objectivity. Accordingly, resource managers rely on scientific and quantitative analyses to satisfy constituencies distrustful of regulatory authorities. Cultural consensus analysis is a powerful method for determining whether knowledge domains are structured in ways that support a conclusion that cultural members recognize certain cultural truths not known beforehand to the investigator. The authors compare hand-line fishermen and fishery scientists in Hawaii regarding their knowledge about stock structure, fish movements, resource abundance, stock condition, and fishery interactions. Yellowfin tuna fishery results show that fishermen and scientists exhibit an overall consensus about ecological knowledge, although they disagree in some areas. Some practical advantages of consensus analysis are discussed along with the possibilities for growth in the fishery social science sector, cross-cultural applied research, and the practice of environmental anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cross-Cultural Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)