{"product_id":"fishy-business-9781566397292","title":"Fishy Business","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeaping waterfalls, struggling through rocky shallows, only the strongest salmon survive to spawn a new generation. These remarkable fish seem to be pure nature, unfathomable, all instinct. But are they? For more than a century biologists have tried to unlock the mystery of salmon we know. For sociologist Rik Scarce, salmon represent an opportunity to probe the relationship of science, society, and nature. About Pacific salmon -- a game fish and food source that is protected and manages for economic and environmental  abundance -- Scarce writes, \\u0022What other living thing receives such extensive attention from science and society, is used in so many ways, yet retains so much of what we would like  to think is its 'wild' character?\\u0022 He shows how political, bureaucratic, and economic forces have directed salmon science for their own purposes and how control remains a central feature in salmon biology. Identifying a countertrend rooted in environmental activism, Scarce also argues that an ecocentric perspective is gaining ground even as pressures mount simultaneously to save endangered salmon populations and to bring every last salmon to market. Thus, while external forces control much of the biologists' work, a movement is underway to free biology from political and economic pressures. In rich, ethnographic detail, Scarce develops this portrait of a science struggling with nature and itself. The old-line \\u0022fisheries biologists\\u0022 tell how they work under immense pressure to unravel the unknowns of salmon existence to fulfill objectives of politically-motivated funding agencies. In contrast, the new breed of \\u0022conservation biology\\u0022 researchers struggles to maintain the genetic diversity of salmon populations while minimizing the ways humans determine the fate of the salmon. Fishy Business provides new ways for regarding about human interactions with other species, from appealing ones like wolves, whales, and redwood tress to less popular ones like snail darters and kangaroo rats. Society struggles to decide what parts of nature matter and why. Ultimately, Scarce argues, nature is a social product: what shall we make of it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Scarce shines a revealing light on the inner workings of hatcheries, providing the reader an appreciation of human compulsions to domesticate and control-forces that have influenced our knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of salmon and other natural entities. ... Thoroughly researched, eloquently written, and energetically told, this book dares us to explore our relation to nature and our knowing of ourselves.\" -Pacific Northwest Quarterly \"In this book, [Rik Scarce] describes human uses and abuses of Pacific salmon in an attempt to explore the relationship between science, society and nature. He shows how salmon biology has been manipulated in western North America, originally through scientific curiosity, and then exploited for economic gain, causing ongoing strife between factional and ethnic groups and even between nations. He discusses through many interviews with biologists and fishery managers how political, bureaucratic and economic forces have modified and engineered salmon populations for their own purposes by extensive ranching and enhancement of programs, citing examples of the successes and failures that have resulted.\" -Andrew F. Walker, Environmental Conservation \"...Scarce compellingly argues that the emerging field of 'Environmental Sociology' has much to offer. ...Fishy Business is a strong contribution to the growing literature on human\/animal relations and Environmental Sociology. Further, in light of the continuing 'Salmon Wars' between Canada and the United States, and other conflicts based upon dwindling 'resources,' Fishy Business is timely and thus well worth a read on that basis alone.\" -Canadian Journal of Sociology Online\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCONTENTS  Acknowledgments  1. NATURE IN THE MAKING     Nature's Beginnings                 Scientists, Rivers, and Salmon                 Why Salmon?                 Constructing Nature     Classical Social Constructivism: An Overview     Macroconstructions and Rationality                 Rationalization and the Social Construction of Nature     Storytelling                 An Author's Story  2. WHO -- OR WHAT -- IS IN CONTROL HERE?     Control, Power, and Salmon Biology     Professionalizing Biologists and Salmon: A Brief History                 Schools of FIsheries     Structural Control over Salmon Biology                 The Political and Economic Milieu                 Funding Salmon Biology                                  Society and Funding for Salmon                                 Expediency versus Knowledge                                 The Professional Politics of Funding                                  \"Bootlegging\" Research     Conclusion: Biologists as Bartleby  3. BIOLOGISTS IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT     Control of Salmon by Salmon Biologists                 Engineering Salmon                                     Systems                 Laboratories, Field Research, and Control                 Quantification and Modeling                 \"Enhancement\": Control by Other  Means                                     Assessing Enhancement                 The Interchangeability of Salmon     Salmon Biology and Control over Managers                 Biologists and Managers     Conclusion: Salmon and Biology Transformed  4. THINKING AND MAKING SALMON     Cognitive and Physical Constructions                 Cognitive Constructions                 Physical Constructions     Salmon Hatcheries as Political-Economic Instruments                 Salmon Hatchery Technology                 Production in Salmon Biology                 Hatchery Politics                 Hatchery Economics                 Certainty, Prediction, and Tooling                 An Agrarian Model for Fisheries                 Hatchery Salmon as \"Different\"                 The Pro-Hatchery Response     New Tools for Tooling Salmon: High-Tech Fish                 When Salmon Research Themselves                 The Social Context                 Genetics and the New Salmon     Conclusion: Salmon as Social Fact  5. MYTHOLOGY AND BIOLOGY     Science: Myth and the Material     Why Mythology?                 Mythology and Control                 Mythology and Meaning     Contemporary Interpretations of the Myth Concept                 Mythology's Contradictions     Uncertainty and Mythology                 Uncertainty, Expertise, and Myth     Myths and \"Bad Science\"                 Funding and Bad Science                 Distinguishing Fact from Bad Science                 Bad Science: Some Examples     Observer-Created Reality     Conclusion: Infinite Control?  6. FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN SALMON BIOLOGY     Freedom and Control                 Freedom in Classical Sociological Theory                 Control\/Power versus Self-Determinism and Freedom     Biologists' Struggle for Freedom                 The Scientific Ideal in an Age of Limits                 The Importance of Interchangeability     Conservation Biology, Freedom, and Self-Determination                 Conservation Biology: The Core                 Conservation Biology within Salmon Biology                                     Identification and Ethics                                     Advocacy, Acceptance, and Resistance                 Commonalities with the Fisheries Perspective     Conclusion: Back to the Future  7. SALMON WARS AND THE \"NATURE\" OF POLITICS     Power to the People?      Anatomy of  a Fish War                 Capturing a Fugitive with a Treaty                 The Salmon War Gets Hot     Constructing Complete Communities     Conclusion: Nature as We Want It to Be  8. CONSTRUCTING NATURE -- AND  EXPERIENCING IT     Toward a Sociology of Social-Natural Interactions     Knowing a Meaningless Nature  APPENDIX. METHODS AND RELATED RESEARCH     Data Gathering and Analysis for this Study                 Grounded Theory     The Intellectual Heritage: Prior Works                 Socially Constructing Science and Technology                  Socially Constructing Nature                                       Catton and Dunlap: The First Social Constructivists of Nature                                         Landscaping Nature                                         Other Understandings                 The Anticonstructivists                                        A Change of Face                                         Murphy's Failed Critique of Constructivism  NOTES  INDEX","brand":"Temple University Press,U.S.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51041364148567,"sku":"9781566397292","price":26.59,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781566397292.jpg?v=1750949980","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/fishy-business-9781566397292","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}