Siri Gerrard

University of Tromsø

Siri Gerrard is an associate professor in the Department of Planning and Community Studies at the University of Tromsø, Norway.

Siri’s research interests include: ethnography, social anthropology and gender and feminist studies. Her research focuses more particularly on fisheries, fisheries policies, fishing communities, work, employment and development in North Norway, but also in Tanzania and Cameroon, studied by means of cultural and gender perspectives. Siri’s current research project is entitled, “towards “new” fishery communities?” This project looks at the changes that have taken place in fishing and other types of local employment, in fishery households, community life and children’s activities within the framework of small fishing villages. The changes have occurred in a period where fish resources, regulation systems with quotas are being restructured. At the same time there are changes in education, labour market and viewpoints on men’s and women’s roles and positions in society. One of the key findings so far, is that the male fishers, and the women as well as youngsters, are very mobile individuals with non-fixed perceptions of gender and gender roles. Accordingly, the household becomes mobile with different houses at different places. With these kinds of mobilities and changes, it seems necessary to deconstruct the concepts of household, fishery community and fisher.

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  • Changing Tides

    Gender, Fisheries and Globalization

    Edited by Marian Binkley, Siri Gerrard, Christina Maneschy and Barbara Neis     January 2005

    Fisheries are among the most globalized economic sectors in the world. Relying largely on wild resources and employing millions of people and feeding many millions more, fisheries provide a unique vantage point from which to view contemporary globalization, which is co-occurring with a major ecological revolution triggered by resource degradation and associated with the development of intensive aquaculture. Globalization is intensifying the export orientation and use of joint ventures between rich and poor countries in fisheries. International organizations such as the IMF are pressuring many debtor countries to exchange access to their fishery resources for access to foreign exchange, constraining their ability to limit external ownership and the export of resources, and threatening local fishery employment and food self-sufficiency. Changing Tides brings together contributions from researchers and community workers from 13 countries of the world. Juxtaposing academic case studies with accounts from activists and fisheries workers, this book points the ways in which globalization and associated resource degradation, privatization and the concentration of ownership and control in fisheries are jeopardizing the lives and livelihoods of women fish workers and their families.