Abstract
In the Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture, Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark challenge Garret Hardin’s (1968) well known ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ thesis and supply an alternative explanation and suit of solutions for ecological crises. Chapter 1 is a critique of Hardin’s (1968) thesis for oversimplifying human nature and ignoring social context, particularly the underlying logic of capitalism. The authors draw attention to natural resource policy prescriptions derived from the logic of commons tragedies that seek to achieve sustainability while maintaining or increasing profit accumulation through increased production efficiency. Technological responses to ecological crises follow the logic of economic efficiency to maintain and ultimately increase capital accumulation through commodification of the environment. The commodification of the natural world displaces labor, concentrates wealth, and increases resource use, which compounds and expands the breadth and depth of ecological crises, resulting in further iterations of the technological-crises cycle. Hence, according to the authors, the commodity not the commons produces tragedies.
In chapter 2, Longo et al. provide a detailed overview of the tragedy of the commodity framework. The authors draw from human ecology and Marxist social metabolic approaches to explain the dialectic between socially structured processes and the materialist conditions of the natural world in the production of marine fisheries crises (p. 8). Whereas human ecology focuses on the reciprocal relationships between population, organizations, environment, and technology (p. 21), the social metabolic perspective draws attention to the rifts between human systems and the natural world created by capitalism (p. 26). Ecological crises are endemic to capitalism as nature is continually transformed and destroyed in the commodification process in the pursuit of capital accumulation (p. 32). Drawing from Karl Polanyi (1957), the authors explain how metabolic rifts are formed by the commodification of phenomena that were not inherently created for trade on the market (fictitious commodities), which drives disembedding processes by separating and giving economic imperatives primacy over social and natural spheres (p. 33). The result is further intensification of the social metabolism of capital, deepening of metabolic rifts, and escalation of ecological crises.
Longo et al. use individual transferable quotas (ITQs) in chapter 3 as an example of fish as a fictitious commodity and the limitations of market-based solutions to problems rooted in the commodification process (p. 40). ITQs commodify fish through the privatization of access rights. The logic of ITQs promotes efficient and sustainable resource use from the rational maximizing tendencies of individuals. Ownership of a known portion of total allowable catch eliminates competitive fishing and creates the incentive to invest in the future of the resource to maximize long-term profit potential. ITQs have solved the problem of ‘too many fishers chasing too few fish’, but the environmental benefits are mixed and negative social consequences have been widely documented (p. 46). Implementation of ITQs have been linked to concentration of rights, disintegration of community bonds, and loss of traditional fisher livelihoods and local knowledge, as well as greater inequality and restructured power relations (pp. 54–58).
The analytic utility of the tragedy of the commodity framework is demonstrated through two case studies, the Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery and the Pacific salmon fishery. In chapter 4, Longo et al. explain the tragedy of commodity for bluefin tuna in three acts (p. 105). The first act is overfishing and destruction of a 1000-year-old traditional system of sustainable bluefin capture (pp. 81–85). In the latter half of the 20th century, the increased market profitability of bluefin tuna and consumer demands for mass production drove technological adaptions to maximize economies of scale (p. 88). Larger vessels and mechanized equipment replaced traditional, labor-intensive processes and increased the quantity of fish harvested. Consequently, fish populations decreased requiring subsequent technological adaptations to maintain and expand commodity production. The traditional trap fishery was replaced by industrial long lines and purse seines, and more recently the development of tuna ranching, a form of capture-based aquaculture (pp. 88–93). Tuna ranching represents the second act and the expanded scope of overfishing. In addition to concerns of pollution and disease, tuna ranching is energy-intensive, requiring large quantities of feed-fish to promote weight gain and fossil fuel use in operation and harvesting processes (pp. 101–102). The third act is an ongoing development of bluefin tuna domestication and aquaculture systems as technological ‘fixes’ to ecological limits and metabolic rifts.
Longo et al. also describe salmon aquaculture in the Pacific Coast of North American as proceeding through three phases in the tragedy of the commodity in chapter 5 (p. 142). The first phase is the conversion of salmon from use-value to exchange-value as the canning industry displaced traditional fishing communities (pp. 115–120). The disembedding of salmon through commodification processes undermined the social practices, rituals, and belief systems that maintained a sustainable and resilient socio-ecological metabolic rate of exchange between humans and salmon and resulted in declines in salmon populations. While privatized access rights prevented collapse of the salmon population by decreasing the number of salmon harvesters, inequality and loss of traditional livelihoods and knowledge were exacerbated (p. 122). In the second phase, salmon were formalized as a commodity through salmon hatcheries, which disembedded the salmon from the ecological requirements for species preservation (pp. 123–127). Tanks replaced watersheds and streams, as well as the need to protect wild salmon habitat. The third phase of the tragedy is unfolding with the development of salmon aquaculture. Similar to tuna ranches, problems with energy and nutrient cycling, concentrated fish by-products, parasites, and toxic chemicals are produced (pp. 134–139). Risk of escape and invasion of nonnative and genetically modified salmon are also concerns (pp. 139–140).
The case studies demonstrate three stages in the tragedy of the commodity process: (1) privatization for capital gain, which separates social and natural spheres and leads to exploitation; (2) technological responses to environmental limits, which separate nature from nature to maintain and/or expand commodity production; and, (3) intensification of technological fixes, which progressively widens and deepens the metabolic rift with profound consequences for further socio-ecological transformation. In chapter 6, the authors discuss the qualitatively unique role of commodities in modern capitalist systems. Longo et al. argue that the tragedy is not caused by commodities per se; commodities have always existed in human societies (p 145). The tragedy emerges when commodification dominates all other aspects of human relations, when the economy is disembedded and given primacy over all other aspects of the social and natural world. The social gravity produced by this system ‘expands the commodification process. All aspects of the social and natural world – the substance of society – are subordinated to the laws of the market’ (p. 147). The social metabolism of capitalism is driven by the incessant drive for capital accumulation, which propels the commodification process and increases the scale and scope of ecological crises beyond the universal metabolism of the biophysical world. However, ‘Healing the Rifts’ is possible (p. 175).
Stefano B. Longo et al. discuss potential approaches for transcending the tragedy of the commodity in chapter 7. The authors argue that uniform policy solutions are inadequate; and, interdisciplinary collaboration is a necessity for problem-solving in complex socio-ecological systems (pp. 176–179). The authors review the transformative potential of regulations, such as Marine Protected Areas; consumer movements related to local, organic, and fair-trade products; and governance reforms, which include community self-determination in resource access, use, and allocation. However, according to Longo et al., the success of any approach in healing metabolic rifts depends on what environmental sociologists refer to as the New Ecological Paradigm (p. 183). The paradigm contributes to resilient and sustainable socio-ecological systems by emphasizing the importance of an equitable social order that operates within ecological limits, with an economy predicated on human welfare and development, rather than accumulation and growth.
Longo, Clausen, and Clark offer an intriguing Marxist alternative to the perspectives that currently dominate fisheries scholarship. Current scholarship draws heavily from Elinor Ostrom’s (1990) neoinstitutional approach to commons governance and Weberian perspectives similar to sociologist, Doug C. Wilson’s (2009) analyses of science, technology, and policy. The primary weakness of The Tragedy of the Commodity is a lack of attention to agency and politics, which is also an opportunity for further theory development. For example, Marx’s conception of alienation is implicated in the authors’ discussion of disembedding through commodification processes but not thoroughly explored. A greater focus on socio-ecological alienation and how it is produced would help explain how commodification occurs and is contested and the ways power and agency articulate with social structures and the environment in the process. In general, The Tragedy of the Commodity is an important step toward situating commons governance and ecological crises within a critique of the political economy of capitalism. Marxist scholarship on fisheries and other common resources represent a ‘robust, but small, critical literature’ (Campling et al., 2012: 178), which makes this book a required addition to Environmental Sociology and Society and Natural Resources, as well as Contemporary Theory courses.