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Social Science General

Uncommon Property

The Fishing and Fish-Processing Industries in British Columbia

edited by Patricia Marchak, Neil Guppy & John L. McMullan

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jan 1987
Category
General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774856942
    Publish Date
    Nov 2007
    List Price
    $39.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780458809905
    Publish Date
    Jan 1987
    List Price
    $41.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774808699
    Publish Date
    Jan 1987
    List Price
    $32.95

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Out of print

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Description

Uncommon Property describes Canadian West Coast fisheries in the 1980s, focusing on the social and economic structure of the industry. It is the product of a three-year research project conducted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

Part 1 is concerned with the history of the industry, the role of the federal and provincial governments, international markets, significant differences in raw fish markets and their importance for the fish processing sector, and the international context for British Columbia fisheries.

Part 2 considers the labour process. This includes chapters on shoreworkers and fishers, with descriptions of their characteristics and working conditions. It also examines their history of organization, the special place of native Indians in the fishery, and the perspective of history by the Union of Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union Newspaper.

Part 3 considers fishing communities: their viability when they are dependent on a diminishing resource and their responses to resource depletion.

This study offers readers unique insights into the complex problems of fishing industries in which competing interests are attempting to find solutions to unresolvable contradictions.

 

About the authors

Patricia Marchak, former dean of arts and professor emerita, University of British Columbia, is the author of several books including Logging the Globe, The Integrated Circus, God's Assassins, and Reigns of Terror.

Patricia Marchak's profile page

Neil Guppy's profile page

John L. McMullan's profile page

Editorial Reviews

A welcome and valuable resource book essential for anyone interested in the west coast fisheries. More than that, however, the key chapters by Guppy, Pinkerton, and Muszynski in Part 2 and one on the state by McMullan in Part 1 are classic articles in the field and deserve to be widely cited  as insightful, original contributions to Canadian political economy.

BC Studies

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