Abstract

At the margins of the industrial economy of the mid-twentieth century, economic change in the American commercial fishing industry challenged its very market, social, and environmental relations. The issue of overfishing became a national one in the 1960s and by 1976, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnuson-Stevens Act, nationalizing waters within 200 miles of its coast. And yet, it wasn’t until the 1990s, with the collapse of fisheries across the Northwest Atlantic, that the notion of the unchangeable ocean would lose its hold over politics. This project considers the industrial decline in fisheries through the lens of neoliberalism and deindustrialization, an approach rarely used in fisheries history. Using the archive of the Point Judith Fishermen’s Cooperative Association (1947-1996), Rhode Island, USA, this thesis considers the history of industrial decline from the experiences of fishermen themselves. Instead of fishermen’s jobs going overseas, Point Judith fishermen experienced consolidation and atomization, relying on the free market to access economic security while experiencing the squeeze of global free trade. Industrial decline in fisheries highlights the contradictions within late 20th century America, in which economic nationalism and neoliberalism went hand-in-hand. Not only did neoliberalism impact how the fishing industry was governed and financed, but it shaped how fishermen were treated as workers. This thesis strikes a path to excavate the history of fishermen’s class consciousness at the nexus of ecological and economic pressures in an era of industrial decline.