Fish, fisheries and fishermen: ethnographic notes about ecosocial processes

Abstract This paper focuses on three emic concepts (fish, fisheries, and fishermen) that are important to understand artisanal fishing at two beaches of Pernambuco in the Brazilian Northeast: São José da Coroa Grande and Carne de Vaca. Using a comparative ethnographic approach, I discuss these concepts as eco-social processes, supporting the concepts of social production and reproduction of Godelier and Lukács. Thus, eco-social processes are understood as an irrevocable metabolism of the fisherman with nature. Consequently, the fisherman’s work becomes a sine qua non condition for social production and reproduction of artisanal fishing as a category that at the same time constitutes and is comprised by ‘ways of being’ and by socio-economic, cultural and ecological conditions of existence. In addition, eco-social processes are social mediations linked to certain historical times, given specific environmental conditions, local characteristics and their interactions with the whole of society. An example of this is presented through the different fishing practices (with rafts, boats and canoes) and ways of the fishermen at the beaches of São José da Coroa Grande and Carne de Vaca.