A study of North Norway and Atlantic Canada, two regions experiencing severe crisis due to over-exploitation of fishing resources. The book examines the implications of common market integration, privatized resource management, and small business development policies for fishery dependent communities. 30 illustrations.

This is a book about fishermen's reasons for obeying fisheries law. The fish harvesting industry has become subject to state interference to an increasing extent over the past twenty years. As natural resources become scarce and subsequent fisheries regulations abound, the question of law-abidingness is brought to the public agenda. However, there is still little empirical data as regards the dynamics of compliance in this field, and this book aims to meet a demand for in-depth knowledge. The cases studied can be regarded as instances of economies dependent on the harvesting of natural resources for both household and the market, and the study aims to contribute to the building of more adequate theory on the dynamics of compliance in such economies. However, focusing on a specific type of setting seldom constitutes a safe escape route for getting away from more pervasive sociological questions, and it certainly does not in this case. As any attempt to explain social phenomena, this study is faced with the fundamental sociological question of how the acts of individuals can best be understood. The question concerns the interface between the individual and the collectivity – between collective morality and self-interest. It thus deals with classical sociological issues such as the nature and regulatory capacity of group norms and sanctions, and the forms and roles of rationality and strategic action.

The Nordic Atlantic area has seen remarkable examples of social formations in areas that many would perceive as too remote to allow the construction of functioning communities. But through innovations, networking and the formation of identities people have coped with distances, thus continuously rebuilding societies in Northern Norway, Iceland, the Faroes, and Greenland. Living conditions in the Nordic Atlantic are so extreme that one might ask whether the notion of society is applicable under these circumstances. The author argues that, yes, there is a meaningful way of comprehending these social formations, which is through the spatial and temporal practices that produce, reproduce, stabilize, destabilize and change them. He introduces the concept of coping, which means neither mastering nor adapting but relates to in-between strategies and tactics reflected in practices of securing people’s way of life under conditions that are never totally under their control.

A meticulously researched and revisionist study of the nineteenth-century Ontario's Married Women's Property Acts. They were important landmarks in the legal emancipation of women.

The Arctic has, for some forty years, been among the most innovative policy environments in the world. The region has developed impressive systems for intra-regional cooperation, responded to the challenges of the rapid environmental change, empowered and engaged with Indigenous peoples, and dealt with the multiple challenges of natural resource development. The Palgrave Handbook on Arctic Policy and Politics has drawn on scholars from many countries and academic disciplines to focus on the central theme of Arctic policy innovation. The portrait that emerges from these chapters is of a complex, fluid policy environment, shaped by internal, national and global dynamics and by a wide range of political, legal, economic, and social transitions. The Arctic is a complex place from a political perspective and is on the verge of becoming even more so. Effective, proactive and forward-looking policy innovation will be required if the Far North is to be able to address its challenges and capitalize on its opportunities.

"Comparing and contrasting the households of deep-sea and coastal fishers, Binkley illustrates the daily dependence of husbands upon their wives' labour and ability to adapt to often difficult and precarious living conditions.

"This is what anthropology should be and the way ethnography should be done." - Gavin Smith, University of Toronto