This ethnographic study examines how as an agent of globalization, the Bering Sea's transnational commercial fishing industry has influenced local social and environmental change. It seeks to answer the question: How has industrial fishing effected social and environmental change in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Island area as experienced in the locality of Unalaska, Alaska? This study takes a local knowledge approach to this problem by historically examining changes in the life experience of local resource stakeholder groups since industrial fishing began in the area in 1960. This approach defines what it means to be local for these groups by exposing their varying relationships to marine resources in their socioeconomic practices, and in the values, beliefs and discourses concerning those practices. The study identifies the economic opportunities and constraints presented to the local population as a result of changes in mode of production and the resource base. Social change occurs in the cultural response to those opportunities and constraints.

Arctic ecosystems are undergoing rapid changes as a result of global climate change, with significant implications for the livelihoods of arctic peoples. In this thesis, I use ethnographic research methods to detail prominent environmental changes observed and experienced over the past few decades and to document the impact of these changes on subsistence fishing practices in the Inupiaq communities of Noatak and Selawik in northwestern Alaska. Using in-depth key informant interviews, participant observation, and cultural consensus analysis, I explore local knowledge and perceptions of climate change and other pronounced changes facing the communities of Noatak and Selawik. I find consistent agreement about a range of perceived environmental changes affecting subsistence fisheries in this region, including lower river water levels, decreasing abundances of particular fish species, increasingly unpredictable weather conditions, and increasing presence of beaver, which affect local waterways and fisheries. These observations of environmental changes are not perceived as isolated phenomena, but are experienced in the context of accompanying social changes that are continually reshaping rural Alaska communities and subsistence economies. Consequently, in order to properly assess and understand the impacts of climate change on the subsistence practices in arctic communities, we must also consider the total environment of change that is dramatically shaping the relationship between people, communities, and their surrounding environments.

This book provides two case studies that demonstrate the use of systems analysis to forecast the often far-reaching consequences of government policies and economic development for the social relations and cultural values of different communities. The case studies examine the potential effects of oil development in two rural Alaskan communities, co