This volume examines the impact of fish stock assessment and catch share arrangements in
context through case studies and in terms of ecosystem economy and society. It examines the
rationalizing work of bio-economic projects especially the institutionalization of individual
transferable quota (ITQ) in fisheries: what impact have they had on fisheries and fishers? The
contributing authors understand ITQ and quota management as bio-economic projects that is as
widely deployed but locally constituted projects that combine biological and economic logics to
rationalize production and in this case fish. Politicians and managers use these projects and
the models that justify them to rationalize fisheries in favor of modern technology and for
capital and species efficiency. Aimed at a diverse interdisciplinary fisheries management
readership and designed as a guide to issues emerging in any assessment of ITQ the book is a
timely investigation of the origins and diverse experiences of ITQ projects including
resistance to them attempts to develop fisheries management around them and experiences of
the risks that come with them.Now around forty years old ITQ has never been subject to the
kind of comprehensive sustainability assessments once advocated by Elinor Ostrom let alone the
full-cost accounting of impacts at the national level that Evelyn Pinkerton recently called
for. Fisheries Quota Management and Quota Transfer offers multi-disciplinary assessments of
the effects of ITQ from scholars working in eight countries. The book brings together scholars
from anthropology economics geography sociology the history of science and marine
environmental history to discuss experiences from fisheries in eight industrialized countries.
It considers cases from outside as well as inside the EU including ITQ pioneers New Zealand
and Iceland. The combination allows for an unprecedented international perspective on stock
assessments and share allocation systems. By emphasizing emerging becoming learning and
transforming through knowledge the book conceives technology as a field of power and choice
nevertheless dominated by managers through specific projects in specific contexts. Individual
chapters relate bio-economic projects to separate theoretical literature an approach that
facilitates multi-disciplinary dialog.
