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Sense of Place
Alongside the attachments to place, fishing is also an important contributor to the construction of identity in fishing places. For many fishers, fishing is a way of life and they express deep embedded attachment to fishing and their occupational identity as fishers. Those attachments and identity to place are forged through genealogical ties and the co-location of work and home in a place. Identity as a fisher, kinship ties and a long genealogical history provide the basis for social life in fishing communities. Fishing is often at the heart of social organization and provides the setting for social interaction. Alongside the emotional attachments and meaning that people ascribe to places, fishing activity in a coastal town also creates a particular aesthetic that shapes place character. Fishing places are, therefore, sites of cultural expression through a blending of the particular coastal environment, the bringing to shore of marine organisms and the cultural and social meanings that people ascribe to that activity that are either perceptual or manifest as material culture in those places.
from Sense of Place and Cultural Values in Inshore Fishing Communities
by Julie Urquhart, Tim G. Acott and Amdeep Sanghera
Faculty of Science & Engineering, University of Greenwich
