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At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape

Includes bibliographical references.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Norton, Marieke
Other Authors: Green, Lesley
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Social Anthropology 2015
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access_status_str Open Access
author Norton, Marieke
author2 Green, Lesley
author_browse Green, Lesley
Norton, Marieke
author_facet Green, Lesley
Norton, Marieke
author_sort Norton, Marieke
collection Thesis
description Includes bibliographical references.
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12841
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:31:28.055Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2015
publishDateRange 2015
publishDateSort 2015
publisher Social Anthropology
publisherStr Social Anthropology
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12841 At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape Norton, Marieke Green, Lesley Jarre, Astrid Social Anthropology Includes bibliographical references. The Western Cape fisheries are heavily contested. Primary concerns in the contestations are over access to marine resources, which have been regulated through the Marine Living Resources Act of 1998. At the centre of these conflicts, is the figure of the marine compliance inspector, whose task is to enforce the state’s version of nature onto the collective of resource users. This thesis, based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork alongside inspectors of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: Fisheries Branch in the Western Cape, explores the everyday human interactions on which the implementation of marine resource law depends. Exploring interactions between inspectors and resource users, the dissertation seeks to contribute to the task of reimagining fisheries governance. Drawing on ethnographic material deriving from participation in inspection duties; observations of fishing behaviour; conversations with inspectors, resource user and marine resource management officials; and analysis of texts such as relevant legislation and job descriptions, I argue that the issue of non-compliance in marine fisheries in the Western Cape can only be partially understood by the framework offered in extant South African compliance scholarship, which has focused largely on the motivations of resource extractors, or the formulation of law and policy. Given that compliance functions are part of the wider social spectrum of contestation and that the compliance inspectors are the interface between the government of South Africa and its fishing citizens, the study explores the real effects of state-citizen-nature contestations on environmental governance, and presents evidence in support of an argument that the design of the job of marine compliance inspector itself needs to be re-conceived. While compliance is a central feature of fisheries management, the performance of its personnel is taken for granted as the simple implementation of institutional policy, in a number of ways. Efforts to address conflicts will fall short of the goal of providing solutions if the assumptions about nature and humanity that current marine resource legislation embodies are not questioned, and this will exacerbate existing suffering in the ecology of relations between state, science, public and marine species. 2015-05-26T14:06:54Z 2015-05-26T14:06:54Z 2014 Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12841 eng application/pdf Social Anthropology Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Social Anthropology
Norton, Marieke
At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape
thesis_degree_str Doctoral
title At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape
title_full At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape
title_fullStr At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape
title_full_unstemmed At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape
title_short At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape
title_sort at the interface marine compliance inspectors at work in the western cape
topic Social Anthropology
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12841
work_keys_str_mv AT nortonmarieke attheinterfacemarinecomplianceinspectorsatworkinthewesterncape