Double Approach to Changes in a Subsistence Environment : Case Study on Cormorant Fishermen at Lake Poyang in China

<p>This paper focuses on cormorant fishermen at Lake Poyang in Jaingxi Province in China. It provides an ethnographic description of the historical changes of cormorant fishing amidst social changes in China, and analyzes the subsistence strategy of the fishermen. In China, there are comparatively many studies on the historical change of peasants' lives and rural communities. From those studies, we know that social changes in China, such as the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the implementation of land reforms, the enforcement of the collectivization policy, the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and implementation of the family contract responsibility system, have all greatly influenced the lives and subsistence of peasants. However, there have been only a very few studies made on the historical changes in fishermen's lives and fishing communities in China. Especially, there has yet to be conducted any anthropological research on the fishermen at the inland lake. Therefore, it is still unclear how the life and subsistence of the fishermen has changed in China. Geographically, the research in this paper focuses on R town in Yugan County of Jiangxi Province, located to the south of Lake Poyang. The fishermen in R town live on the lakeside. In R town, 39 households are mainly engaged in cormorant fishing. All of the fishermen (68 male and 25 female) are Han Chinese. Their average age is 36.4 years, and their average fishing experience is 26.6 years. All the cormorants that the fishermen keep in Lake Poyang are so-called Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis Linnaeus). In R town, the fishermen keep 925 cormorant (611 males and 264 females), the average age of which is 3.3 years. Cormorant fishing on Lake Poyang was influenced by national policy and environmental changes in China. Before the founding of the PRC, dispute about fishing spots had frequently occurred between fishing villages on the lake. At that time, the fishermen established their own governments to decide upon a set of rules, which aimed to regulate the fishing activities and solve the disputes. After the founding of the PRC, land reform was instituted, and all the "self-governments" that the fishermen had organized were abolished. However, the fishermen managed to cope with the various problems that emerged on account of their fishing activities through the traditional fishing rules. The enforcement of a collectivization policy completely abolished the conventional organization and fishing rules. It also forbade family fishing activities, and forced fisermen to fish in large groups. However, the fishermen quickly adapted their conventional fishing methods to the collectivization policy, newly defining the fishing rules. After the collectivization policy was stopped, the fishermen abolished the conventional rules, and shifted the group fishing back to family-based fishing activities. Thereafter, the geographical area of cormorant fishing vastly declined during and after the 1990s. In 1989, the fishing area covered 581.3km^2, but that shrank to just 114.16km^2 by 2000. In other words, the area of cormorant fishing was reduced by 80.4% over that period. Two causes can be identified for the decrease. First, there was an increase in exclusive water areas, in which the right to fish was purchased by other fishermen after the execution of the family contract responsibility system. For that reason, cormorant fishermen cannot fish in those areas. Secondly, large water areas had turned to land through reclamation works. Under such circumstances, fishermen resumed fishing in large groups, newly defining the group fishing rules, and making contact with the merchants who buy their fish. Using this case study, this paper shows that fishermen have changed or arranged their fishing methods and rules according to the environmental changes that occurred in China. In other words,</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>