Sep 15

Acheson’s “Tricks of the Trade” certainly struck me with its distinctive use of technical language. While several other authors we have read (see: Wallace and Conkling) have spoken casually, building narratives through anecdotes and flowery descriptions, Acheson’s approach is utilitarian. His sentences are succinct and mainly focus on sharing raw information, rather than unpacking its implications. At a glance, the Maine Boats article reads similarly. “Evolution of the Maine Lobster Boat” might first appear as a simple laundry list of fun facts, but the historical nature of this text elevates its goals. Yes, this article is offering us some information. It then continues, though, to place these seemingly isolated facts and place them into the context of place (have we beat this word to death yet?). On top of this, Maine Boats has created a multimedia experience for us as readers, combining written narrative with historical photographs and a timeline structure. Here, we see the details described by Acheson made digestible. This, I think, illustrates our ultimate goal as digital humanities students: to take that which an outsider might think irrelevant (we could reflect here on our first class, when we acknowledged this course as “weird”) and make it engaging.

One theme that caught my attention was the ebbs and flows of lobster and how it may effect the lobstermen. In the summer, when the lobsters are closer to the shore, the lobstermen and their traps are in close proximity to each other. While the article did not touch on this too much, the relative lack of space would seem to create a tension between lobstermen. When the lobsters go out to sea and there is more space to set traps, it seems as though the tension between lobstermen would go down. I am interested in learning about lobstermen relationships and how the natural migration of lobsters can create or diffuse social tension in the lobstering communities that litter the Maine coastline. While most of the articles we read were describing everything about the lobstering industry but the lobstermen themselves, learning about the factors that make the industry work illuminated characteristics about the industry that I would have otherwise overlooked. The anecdote about the lobstering law most frequently broken showed the attitude that most lobstermen have towards their work. Taking an oversized male lobster does not help them get ahead economically or put other lobstermen down. This shows that many lobstermen take pride in what they do and have a mutual respect for one another even though they are in direct competition and occupying the same, somewhat small, space.

When we last left class on Tuesday afternoon, I very much felt that Maine’s mid-coastal islands were sheltered from the rest of the state and existed outside of Harvey’s “time-space compression”; that it was a place that embodied placelessness. However upon reading Acheson’s The Lobster Gangs of Maine, I started to see another side to it. The mid-coastal islands are similar to the fishermen who share their waters from the Gulf of Maine. Acheson describes the stereotype of the Maine lobster fisherman as “the last of the rugged individualists” and as “quintessential(ly) American” (Acheson, 2). He goes on to state how the some of these stereotypes are true, but that the lobstermen also work together in communal groups in order to survive and succeed; and how these communities of fishermen are “tied to he state, the region, and the nation” (Acheson, 2). I see the islands in a similar way as the fishermen. The islands are too inextricably tied not only to each other but also to region and beyond. The evolution in lobstering, and the laws surrounding the business are a example of how the land affects the people and the people affect the land. But it is more than just the fisheries that are apart of this system.

Just like the fishermen, the islands seem to be more singular, at least in their very geography -a single mass of land surrounded by water on all sides. But together they make up a system of islands that are used by tourists, locals, and everyone in-between. While it cannot be determined how valid the stereotype of the Maine fisherman as one of a “rugged individualist”, it is that very idea that sends so many to the island. Tourists come from near and far to coastal Maine to experience or at least to witness what they believe to “quintessential(ly) American”. Mid-Maine’s coastal islands are apart of this experience. As the tourist arrive at the islands, they bring the outside world with them and when they leave they take a bit of place with them.

In the Cresswell piece from Tuesday, page 11 contains wisdom from Cronon as he takes a analytical journey in order  to know “what to make” of a place called Kennecott. His answer is to trace the connections between Kennecott and the rest of world. He explains connections as ” the ecology of people as the organisms sharing the universe with many other organisms, the political economy of people as social beings reshaping nature and one another to produce their collective life, and the cultural values of people as storytelling creatures struggling to find meaning of their place in the world.” (Cronan 1992, 32) I found this quote to be very applicable and relevant to the Acheson Intro. In the piece , Archeson talks about the social organization of the Maine lobster fisherman industry.  He explains that social anthropologists have found that “each industry has a set of traditions, rules of behavior and myths about itself.. they share skills and a common knowledge of the means to exploit and market a certain product”. These social and cultural traits are not exclusively shared and understood by the Maine industry but also, “with other fishing communities in the United States and thoughout the world”.  It is also explained that  “Maine lobster fishermen live in long-established communities, interact with other people from “town” and are concerned primarily with events in their own community. ” These communities are “inextricably tied to the state, the region, and the nation. If Cronan’s words are a formula for understanding connections thus knowing what to make of a place, I would have an input for every piece of the formula based on what I’ve found in the Acheson Intro. With this knowledge is it possible to understand what defines the place of the Maine lobster fisherman?

 

 

 

According to the reading material, the “harbor gang” is a cluster of fisherman who claim and defend their fishing territories, and that reminds me of the fisherman culture in my mother’s hometown, a tiny fishing village in China. People living in the villages in that area have been living on fishing for centuries, and each village occupies a certain fishing area. Though there are no government regulations to protect the breeding stock, the fisherman cluster, or “community”, developed several unwritten rules (according to my grandparents), for example, the fishing net mesh should not be smaller than a certain size, and fishermen should not go fishing during the spawning period. Unwritten rules like these, I believe, resemble those Maine laws to protect undersized lobsters and egg-bearing lobsters.

 

However, when advancing transportation boost the time-space compression between these tiny villages and the main cities, increasing numbers of people in the younger generations went to seek better working opportunities, and those who did not want to abandon the traditional means of subsistence began hiring people from outside to help out during the fishing season. These immigrant workers had no idea about the old rules, they used fishing net with tiny meshes, leaving no fish behind, paying no attention to their sizes. They began fighting other fishermen from nearby villages for larger fishing territories. All the old rules were ruined because of the destruction of the stability of a long-standing community.

 

The point I want to make is that the social obligations, which are unwritten but being taken by everyone, is closely related to a long-existing culture. Once the culture itself is gone, the tacit agreement no longer exists. That’s why I believe that the unique culture of Maine lobstermen is the result of the existence of the cluster, or the “gang”.