Communicating care in coastal fisheries: Narratives of restoration, adaptation, and collaborative policy change

The soft-shell clam fishery in Maine and Wabanaki homelands is in a state of crisis, or so say most news reports about this fishery. While there is ample evidence that small-scale fisheries and the communities these fisheries support are rapidly changing, the crisis narrative conceals more than it reveals about how communities are actively responding and the longer-term histories that have led to climate change. In this presentation, Professor Bridie McGreavy shares collaborative research that focuses on the dominance of the crisis narrative in news reports about clamming and connects with critiques in Native American and Indigenous Studies and environmental communication that describe some of the problems with this narrative. This research highlights a need to shift from narratives of crisis to practices of care, including relational and networked approaches to listening for more just resilience and climate adaptation planning. This presentation also connects with a paper that was published in a special issue of the Maine Policy Review and is available here.