The schizophrenia of development: A semantic-discursive analysis of the relations between salmon-farming and artisanal fishing in the austral macro-region of Chile

Abstract

This article is based on an ethnograhic and documentary investigation of the problematic relationship between the producers of farmed salmon and the small-scale, non-industrialised artisanal systems used in the extreme south of Chile, in the islands of western Patagonia. In particular,
the work seeks to elucidate what types of representations about artisanal fishing and salmon-farming are constructed by the protagonists – actors in the coastal «community» – in a problematic context characterised by the uncertainties and dissolving, de-structuring dynamics proper to the modernising expansion of late capitalism; or, to give it another name, transnational, neoliberal capitalism. The methodological basis of the investigation is
a reflexive-conversational ethnography carried out in successive field trips between December 2011 and September 2014, and the application of natural semantic networks to construct and analyse social representations. The main results of the investigation show the discursive and practical differences that the actors in question formulate in this spatial and territorial intersection. They reveal the paradoxical and controversial meanings interwoven into relations between the industry and the community, in which «work» appears to be the conceptual common denominator but in fact acquires a
polysemic condition of strong contrasts depending on whether it is observed and/or experienced from the angle of the artisanal fishing community or that of the fish-farming industry’s employees.