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Beyond Design Principles: Subjectivity,

Emotion, and the (Ir)Rational Commons
a
Andrea J. Nightingale
a
Centre for the Study of Environmental Change and Sustainability ,
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh , Edinburgh,
Scotland, United Kingdom
Published online: 19 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Andrea J. Nightingale (2011) Beyond Design Principles: Subjectivity, Emotion, and
the (Ir)Rational Commons, Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal, 24:2, 119-132, DOI:
10.1080/08941920903278160

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 Society and Natural Resources, 24:119–132
Copyright # 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0894-1920 print=1521-0723 online
DOI: 10.1080/08941920903278160

Beyond Design Principles: Subjectivity,

Emotion, and the (Ir)Rational Commons

ANDREA J. NIGHTINGALE
Centre for the Study of Environmental Change and Sustainability,
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland,
United Kingdom
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Common property debates are dominated by approaches that seek to demonstrate

how cooperation is ‘‘rational’’; by working together under appropriate institutions,
the commons becomes a viable management strategy. This article seeks to expand
the commons debate by arguing that more attention is needed on the emotional
and ‘‘ir-rational’’ reasons people cooperate. Drawing from feminist theory, subjec-
tivity, and power, I explore how subjectivity is bound up in kinship and community
obligations, such that people draw from alternative rationalities to develop informal
modes of cooperation. These affective relations are important for people’s willingness
(or not) to cooperate in more organized contexts, demonstrating the importance of
thinking about gender, community, and space as productive of subjectivity, rather
than roles or structures in order to understand how particular forms of cooperation
emerge. The result is a new understanding of cooperation that incorporates new
feminist research on emotion and subjectivity with institutional studies.

Keywords common property, cooperation, emotion, fisheries, gender, subjectivity

Debates about the commons have largely focused on rational reasons for
cooperation and refining an understanding of the circumstances under which
Hardin’s (1968) ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’ is irrelevant. This is not surprising, given
that most resource managers trained in natural science traditions, and even some
trained in the social sciences, continue to assume that the commons is an ecological

Received 1 July 2008; accepted 11 March 2009.

I would like to give a special thanks to the people on the west coast who contributed their
time, thoughts, and patience to my project. They have shown a generosity in working with me
that helped me to better understand the importance of the ‘‘community obligations’’ I discuss.
I also thank David Donan, Jim Atkinson, Jim Watson, and Hamish Mair for discussions on
the policy context and pressures facing the fishery and being open to thinking about the social
science aspects of the science they do. I owe a special debt to the Feminist Geography Reading
Group at the University of Edinburgh (especially Liz Bondi and Deborah Thein), as it was in
that forum that my ideas around subjectivity, emotion, and its importance in collective action
first emerged. Finally, three anonymous reviewers and the editor, Thomas Beckley, provided
exceptionally productive, insightful, and supportive reviews of the article. Their input helped
me to develop a far stronger article; thank you. Any errors that remain are my own.
Address correspondence to Andrea J. Nightingale, Centre for the Study of Environmental
Change and Sustainability, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond
Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9XP, United Kingdom. E-mail: andrea.nightingale@
ed.ac.uk

119
 120 A. J. Nightingale

disaster waiting to happen. We need to persist in promoting the idea that manage-
ment of the commons is viable. And science, after all, is a ‘‘rational’’ tradition, firmly
embedded within Enlightenment thinking that places reason above all other forms of
knowing (Livingstone and Withers 1999). Yet feminist scholars and social scientists
in a variety of fields have long disputed the supremacy of so-called ‘‘rational’’ knowl-
edge and sought instead to demonstrate the multiple ways of knowing that better
account for how societies understand the world around them (Harding 1986;
Longino 1990; Haraway 1991). I take some of these insights into the commons
debate to think about the role of subjectivity and emotion in creating durable coop-
erative agreements. In other words, can we conceptualize an ‘‘ir-rational’’ commons?
When I first began thinking about ideas of subjectivity and emotion in relation
to fisheries most people thought I was crazy. Talk to fishermen about their feelings?
But when I did preliminary research, it became very clear that I was on the right
track. As one fishermen’s advocate said to me, laughing, ‘‘People are definitely
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not rational, especially fishermen. They make decisions based on other factors.’’1
And my work on community forestry in Nepal had similarly convinced me that
the commons is a context wherein relationships, motivations, and emotions that
have very little to do with the management of resources were played out (Nightingale
2005, 2006). Yet these same issues had significant implications for commons
management and ecology. So I want to consider what some of these ‘‘other’’ factors
might be.
I should make it clear at the outset that I am not rejecting institutional design
principles or the excellent work that has been done on conceptualizing the commons
to date. Rather, I want to build from this work, most of which has been done within
a broadly defined rational choice framework, and open up the debate to alternative
rationalities. There are a number of epistemological challenges to doing this. Are we
simply going to add in gender, kinship relations, and emotional attachments to
resources and land- and seascapes as new design principles? While certainly that
is one approach, I would like to suggest another way of conceptualizing how coop-
erative arrangements surface. I want to explore how institutions, resources, and
societies coemerge. If we understand their production as mutually constitutive, then
rational choice models and design principles cease to be a logical starting point.
Instead, it becomes clear that design emerges from interactions, histories, and
relationships that need to be continually renewed.2 Therefore, we need a conceptual
framework that can better account for the emergent relationships between the
human and nonhuman aspects of the commons.
This kind of conceptualization draws from nature–society studies that argue
environments and societies are co-produced (Braun and Castree 1998; Cronon
1996; Hinchliffe 2007; Nightingale 2006, 2003; Whatmore 2002). This has major
implications for how we understand the dynamics of the commons. It is not a ques-
tion of explaining how resource use impacts upon the commons, but rather of
exploring how the commons, as an institution, a place, and an ecosystem, is embed-
ded within and productive of the societies that use the commons (St. Martin 2006;
2007). The two cannot be neatly separated either spatially, temporally, or symboli-
cally. In terms of management, then, we need to understand how social processes
emerge from and are reflected in the commons ecosystem. I am not going to treat
nature–society debates in detail here, as good reviews can be found elsewhere (Braun
and Castree 1998; Bryant 1998; Watts 2000; Castree and Braun 2001; Forsyth 2003;
Peet and Watts 2004; Hinchliffe 2007). Rather, to explore the ‘‘irrational’’ commons,
 Beyond Design Principles 121

I am first going to position this in relation to design principles and then draw from
other work I’ve done on subjectivity and environment to think about social and
power relations in the commons. This leads me into a discussion of subjectivity, gen-
der, and community, and I conclude with an exploration of the multidimensional
aspects of power.

Design Principles and the (Ir)Rational

Much of the work done on the commons has centered around the institutions that
make collective management of resources viable (Runge 1986; Berkes and Farvar
1989; Bromley and Cernea 1989; Ostrom 1992; McCay and Acheson 1996; Ostrom
et al. 1999; Berkes 2004). McKean’s (1992) and Ostrom’s (1992; Ostrom et al. 1999)
original and still highly pertinent interventions into property debates were to insist
that it is the institutional arrangements, not the ownership structure, that determine
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whether or not management is successful. This emphasis on institutions has led to a

proliferation of case studies to produce a set of design principles that help ensure
sound commons arrangements. There is no question that the institutions to manage
the commons are crucial to how resource extraction is limited and monitored. Yet
here, I want to focus on the dynamics of institutions, the everyday practices through
which institutions come into being and are (re)produced over time and space. I
suggest that subjectivities, including gender, race, class, and identities such as
‘‘fishermen,’’ are equally important to how the commons is managed (see also St.
Martin 2006, 2007). When we take into consideration alternative rationalities, then
why some well-designed institutions fail becomes clearer. It is the enactment of
institutions and their underlying rules and norms that are crucial to outcomes.
Subjectivities are decisive to the operation of institutions as they are integrally
bound up in social relations of power and the ways in which people understand their
relationship to others, whether that be human or non-human others (Allen 1999;
Gibson 2001; Nightingale 2006; Butler 1990, 1997; Whatmore 2002). In a fisheries
context, I am interested in the practices and interactions that are required for one
to be considered a ‘‘fisherman’’ and the contradictory ways in which these relation-
ships both promote and frustrate attempts at collaboration (St. Martin 2006). For
example, when I tell in-shore fishermen I am interested in how they cooperate, they
laugh and say they do not. And yet, when I have been on boats with them, there is an
almost constant stream of communication as skippers radio others to tell them about
the sea conditions, alert them to a strange boat in their waters, or warn trawlers they
are too close to someone’s creel line. When I point this out, they readily agree
that they cooperate in these ways. In fact, I think most would agree that they must
cooperate in order to ensure the safety of themselves, their gear, and their catch. My
longer term research goals are therefore to explore whether or not these forms of
cooperation help to build a foundation for more formal collaboration.
These types of relationships driving cooperation, of course, can be considered
‘‘rational’’ in certain respects. Taking account of community obligations, the need
to preserve kinship relationships, and an emotive attachment to the sea can be seen
as ‘‘rational,’’ particularly over long time scales (see also Princen 2003). Kinship
relationships, for example, can be vital to supporting people during times of crisis
and therefore are logically considered important to maintain. This kind of ration-
ality, however, is not equivalent with the ‘‘rational fisherman’’ that is invoked by
game theories and other approaches to the commons informed by a neo-classical
 122 A. J. Nightingale

economic logic. It is this more narrowly understood ‘‘rational economic man’’ that
informs fisheries policies and enforcement (Princen 1998; St. Martin 2006, 2007).
Thus, boats have quotas limiting their catch, mesh sizes are enforced, and fishing
zones are delimited. These are consistent with the design principles for effective com-
mons institutions that focus on a variety of enabling conditions to make cooperation
more rational than short-term profit maximization. I am therefore interested in
challenging that dominant logic by highlighting the ‘‘ir-rational’’ or, more accu-
rately, the alternative rationalities that underpin cooperation.

Scottish Nephrops Fishery

Before developing my conceptual arguments more fully, I provide a background to
Scottish fisheries. This article is in part the outcome of preliminary ethnographic
work on the Scottish in-shore Nephrops norvegicus fishery. Nephrops, also known
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as Norwegian lobster or prawns, are the main species marketed as scampi or lan-
goustines. They are fished by both creel and by trawl net, although the creel fishery
produces a higher value, live product. Nephrops are crucial to the west coast fishery
as they account for the vast majority of landings. Skipper-owned boats operating out
of small ports on a daily basis dominate the fishery. It is rare for skippers to stay out
at sea for extended periods of time, although some trawlers will go for up to a week.
The fishery is also dominated by men. There are some women who fish, but the vast
majority of boats are skippered and crewed by men, particularly the creel boats.
There are also a number of skipper-owned and community companies that export
prawns directly to the biggest market for live prawns in southern Europe.
The west coast is a mixed fishery with creelers and trawlers sharing the same
fishing grounds and significant salmon and mussel aquaculture developments in
the lochs that overlap spatially with the wild fishery. One community on the west
coast has banned all mobile gear from its fishing grounds and the community mem-
bers operate a formal, although not legally binding, scheme to limit the number of
creels fished per day per boat. This is a very interesting case study as the scheme
was initiated by the fishermen in a political context where such schemes are not
encouraged or supported and in some cases are illegal (Crean 2000). The UK govern-
ment sets and distributes prawn quotas and there are very limited opportunities for
fishers to self-regulate, although that situation is rapidly changing with proposals to
decentralize management (Scottish Executive 2005).
The Scottish in-shore fishery can be considered a commons in many respects.
The fishery is regulated by a set of institutional rules that are in part set by the
Scottish government and in part by the local producers’ associations. These both
in turn operate within a context where the European Union Common Fisheries
Policy (CFP) regulates the fishery3 and Scottish Natural Heritage and other state
regulatory bodies have a stake in management. Boats gain access to the fishery
through licenses that have been allocated based on historical use rights, with a lim-
ited number available for purchase by new users of the fishery. Therefore, many east
coast whitefish boats have use rights to the west coast prawn fishery that are only
intermittently used. Quotas are set per boat and for the fishery as a whole; these quo-
tas cannot be bought and sold directly but rather are regulated through the licensing
scheme. Boat licenses are tied to large fishing zones, but within these zones they have
free access to the entire fishing ground. The inshore fishery therefore has a clear set
of legally enforceable institutional rules that regulate a limited user group of a
 Beyond Design Principles 123

mobile and subtractable resource, making it fit with many definitions of the
commons (Arnold 1998; Ostrom 1992). It is further regulated and limited by the
kinds of informal agreements I highlight in this article.

Subjectivity and Cooperation

A core argument I want to make is that subjectivity is an important component of
informal and formal modes of cooperation. How people are drawn into networks
of power and how they understand themselves in those networks are very important
factors in cooperation over the commons. Subjectivity is often conflated with
identity, but the two concepts are different in important ways. Subjectivity refers
to the ways in which people are brought into relations of power, or subjected, which
is part of how identities emerge.
Work on subjectivity owes a large debt to Foucault, who was deeply interested
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in the exercise of power and the mechanisms through which people become subjects
of states as well as subjected by discourses such as gender and sexuality (Foucault
1980, 1990, 1991, 1995). Power is at the heart of social interactions, as it is impossible
to conceptualize relationships that are not bound by power in some way. While
Foucault has been criticized for overprivileging the exercise of power as disciplining
and negative, his conceptualization emphasizes how power produces the subject,
providing conceptual space for more positive outcomes as well (Allen 2002; Butler
1997; Rose-Redwood 2006; Allen 1999). The subject is not necessarily a negative
product; rather, it is a consequence of the multidimensional aspects of power,
making it difficult to think of power as simply unidirectional or even bidirectional.
It is power that produces the subject, and power gives the subject the ability to act,
whether that be in compliance with or in resistance to the processes of subjection
(Butler 1997; Mahoney and Yngvesson 1992).
Feminist theorists have pushed many of Foucault’s ideas further by exploring
how social relations of difference are constantly produced out of everyday interac-
tions (Bondi and Davidson 2003; Butler 1990; Gibson 2001; Longhurst 2003;
Nightingale 2006). As Probyn (2003) defines it, individuals are ‘‘hailed by’’ or
interpellated into normative subject positions such as race, sex, class, caste, gender,
or, in this case, ‘‘fishermen.’’ These subject positions are not stable and are (re)pro-
duced in the contexts within which identity claims are made and performed. Thus,
subjectivity is something that entails processes that are ‘‘fluid’’ but also ‘‘sticky’’
and tend to become stabilized through complex combinations of psychosocial
and sociospatial processes (Bauman 2000; Butler 1997; Massey 1994). In fisheries,
to be ‘‘a fisherman’’ requires that one goes to sea and catches fish, and this
relationship between the resource and subjectivity is crucial for how fishers are
then integrated into other aspects of their lives, including formal institutions to
manage the fishery.
The subject, therefore, does not exist outside a set of relationships that are
always infused with power, even if that does not imply ‘‘power over.’’ Feminist the-
orists have expanded upon these insights to understand how subjects need to take up
or assume the power over them as part of their production (Butler 1990, 1992, 1997;
Mahoney and Yngvesson 1992; Scott 1991). It is the same conditions that make the
subject possible, that also provide the possibility for resisting domination. In Scottish
fisheries, the normative subject ‘‘fisherman’’ is dependent upon a large web of
economic, political, and social relationships wherein fishing as a historical, cultural,
 124 A. J. Nightingale

technological, and legal activity is defined and policed (St. Martin 2006, 2007). If we
consider the operation of power in this context, fishers cannot contest fishing
regulations without first accepting that they are subject to those regulations. This
power over them also provides the power to act in a variety of ways (Nightingale
2005; Mahoney and Yngvesson 1992). Similarly, fishermen cannot make claims
about protecting their fishing grounds without simultaneously reinforcing the idea
that fishermen exploit their fishery.
In terms of commons management more generally, relations of power affect the
ecology of the commons and possibilities for collective action. Subjectivities emerge
from the dominant=subjected relations that are inscribed in policy and practice, but
these same subjectivities also open up possibilities for resistance (St. Martin 2007).
One of the most common in fisheries is overfishing or violating quotas, but recently
some Scottish fishers have been at the forefront of voluntary schemes to create
sustainable fisheries. One is the case I mentioned earlier, where mobile gear was
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banned from a creel fishery.

Another is a scheme for whitefish boats to report and actively avoid areas where
large concentrations of young cod are found. They thus prevent catching large
amounts of cod too small to land or that will exceed their quota. Both these schemes
are constructive, pro-active attempts to protect their fishery. Neither scheme pro-
vides short-term financial returns for the fishers, although most people involved
believe and hope that over the longer term it will ensure the viability of the fishery.
Under a rational-choice framework, however, these kinds of schemes are highly
irrational. They are not in the best interest of individual fishers and often mean
the fishers deliberately take fewer earnings from their days at sea. The conceptual
point here is that the normative subject ‘‘fishermen exploiting the seas’’ is crucial
to these schemes. They only appear as ‘‘unusual’’ or ‘‘innovative’’ because of the
dominant view that fishers are only interested in self-improvement or profits. The
schemes would have a very different effect and meaning if fishermen were popularly
considered to be wise stewards of the sea.
In the commons literature, power is either external to institutions, something
that might derail an otherwise well-functioning ‘‘community,’’ or is something con-
tained in individuals that they can use to maximize their profits by overexploiting
the commons in defiance of the rest of the users (Princen 1998, 2003; St. Martin
2007). Power in fisheries management, therefore, is built around a normative
notion of the ‘‘rational.’’ To be rational in this context is to try to fish as much
as possible and to maximize efficiency, whether that is through gear, crew arrange-
ments, or the ground one fishes. A quick glance at the Fishing News is sufficient to
see the dominance of this perspective, as it is filled with advertisements and articles
about the latest (faster) boats and more indestructible gear. And schemes to limit
the fishery are all built around the notion that fishers will try to catch as many fish
as they can when they are out on the sea. Yet I want to demonstrate in this article
that the everyday practices of fishers subvert the assumed norm of the ‘‘rational,’’
profit-maximizing fisherman as well as the ‘‘rational’’ commons user. Rather, to be
a ‘‘fisherman’’ is produced out of the act of going to sea and the kinship, com-
munity, and peer relationships that are crucial to supporting fishing as an activity
and as an industry, regardless of the institutional rules (see also St. Martin [2007]
for a similar critique based on class). This suggests that attention to alternative
rationalities is crucial to understanding how cooperation or noncooperation
emerges in the commons.
 Beyond Design Principles 125

Working the Sea: Everyday Practices and the Operation of Power

This argument, however, still seems remote from the pitching fishing boats and
smelly piers wherein fishers spend most of their time. Following geographers and
feminist theorists, I suggest that to rectify this, attention needs to be paid to the
embodied, discursive, and social processes that produce ‘‘fishermen’’ (Longhurst
2003; Gibson 2001). In other words, the places within which fishers not only fish,
but also the spaces where they interact—the pier, on boats, in meeting halls, at family
gatherings, and so forth—are critical to the formation of the subject, contexts that
are always laden with power.
Fishing produces particular kinds of bodies and emotions that are not insignifi-
cant when it comes to sitting around a table trying to draw up management agree-
ments. Men who are uncomfortable, literally, sitting in meeting rooms, or who are
used to coping with dangerous and physically demanding environments find the
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meeting room to situate their bodies and subjectivities differently. In other words,
what it means to be a fisherman changes in different contexts, and this change is
as much an embodied experience as it is a political and emotional one. A fisherman
working on his boat, providing food and income for his family, is often in a relatively
powerful position. I’ve met few fishers in Scotland who are not proud of their occu-
pation. And yet that same identity changes to a very different kind of subjectivity
when they find themselves the target of decommissioning schemes, blamed person-
ally for degradation of their fishing grounds, or forced to interact with policymakers.
The exercise of power changes in profound ways, and these people end up in a more
defensive position relative to their occupation.
Conceptualizing power dynamics in this way brings into focus the kinds of rela-
tionships and practices that shape how cooperation occurs within the commons,
many of which are not ‘‘rational’’ as narrowly defined by rational choice theory.
Every relationship is imbued with power, from that between policymakers and
resource users, to internal user-group dynamics, to dynamics between resource users
and the larger community living near the commons. Those relationships all contain
the possibility for power to produce either a resistant, uncooperative subject or a var-
iety of subject positions that are more conducive to working collectively. The spaces
within which these interactions occur also become important in shaping power
dynamics and the terms of various relationships. Conceptually, it shifts the focus
from institutional design to the everyday spaces and practices wherein commons
management occurs. It is those elements that shape whether management rules are
accepted, who accepts them, who polices them, and the kinds of social and environ-
mental transformations they produce.
In Scotland, the in-shore fishery is often the lifeblood of small, coastal villages.
Many places literally have no other industries or job possibilities outside of tourism,
which is itself dependent on selling the ‘‘fishing village’’ image to guests. One older
woman, in response to a question about what had caused the biggest changes in her
west coast community, told me:

Well mainly the fishing, the prawn fishing. Years ago now, I suppose 10
or 15 years ago, there weren’t that many boats out of here and most of
the young ones were really going away from the place. But now a lot
of the young ones are back, the young men before could never think
about buying a house in the area. But now they are buying houses and
 126 A. J. Nightingale

they are building houses, and the prawn fishing, how many people are at
the fishing of the local boys?

Fishing, then is far more than an occupation; it is one of the activities that keeps the
community viable. As a result, fishers are embedded in a set of relationships that
support fishing in symbolic and emotional ways, even if local people buy very little
fish directly off the boats. Fishers do not financially gain from the community, but
the relationships bind them together in important ways that reflect alternative
rationalities to profit maximization. These relationships acknowledge the benefits
of fishing from that particular place and provide subconscious emotional support
to fishers when they may not catch any fish. This kind of support is crucial to keep-
ing fishers rooted in place, rather than moving to more productive fishing grounds as
‘‘rational’’ theory suggests they should.
As more ‘‘local’’ boats have emerged, however, many fishers are concerned that
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there are now too many trying to fish the same ground, yet none of them suggests
that people should be actively excluded. Rather, they highlight the ways they coop-
erate, as one fisherman said:

Everyone is free to go where they want but I mean basically your [fishing
ground] is marked and it’s . . . well it’s more of a kind of gentleman’s
agreement that you don’t go and shoot over the top of someone else’s
creels. And it’s a pain in the backside as well for the person who has done
it and . . . I mean it does happen you know, it does happen now and again
basically because people think maybe somebody else is getting something
better but it doesn’t . . . it doesn’t happen an awful lot and its generally
put down to a mistake with tides and all that but if someone was
blatantly doing it, moved in here and just plastered on top of everyone
there would have to be something done that maybe you wouldn’t put
down on paper. [laughter]

He suggests that if someone was really making trouble they would take action
against them, but otherwise most people try to cooperate through ‘‘gentlemen’s
agreements.’’ The action to be taken, however, is not to report them to the fisheries
authorities, but to resort to other forms of intimidation. Importantly, the ability
to exclude someone from your fishing ground is tied up in being a legitimate
member of the community. It is significant that he assumes a blatant violator of
the ‘‘gentlemen’s agreement’’ would be an outsider, someone who ‘‘moved in here
and just plastered on top of everyone.’’ Implicit in his statement is the image of
an unknown person, coming in from the outside, and who would need to be dealt
with by those who are committed to their fishery. Thus, being a ‘‘fisherman’’ in a
locally understood sense is also to be part of the community. I argue that this alter-
native rationality is embedded within the power relations that produce ‘‘fishermen.’’
Another fisherman spoke at length about how it was unpleasant to have con-
frontations with people, and in localities where two communities’ fishing grounds
overlapped they actively tried to avoid fishing in areas that might cause conflict.
In this place, then, the relationships are often more important than the catch. People
aren’t willing to risk causing an altercation in the community just to catch a few
more prawns. What it means to be a ‘‘fisherman’’ is bound up in ideas of ‘‘good com-
munity members’’ and subjects the men working on boats in particular ways that
 Beyond Design Principles 127

both constrain their actions and help to foster cooperation. These ‘‘fishermen’’ are
very different from the ‘‘fishermen’’ of fisheries policy; their everyday actions do
not fit within the model of profit maximization.
In many respects, these are ‘‘irrational’’ actions in the face of competition in the
fishery. One would expect fishers to try to exclude new boats or to capture as much
catch as they can, even if it meant conflict with people they do not know. While
certainly the local men involved in the fishery compete with each other in a variety
of ways, they are also highly valued because of the jobs and prosperity they have
brought into the village. They need to live up to their reputations and feel bound
by certain local etiquettes that supersede some of the more blatant forms of
self-interested behavior. When I speculated on some of these ideas to a fisherman’s
wife she immediately broke in, ‘‘They don’t have a choice. I don’t even think it’s
conscious, they have to be a part of things here. It’s part of who they are. It’s how
we do things here.’’4 Fishermen are thus subject to a discourse of community that
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includes a commitment to the place, adherence to gentlemen’s agreements, and

semiclosed fishing grounds that are designed to avoid conflict.
Similarly, in two of my other case study sites on the west coast, the creelers know
that they would have bigger and more prolific prawns if trawlers were banned from
their fishing grounds. But they are acutely aware that the trawlers also need to make
money and the fishing ground has to be shared. Instead, they seek to contain the
trawlers to specific places by shooting a barrier of creels to mark off their area—
although most creelers say that it is the trawlers who dictate where the creelers go.
In theory, they ought to be able to intimidate or negotiate the trawlers out of their
area (or vice versa) as they did in the community I mentioned earlier. Yet in both
places the creelers are against such a policy. In one place, the brother of a successful
creeler is physically disabled, and while he can run a trawl boat, he would be physi-
cally unable to creel. Everyone agrees that he needs to have an opportunity to fish
too. It is also common for fishers to trade in their creels for a trawler when they
get older and find the physical demands of creeling to be too difficult. It is these
kinds of community obligations and alternative rationalities that make all fishers
in those particular areas committed to a mixed fishery.
Clearly, such relations of power can also lead to noncompliance and defiance of
the pressure to be a ‘‘good community member.’’ Many fishing communities have at
least one such person, and indeed, at one of my field sites I was strongly cautioned
away from one man as he is considered dangerous. Yet for the vast majority of the
fishers I have worked with, they are consciously and unconsciously bound within
relations that make them unwilling to resist the subject ‘‘good community member.’’
The normative good community member is also closely tied in with gender rela-
tions and the ways in which women are incorporated into the fishery. Many wives
occupy a peripheral role in fisheries, ‘‘helping’’ with paperwork, picking up a motor
part from a distant town, or very occasionally helping to land crabs or lobsters that
are stored in pens on the sea bed and collected intermittently. One fisherman’s wife
said she is no longer involved in the paperwork due to her husband’s ‘‘unique orga-
nizational style’’ but that some of the other wives do most of it. She concluded by
saying, however, that ‘‘the guys do it themselves, really.’’ Importantly, both the
men and women I spoke to describe these activities as ‘‘helping.’’
While it is possible to dispute whether the women’s contributions are more sig-
nificant than they are given credit for, here I want to highlight how fishing produces
a masculine subject. Fishing was one of the arenas that many people feel passionately
 128 A. J. Nightingale

‘‘belong’’ to men. Fishermen spoke about how women were bad luck on boats or
justified the lack of female crew members by discussing the difficulties women faced
holding down jobs and raising children at the same time. Fishing is not considered
flexible enough to accommodate child rearing, and, while never directly spoken,
normative ideas of men as providers and women as homemakers are very strong
in these small fishing villages. Also underpinning these discourses of home, family,
and community is the materiality of the work. Fishing requires long, physically
demanding days on the sea, and in Scotland, men are considered to be more fit
for such demands than women.
Fishing is therefore very much a masculine activity, and what I am particularly
interested in is how the kinds of conflicts that emerge are linked to ideas of how men
should behave in this place. One woman vividly described for me the priorities of the
men in her village. She said, ‘‘Oh, you know these West Highland men, it’s work,
pub, wife.’’ As she said this she held her hands up in front of her and placed ‘‘work’’
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right in front, ‘‘pub’’ right next to it, and then stretched her arms to the side and
placed ‘‘wife’’ over there. She continued, ‘‘I’m sure in their heads they think it’s
the opposite but it isn’t’’ [laughter]. The notion that ‘‘good men’’ work hard is
emphasized along with the idea that men’s and women’s places are very different.
Very few women hang out in the pubs. Maintaining your reputation, providing
for your family, working hard, and drinking in the pub are key ways in which males
become ‘‘men,’’ and through their activities on the sea become ‘‘fishermen.’’5
What is difficult about these relationships is that attempting to identify patterns
or to associate identities with particular motivations is inappropriate. Community
obligations can just as easily lead to a ban on mobile gear as it can to a mixed fishery.
Conceptually and empirically, it is important to recognize that the relationships are
complex, contingent, and changeable. If common property arrangements are not
successful, it is more likely due to problems with these relationships than it is with
the institutional design. I want to suggest that a conceptualization of the (ir)rational
commons needs to account for how power operates in the fishery, and this includes
the kinds of relationships I’ve described.

Concluding Thoughts: Meetings, Emotion, and Subjectivity

I want to conclude this article by moving from the boats and the community to the
meeting room. Various meetings occur in relation to fisheries, ranging from informal
chats on the pier between skippers and other users of the sea such as tourist boat
operators or port authorities, to policy meetings in Edinburgh and Brussels attended
by fishers’ representatives, policymakers, and scientists. The shift from their boats to
the meeting room subjects fishermen in radically different ways and is dependent on
the type of meeting. Here I focus on the consultation meetings that usually involve
policymakers and fisheries regulators6 from Edinburgh and fishermen, fishermen’s
advocates, and occasionally other stakeholders such as environmental groups or
local development authorities. Most often, these meetings are held in larger west
coast towns or areas central to the dispersed fishing villages.
One theme that emerged very strongly from the interviews was the idea that
fishermen are far more closely connected emotionally and pragmatically with their
resources. One fisherman put it poignantly: ‘‘People sitting in their office, they are
not even affected by the rain.’’ Another fisherman said, ‘‘They are so divorced from
what it’s about. We have a lot of conversations about what it’s about to live here.
 Beyond Design Principles 129

We are surrounded by greens and blues [i.e., nature], [policymakers] coming from the
city, they don’t have that, they do not understand what that means.’’7 These men
insist that managers do not understand the realities of the act of fishing and living
in a remote coastal village, and this is seen by them as a major problem in coming
to collective solutions. In other words, the fishermen and the policymakers inhabit
different spatial, material, and symbolic relationships with the resource, and this is
crucial for how relations of power are exercised in fisheries. While the fishermen
here are trying to claim a deeper knowledge of their fishery and the industry, the
policymakers are able to draw on the normative ‘‘rational fisherman’’ to undermine
these claims.
The meeting room itself subjects fishermen in very different ways than time on
the boat does. When I ask fishermen about how it feels to be in the meeting room
rather than on the boat, they are clear that the meeting room is not their place.
One man said, ‘‘It’s the difference between standing on the landing and jumping
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in the sea.’’ Another said, ‘‘One’s real and the other is not. Well yeah, I’m happier
for one [on the boat].’’ Equally importantly, many fishermen pointed out that policy-
makers are paid to attend meetings whereas they are not. Instead, they take time
away from their boats or other activities in order to have their voices heard. The
space of the meeting room, then, produces particular kinds of subjects for both
the fishermen and policymakers that sets them literally, on opposite sides of the
room.8
The fishermen are far from naı̈ve in recognizing these dynamics. Instead, they
are acutely aware of how the assumptions of fisheries regulators shape meeting
dynamics. One man said when discussing a recent meeting, ‘‘The guys come with
their preconceptions, it’s almost like here we go again. We threw them a surprise
[when we started talking about limiting the creel fishery in addition to banning trawl-
ing]. Someone talking about their own sector, they didn’t expect that.’’9 Another
man said, ‘‘You explain your point of view but they don’t want to hear it. They’ve
made up their mind before they go in the meeting.’’ I’d like to suggest that these pre-
conceptions in part emerge from the normative fishing subject. Many policymakers
have based their policies and even their meeting agendas on ideas of ‘‘rational
fishermen’’ who need to be policed and regulated. The creel fishermen I have
described here, therefore, move from being family providers, bound by ‘‘gentlemen’s
agreements’’ and subjected by the ‘‘community,’’ to being an overexploiter of the sea
who needs to be told about proper fisheries management. I argue that this shift in
subjectivity is central to why there is so much antagonism between fishermen and
policymakers.
Alternative rationalities or the (ir)rational is therefore a key component of
commons management. The relationships and places within which fishers interact
are important components of their subjectivities, which in turn is integral to how
power is exercised. The preliminary work I’ve done suggests that these kinds of rela-
tions of power are central to whether fishers bond together to cooperate (sometimes
to manage the fishery, sometimes to protest against rules) or fiercely resist any kind
of collective action. Examining the performance of subjectivities as constituted
within the everyday provides a conceptual lever for understanding these complex
workings of power. In terms of commons management, it is important to examine
how people’s relationships and power=empowerment changes with the spatial and
political context (see also St. Martin 2006, 2007). These embodied interactions
create openings and close down others for particular kinds of cooperation.
 130 A. J. Nightingale

Further research is needed on the role of emotion and the links between subjectivity
and cooperation, but I hope that this article has at least raised some questions
and suggested some directions for an exploration of the commons beyond design
principles.

Notes
1. This is a paraphrase, as the conversation was an unrecorded phone interview.
2. This kind of theorization draws from other work on the mutual constitution of institutions,
social relations, and spatial processes (Castree and MacMillan 2001; Haraway 1991;
Nightingale 2003; Robbins 2001; Whatmore 2002), as well as work on the production of
space and subjectivity (Butler 1997; Gibson 2001; Gibson-Graham 2002; Longhurst
2003; Probyn 2003; Agrawal 2005; Nightingale 2006) and similar work on fisheries
(St. Martin 2006, 2007).
3. The in-shore fishery, up to the 6-mile limit, does not fall under the jurisdiction of the
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Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), but nevertheless, the CFP is an important overall context
for the setting of quotas. The fact that whitefish boats—regulated under the CFP—also
have use rights to the in-shore fisheries is just one example of how the two regimes interact.
4. Paraphrase from an unrecorded phone interview.
5. It is interesting that many of the skippers I know do not spend much time drinking in pubs.
They are more likely to drink at parties or at home, whereas crew members, who tend to be
younger and unmarried, do spend a lot of time in the pub.
6. In some instances there can be important differences between policymakers and fisheries
regulators; however, in this section I am using them as synonyms.
7. Paraphrase from an unrecorded phone interview.
8. I am conscious that this discussion is framed only in terms of the fishermen’s perspectives.
This is in part due to the difficulties of interviewing policymakers on their experiences of the
meeting room. My hope is that in the next phase of the research I will be able to better
explore their perspectives.
9. Paraphrase from an unrecorded phone interview.

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