Abstract
In his essay entitled, Energy and Equity, medieval historian and social critic Ivan Illich observed that the first step toward addressing the energy crisis is to recognize that there are thresholds "beyond which technical processes begin to dictate social relations. Calories are both biologically and socially healthy only as long as they stay within the narrow range that separates enough from too much."1
In order to uncover what "enough" might mean in the post-collapse cod fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the many other collapsed fisheries around the world, we focus on debates, since the 1850's, on the appropriateness of various fishing methods. We argue that the introduction of the cod jigger in the 19th century marks a transgression of natural thresholds beyond which technical imperatives began to dictate social relations, both among people and between codfish and people.
In the case of energy use, Illich shows that "the threshold of social disintegration by high energy quanta is independent from the threshold at which energy conservation produces physical destruction."2 He argues that cultural and social thresholds are more sensitive than bio-physical ones, occurring much earlier and at lower levels of energy exploitation. More generally, his argument implies that the atrophy of the social imaginary by the industrial mind-set occurs far earlier than the damages to the physical environment due to runaway industrialization. This paper explores the extent to which the cod fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador exemplify Illich's observations on the timing and relationships among cultural, social and biophysical thresholds. We conclude by arguing that contemporary policy and management discussions on world fisheries are ineffectual and irrelevant because they are blind to the existence of natural thresholds associated with fish and fishing.