This book explores the question of why fishing communities continue their struggle to survive, despite often calamitous changes in ecology and economy. Using historical ethnography as a lens through which to understand how fishers of the Bigouden region of France and their families have reinvented themselves, Menzies argues that local identity plays an important role in their perseverance as global capitalist pressures continually force them to reorganize or disappear entirely.

Touching on many concepts that are fundamental to anthropology—culture, identity, kinship, work, political economy, and globalization—and filled with personal stories and warmth, this ethnography will be a welcome teaching tool for instructors and an enticing read for students.

Charles R. Menzies is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Ethnographic Film Unit. He is director of an accompanying film about the Breton fishery, Face a la Tempete—Weather the Storm (Bullfrog Films, 2008) and editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management (University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

Charles R. Menzies' profile page

Red Flags and Lace Coiffes delivers the goods when it comes to providing an in-depth account of the advent of the artisanal fishery from the perspective of production. It employs a variety of data sources to inquire into the roles of social class, gender, and kinship in sustaining the fishery. In addition, the author's work experience as a fisher allows him to succinctly identify key aspects of Bigouden marine ecology and the ever improving industrial foraging technologies that make fishing possible and economically viable in the region.

<i>Anthropologica</i>