Where is the Lobster: An Exploration of the Lobster as a Being in Fisheries Management in Nova Scotia, Canada

• Main Author: Fowler, April
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: oppression; Mi’kmaq; Canada; Critical Animal Studies; Critical Discourse Analysis; lobster; fisheries; decolonialism
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10852/95992; http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-98500

This research has used a Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze nine different documents relating to the management of the Inshore and Offshore lobster fishery in Nova Scotia, Canada, to answer the question: How does the language employed in fisheries management documents impact the agency of the lobster as a being in a system where it is used? Through a framing of Critical Animal Studies, ecofeminism as it relates to non-human animals, anarchist political ecology, and decolonization, the discourses surrounding the lobster will be examined, as well as how they build into a rights-based or relationship-oriented framework for connecting with the lobster, and, finally, if these discourses add or remove agency for the lobster within its own fishery. As the current fishery is the most profitable in Canada and contentious with corporations, the government of Canada, and the Mi’kmaq (the Indigenous people of the area) having various claims to its inhabitants, this exploration of the lobster will aim to centre the species. However, this exploration must be careful, in order to centre the lobster while not harming the various groups in Canada who have also been Othered. Ultimately, I will argue, through an analysis of identity and death discourses, that the lobster can have agency within a system where it is being used, but that will require a shift in the system in Canada, from one formed with a capitalist and settler-colonialist structure, to a system where a different relationship with the lobster is understood through non-Western ontologies.