Abstract
This article focuses on the importance of gender research in the intangible cultural heritage of fisheries (including shellfish and seaweed farming) as a means to better preserve coastal and maritime cultural heritage. Fishing activities are based on knowledge, the “know-how”, accumulated through experience over time and transmitted to new generations. As written sources have tended, historically, to be written by men, fisheries, shellfish and seaweed farming are usually viewed today as male activities from which women are excluded. However, participant observation and qualitative interviewing of fisheries’ cultures show us this is often not the case. Therefore, this article fills a gap by describing two maritime cultural heritage case studies that provide researchers and practitioners with alternative sources of information, such as oral history and qualitative interviewing. Moreover, policies to conserve maritime intangible cultural heritage require a better understanding of gender-differentiated practices as well as of ways of knowledge acquisition and gender inequalities in such heritage.
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Notes
Since the crisis of 2008, oyster farmers diversified their activity by hosting tourists and others for “oyster degustation” at their farms. This activity offers an important additional income to them.
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Acknowledgements
This work was completed in connection to the EU Horizon2020 Research & Innovation project, Preserving and Sustainably Governance Cultural Heritage and Landscapes in European Coastal and Maritime Regions (PERICLES), grant no. 770504 and the help and support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for funding for “Revitalising/Re-imagining the Commons in an era of social and environmental change: A Next step in Commons Research” Kaken Grant # 19K12454.
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Frangoudes, K., Herry, J., Mylona, D. et al. Gender, a key dimension for the future of maritime cultural heritage research: cases from Europe and East Asia. Maritime Studies 22, 30 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-023-00316-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-023-00316-2