Approach

The project is divided into three work packages (WPs). WP1, which attends to research questions 1-2, involves the combination of narrative and dyadic interviews grounded in interpretive research. WP2 builds on the learnings of WP1 in designing behavioural economic field experiments and answers questions 1-2 from an angle based in this tradition. The final WP3 draws on resilience thinking to answer question 3 by using participatory scenario planning exercises with fishers and trader-patrons. All empirical research will be carried out in Panay, Visayas in the Philippines where I draw upon my PhD work (19,20).

Gender perspectives

I take a gender lens to examine the socio-institutional factors that shape differences in behaviour, relationships and adaptation processes (3,21). In this way patronage is viewed as a key power-relation which can promote or undermine social inclusion and equitable improvements of capacities to adapt to future change. This lens also allows me to nuance human behaviour scholarship in fisheries beyond that of industrial fishermen to fishers and patrons of different types (e.g. sex, age, fishing style, business size) and how they relationally negotiate decision-making and adaptation processes.

My Work Packages

WP1 An interpretive approach to understanding patronage

Theoretical approach An interpretive approach is adopted to explore how patrons and fishers experience and understand patronage, and the ways in which they navigate patron-client relationships in response to change e.g. typhoons. Interpretive approaches focus on the meanings that shape human actions, and are particularly useful in situations where the meanings of a particular phenomenon are multiple and/or ambiguous (22). The meanings surrounding patronage are particularly contested. While fisheries managers and researchers often portray patronage as purely exploitative and harmful to fishers, anthropological and political ecological work helps to situate patronage within a broader cultural context of reciprocal responsibilities and obligations (e.g. the suki relationship (23) ) which opens up for a broader range of possible meanings among participants (10,24). An interpretive approach will therefore help to prioritise the experiences and understandings of the fishers and traders actually operating within patronage, and ensure that the project as a whole begins from a grounded, contextual understanding of the multiple meaning(s) of patronage.

Methods I will engage in individual, narrative-based life history interviews with circa 10 traders and 20 fishers, with the aim of exploring how participants have navigated patronage relationships in response to social-ecological changes (25). Each participant will be interviewed twice, to explore important experiences in-depth and to further examine any areas of ambiguity. Building on revealed events and related decision-making dyadic semi-structured interviews (26,27) will then be used with the same participants now including their husband, wife, partner or other household head arrangement. I will relationally explore intra-household tactical and strategic decision-making, as a gendered bargaining process, which shapes household outcomes and impacts fishing and trading activities, indebtedness to patrons, loan-giving to clients and other livelihood decisions. By combining the individual narratives with dyadic interviews I will map and examine responses to change at different scales as mediated by patronage to create new multi-perspective understandings of how it works and for who. Narrative life history interviews require a deep understanding of context and language on the part of the interviewer. As such I would like to engage anthropology students at the University of Philippines Visayas (UPV) Division of Social Science (of which Ferrer is the Dean) with an interest and relevant background in fishing communities to help interpret, transcribe and translate the interviews.

WP2 A behavioural approach to patron-clients’ experience of market and resource changes

Theory (Neo-)classical economic models of human behaviour, till now dominant in policy discourse, assume rational decision-makers that make use of all available information, including probabilities of future events, to maximize expected profit, income or utility. Behavioural economics challenges this view, recognizing that decision-makers are often better characterized as boundedly rational (28), that they typically violate principles of maximization, especially in complex and uncertain environments. Instead they rely on heuristics (29) which are sometimes biased in systematic ways (30). An emerging field within behavioural economics further recognizes that behavioural influence goes beyond the immediate situation and includes also more durable social, cultural and biophysical contexts (31). To study behavioural strategies of fishers and their patrons in complex social-ecological environments one needs to acknowledge such behavioural features and influences as they can have a profound impact on decisions and consequent outcomes (32).

Methods To elicit data on behavioural responses to market and resource changes I will perform a series of behavioural field experiments subsequently complemented by structured-interviews and focus group discussions. There are many different types of behavioural experiments (33) which can measure the impact of specific variables on behaviour. My field experiments will be designed as choice experiments where each participant (fisher-client or patron) over 10-16 rounds (to be determined) is confronted with different market or resource conditions. In each round I ask participants to make a decision from a set of options which have economic consequences. Participants will be randomly allocated to two main groups- one facing a resource change scenario and the other a market change. Both groups will start with a ‘normal condition’ scenario for the market and resource but also with respect to indebtedness and loan potentials from the patron-client relationship (all based on insights from WP1). Fisher’s choice options can be translated to extraction levels and an expected payoff, with an associated risk level. Patrons’ options can be translated to a supply of loans where each loan level is associated with an expected payoff and a certain level of risk. After 5-8 rounds there will be a dramatic change (the treatment), after which participants will continue with their choices for another 5-8 rounds in new conditions. Exactly what type of market and resource change and scenario conditions (e.g. restricted market access, fish stock decline) to test will be determined based on WP1 insights but will have a substantial effect on expected payoff (level and risk). Post experiment interviews will capture selected individual characteristics (e.g., gender, relation to a patron or client, financial situation, risk attitudes) that may also influence behaviour. Discussion groups offer a chance to explore how participants experienced the experiment in relation to reality (socio-cultural and biophysical context) and the community dynamics around responding to these types of changes.

WP3 What to do about Patronage in complex dynamic systems?

Theory Within the umbrella field of sustainability science the approach of resilience thinking allows one to ask questions, learn and improve understanding of complex intertwined social-ecological systems (SESs) (34). The SES concept serves as a way to organize and understand complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability in fisheries and has also recently led scholars to examine important social-ecological linkages in SSF, like patron-client relationships (11,12). Traits of SESs used to explain processes of change include adaptability, resilience and transformability (34). In resilience thinking adaptation refers to human actions in responding to change that sustain development on current pathways (34). Resilience as the capacity to deal with change, to persist and to continue to develop with ever changing environments (34). Transformation is about shifting development into other emergent pathways and even creating new ones (34). Six interlinked domains of social factors that contribute to adaptive capacity e.g. flexibility and agency, are said to provide resilience to changing social or ecological conditions and I will take a focus on the trade-offs e.g. temporal or social, between them but also with the broader fishery system’s ecological resilience (17).

Methods I draw on SES and resilience literature to help imagine and develop future pathways of the SSF system with alternatives to, restructured or radically different patron-client relationships e.g. auction systems, direct sales to consumers, formalized patron contracts, group bargaining, market information sharing. I will use a series of participatory scenario planning (PSP) (35) with research participants (fishers and traders) as a means to foster long-term and complex thinking around the future of patronage in their system and identify trade-offs i.e. winners and losers, when and where. Sustainable development pathways of the municipality will be created as storylines through different methodological tools e.g. group discussion, individual reflection, depending on participants. PSP will allow for engagement with critical uncertainties e.g. future fish stock trends, and the contradictions presented by patronage under different situations. I will examine desired futures as driven by participants and use the resulting scenarios as decision-support for local fishery governance. Data will be qualitatively analysed to develop narratives which will then be presented to secondary stakeholders i.e. policy-makers, municipal and provincial managers, practitioners, through workshops involving graphic depictions and storytelling techniques.

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