| Salmon crises along the Pacific Slope signal a greater crisis of sustainability. The environmental imaginaries that inform industrial capitalism have contributed to the decline of salmon fisheries and associated resource-dependent communities. This study investigates this decline and three emerging community-based institutional responses to this crisis: co-managed fisheries, watershed organizations, and eco-literacy programs, each of which addresses issues of sustainability in the context of production, governance, and socialization, respectively. A case study (based on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis) of on-going watershed and salmon restoration efforts in the Mattole region of northern California serves as a focus for the themes of this study. I engage social movement theory, bioregionalism, and debates about the commons in my interpretation of the restoration efforts, and demonstrate the ways in which community-based organizational forms offer material grounding for alternative environmental imaginaries and practices, and so are a necessary if not sufficient resource for initiating a future that is ecologically sustainable and socially equitable. |
