Dette er den første av i alt fire artikler om sivilsamfunnet som Minerva publiserer denne uken.[i]

 

 

In their authoritative study of the history of Norges Fiskarlag (Norwegian Association of Fishermen), Christensen and Hallenstvedt (2005) criticize new organizational trends in Norway. They argue that neoliberal state policies have increased the power of business communities and fragmented the political organization of fishermen and the fishing industry. For them, these trends furnish clear proof that neoliberalism has destroyed one of Norway’s main industries. Small-scale fishing operations on the communal level have been the biggest losers, they maintain, closed out of political debate. In Christensen and Hallenstvedt’s story, the winners have been the bureaucrats of neoliberalism: consultants, lobbyists, and investors.

 

This paper mounts an argument that contests this story. What Christensen and Hallenstvedt regard as fragmentation, I argue is a newly emergent plurality of voices that is reshaping the fishing communities in Norway and is symptomatic of the emergence of a more vital civil society.[ii] Instead of the fragmentation and erosion Christensen and Hallenstvedt see, the argument presented here suggests that the new actors in the fishing industry show that the Norwegian political culture is unshackling itself from likhet norms and it is moving to a more plural mode of politics.[iii] In order to demonstrate this claim, I will begin with a case study and then move on to engaging historical and theoretical arguments about the concept of civil society in the context of the Norwegian social democracy.

 

The summer of 2005 I left Seattle in search for the “Truth” about Norwegian fish and Norwegian fishermen. With the support of the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, I spent six weeks in Norway interviewing representatives of interest and sales organizations within the fisheries sector. I started my interviews at the Norwegian Parliament and the Ministry of Fishing and Coastal Affairs in Oslo and ended up in Tromsø, where I was located for a month. On my way North, I stopped in Trondheim, Bodø, and Lofoten. While I was still in Oslo, on Karl Johansgate, I ran into two women wearing bright orange stockings that matched their orange T-shirts with the logo “Kysten til kamp” (“The Coast to Battle”). Closely followed by a cameraman, they handed out pamphlets to the inhabitants of Oslo and informed them about the struggles of the coastal communities in Northern-Norway. As I later found out, the two women expressing the concerns of the coast in the heart of the Norwegian capital were May-Britt Solhaug and Lena Amalie Hamnes from the Lofoten Islands. February 2004, they formed the organization Kysten til Kamp (The Coast to Battle, KTK). Rather than prioritizing the internal building of the organization, KTK is mostly interested in working through contact networks. Its goal is to raise awareness in urban areas to the struggles and worries of the small fishing communities in Northern-Norway and to further foster a productive dialogue on fisheries at the level of the entire Norwegian society. With an interactive website (www.kystentilkamp.com) and involved in local and national media, KTK hopes to become a catalyst for civic participation across group distinctions such as rural / urban, periphery / center, fishermen / non-fishermen.

 

Why is KTK worth of our attention? First, KTK is symptomatic of new organizational trends in Norway that differ both from the fishermen’s traditional corporatist activism and the more recent lobbyist activism identified by Christensen and Hallenstvedt. As it has been pointed above, KTK works through networking and creates its publics ad-hoc in both urban and rural places. Second, framing its discourse in opposition to the state and rather indifferent to the fishermen’s interest and sales organizations, KTK is symptomatic of the affirmed individualism and the proliferation of personal projects of managing that are shaping the contemporary Norwegian civil society, and that Christensen and Hallenstvedt fail to acknowledge. Finally, KTK takes the fisheries debate beyond the dichotomies center / periphery, urban / rural, non-fishermen / fishermen, dichotomies that have traditionally shaped the political discourse in Norway (Rokkan 1967, Nelsen 1993). Completely ignored by current scholarship, organizations such as KTK become interesting as a concrete example of how the discourse of the welfare state has been eroded by globalization, multiculturalism and increased economic integration in the European Union (EU).

 

Having said that, I will now turn to an analysis of the factors that in the first place enabled the appearance of organizations such as KTK, and that Christensen and Hallenstvedt are disconcerted with, namely the competition between the fishermen practicing corporatist activism and the industry, fish farming, and export indulging in lobbyism.

 

Discussing the rationalization of the Norwegian fisheries, Petter Holm (1996) identifies three models of modernization sharing the same rationale, namely, to reduce the instability and fluctuations characteristic of the sector. Each model legitimizes a particular set of norms and empowers a distinct group of actors. The first rationalization model is the small scale industry model, which dates back to the interwar period and implies minimal investment, simple technology, and flexible forms of production closely following the cycles of nature. The second rationalization model was implemented after the Second World War (WWII) in response to international trends of industrialization. Its operative mode involves great investments, the latest technology, and production throughout the entire year. If in the small scale industry model the legitimate actors are the farmer-fishermen, in the big industry model, it is the industrial fishermen, processors, and trawler owners that become primary players in decision making. Finally, the third model of rationalization is the management of resources. This model was institutionalized in the wake of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Agreement of 1977 which held coastal states responsible for the management of fish resources within 200 nautical miles of their coast. The factors of decision in the management of resources are the scientists, who “catch” fish on paper and make recommendations regarding how many quotas each fish stock can support. This third model of rationalization leaves little space for negotiation, as the scientists’ recommendations need to be closely followed, is Norway to support a fishing industry at all.

 

According to Holm, the small scale industry model, the big industry model, and the management of resources have not replaced each other. Rather, there is a hegemonic struggle going on between these three models and the institutions they legitimize. Forced to accommodate the environmental concern and limited by the epistemic communities, the fishermen and the industrialists of today engage in a fierce struggle over who has the right to the available fish resources. The balance of power constantly shifts between the two groups, and, as of 2008, the conflicts between them have not been resolved. While the fishermen insist that the small scale industrialist model is far more sustainable than the big industrialist one, it is a fact that the big industrialists are better adapted to deal with the great mobility of capital in the global markets characteristic of the export intensive Norwegian fisheries.

 

With the power of decision constantly relocating from the coastal fishermen and industrialists to the members of the epistemic communities, the Norwegian state is redefining its role. If in the small and big industrialist model, a good percentage of the subsidies went into the improvement of the coastal fleet’s gear, in the management of resources, the main concern of the Norwegian state has been to close the commons and keep participants out of fishing. In the first instance, the state was defined in positive terms as the provider of social welfare and the protector of public interest. In the second case, it has become the restrictor, cutting subsidies, managing through quotas and taking care of market access. This redefinition of state roles has major consequence for the nature of organizational life in Norwegian fisheries, and extending from here, in Norway.

 

Working within the German tradition, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas (1974, 1991) argues that it was the European bourgeoisie that initiated the process of democratization in feudal Europe by creating a new type of public space to meet and debate matters of common concern. Militating to universalize the rights and privileges of the nobility, the bourgeoisie gathered in coffee shops, scientific, cultural or philanthropic associations and submitted the state to rational scrutiny and criticism.Consequently, in Habermas’s account, civil society emerges as a counterweight to the state led by the feudal political elites, while the process of democratization works from the top down. Norwegian scholars have demonstrated that this instituted opposition between the state and the civil society does not hold in the Norwegian case (Neumann 2002, Sørensen 1998, 2001). The democratization of Norway occurred from the bottom up, with the state and the king representing the Norwegian people against Danish cultural domination and Swedish political rule. Taking advantage of the weak landed nobility, mobilizing the relatively strong rural interests and backed up by the Lutheran dogmatic tradition, the Norwegian political elites managed to universalize local rural communities to form state democracy. In contrast to other Western European cases, the discourse around the Norwegian state was therefore dominated by the representation of the state as “us,” “the people.” The rural peasantry came to see itself in the good, trustworthy state. A key consequence of this genealogy of state is that civil society was not needed as a counterweight to the state, as is the case in Habermas’s account.

 

Today, under the pressures of multiculturalism, globalization and increased core EU integration, the political, social, economic and cultural landscapes in Norway are being redefined. One effect of these new transformations is that the discourse of the state as “us,” “the people” is gradually being eroded.[iv] As Norwegians find affiliations beyond national borders and construct their identities in response to impulses coming from elsewhere, the state loses both importance and credibility. We could therefore claim that civil society in Norway is actually emerging right now as a reaction to the neoliberal takeover of the state. Thus, neoliberalism establishes an antagonism between the state and the people and, therefore, requires civil society. The Norwegian fisheries are an illustrative microcosm of this transitional juncture in contemporary Norwegian society. As the Norwegian state is mostly preoccupied with managing through quotas and market access, and less with social welfare and public interest, the fishing communities along the coast of Norway blame the Ministry of Coastal and Fishing Affairs for favoring the business communities at the expense of the fishermen. They also purport the idea that the fishermen’s own organizations have been co-opted by capital and industry.

 

Instead of closing-off political debate, the struggles between the fishermen, industry, fish farming, export, and the epistemic communities expose the hegemonies at work in the Norwegian society. With the Norwegian state losing authority and the hegemons struggling to redefine their position in the power structure, new participants that have not been recognized as legitimate actors in the Norwegian public debate may appear. Some of the actors kept in the twilight of the Norwegian fisheries discourse are the fishermen that are not organized under the banner of Norges Fiskarlag, women, the Sami people, and foreign workers. From this perspective, KTK, the network organization previously discussed, is a proof of how the “non-institutionalized” take advantage of the opening of the public sphere. As we have seen, KTK consists of two women from the Lofoten Islands that attempt to make the fisheries debate into a topic of concern for both rural and urban inhabitants, fishermen and non-fishermen, men and women alike. Challenging corporatist activism and lobbyism, KTK redefines the dichotomy center / periphery that, according to Stein Rokkan (1967), has traditionally made the backbone of the Norwegian political discourse.

 

Rokkan has argued that the territorial cleavage between center and periphery is the fundamental theme in Norwegian politics which explains the cultural and ideological split in the Norwegian electorate. According to him, the antagonisms in Norwegian politics date back to the struggle for the parliamentary government in the 19^th century, and roughly correspond to the following two groups: the anti-market periphery highly supportive of the Norwegian language, culture and values, and the pro-market, Europe-orientated governing elites in the center. Unlike in other Western European states, in Norway, the center / periphery scenario has played out in favor of the latter. With strong local government autonomy, local industries spread along the coast, an electoral over-representation of the periphery in the political structures, and specific identities unwilling to settle for a regional infrastructure, the Norwegian periphery has been in the position to challenge the establishment (see Nelsen 1993). Given the current political and economic climate in Norway, as I have described it above, today’s fishing periphery is no longer in the position to do that. As the KTK case shows, the periphery feels compelled to take the urban road to make its claims and concerns heard. This implies a transformation of the ways in which fishing communities organize and a change in their discourses. Suspicious of the corporatist activism, which traditionally detracts its legitimacy from being connected to the state, organizations such as KTK choose networking as a more efficient operative mode that fits life in a globalized world and can mobilize ad-hoc publics by virtue of addressing them from Karl Johans gate in Oslo to Svolvær on the Lofoten Islands. Framing its discourse within the market economies where the state is no longer trustworthy and citizens are defined as consumers, KTK suggests that fish is first and foremost a matter that concerns your pocket:

 

 

But that KTK does not choose traditional corporatist activism is not merely a proof that civil society in Norway has been weakened by neoliberalism. Rather, KTK is an expression of the fragmentation, dynamism, competition, and flexibility characteristic of living in a globalized world. In this respect, Lance Bennett (1998) shows that neither the public sphere nor the individuals themselves can resist these global trends. Given the economic insecurity and the market pressure, in order to put up with the new changes in society, people are more than ever likely to change jobs and redirect themselves on the market. As a result, in place of homogenous, grand narrations of the nation-state, contemporary democracies are “increasingly directed toward personal projects of managing and expressing complex identities in a fragmented society” (Bennett 755). These observations, however, should not lead to a rejection of KTK as a discourse of mere individual initiative and agenda setting. Rather, small activists such as KTK should be credited with greater trust and academic concern precisely because they bring into the public debate matters that have remained outside the hegemonic discourses purported by interest organizations such as Norges Fiskarlag.

 

Bennett, Lance W. “The UnCivic Culture: Communication, Identity and the Rise of

Lifestyle Politics.” Political Science and Politics XXXI, no. 4 (1998): 741-62.

 

Christensen, Pål and Abraham Hallenstvedt. I kamp om havets verdier. Norges

Fiskarlags historie. Trondheim: Skipnes AS, 2005.

 

Habermas, Jürgen. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article.” New German

Critique 3 (1974): 49-55.

 

———. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a

Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

 

Holm, Petter. “Kan torsken temmes? Moderniseringsprosesser i fiskerinæringa.” In Det

nye Nord-Norge. Avhengighet og modernisering i nord, edited by Erik O. Eriksen, 109-42. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 1996.

 

Nelsen, Brent F. “The European Community Debate in Norway: The Periphery Revolts,

Again.”In Norway and the European Community: the Political Economy of Integration, edited by Brent F. Nelsen, 41-61. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993.

 

Neumann, Iver B. “This Little Piggy Stayed at Home: Why Norway Is Not a Member of

The EU”. In European Integration And National Identity. The Challenge of The Nordic States, edited by Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver, 88-129. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

 

Rokkan, Stein. “Geography, Religion, and Social Class: Crosscutting Cleavages in

Norwegian Politics.” In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, edited by Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, 367-444. New York: The Free Press, 1967.

 

Sørensen, Øystein. ”Hegemonikamp om det norske.” In Jakten på det norske.

Perspektiver på utviklingen av en norsk nasjonal identitet på 1800- tallet, edited byØystein Sørensen, 17-48.Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal AS, 1998.

 

———. “Et folk av bønder.” In Kampen om Norges sjel, vol.3 of Norsk

Idéhistorie, edited by Øystein Sørensen and Trond B. Eriksen, 7-22. Olso: Aschehoug, 2001.