ABSTRACT
The governance of Greenlandic fisheries provides a window for observing the way competing aspirations for development and constancy play out in relation to Greenlandic society. Since the commencement of Greenland commercial fishery, the industry has been tasked with multiple societal goals of sustaining an emerging national identity both economically and culturally. Based on a review of previous studies of power and participation in Greenlandic fisheries, this chapter identifies stocks, communities, and the public purse as three ‘reference objects’ for societal development within Greenlandic fisheries governance. The chapter includes a study of how different actors position themselves in relation to these reference objects with a particular focus on the period after 2009 up to policy development in 2018. Subsequently, the chapter include selected results from a national survey study of public opinion on the role of fisheries in Greenlandic society (2015) in order to explore public support of the prioritization of competing reference objects. The chapter eventually argues that while some discourses within Greenlandic fishery governance have been eager to reduce the number of relevant reference objects of sustainable fisheries, individual actors and public opinion nevertheless seems to recognize the relevance of interacting with and sustaining multiple reference objects still.
