ABSTRACT
This chapter considers aquaculture development in atomistic societies, with a particular example of an impoverished, rural community in Mexico. Some aquaculture developers distinguish between aquaculture development aimed at alleviating subsistence problems versus development aimed at increasing individual cash incomes and stimulating local and regional economies. Aquaculture development should start by addressing a people’s most pressing problems, and then work outward. The atomistic society notably lacks those organizational units which in other societies integrate a large number of societal members or bring them together for collective action. The atomistic rural society is the most pervasive type of society in the developing world, particularly in Latin America and Asia. In an atomistic society, on the other hand, such efforts would be inappropriate, and it would seem better to try first to strengthen the “atoms” in societies before predicating developments upon the functioning of “molecules”.
