ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the ongoing dialogue between “outsiders,” in this case tourists, tourism developers, and museum professionals, and the fisherfolk who seek to control how they are being represented. As fishers involve themselves in the production of heritage they risk ensconcing themselves in essentialized images of tradition and folk culture. A more useful way of viewing fisher heritage is as a negotiation: with local and regional authorities, with visitors, with promoters of Scottish heritage, and most generally, with modernity itself. The Anstruther and the Pittenweem fishermen are finding that their authority is slipping away as others attempt to “speak” their place. The curator must answer to a Board of Trustees that includes local fishermen, businessmen, solicitors, bankers and one university academic. A non-fisher board member said that the intent had been to display the fish-curer’s documents and that the clothes were “just things that the museum had handy.”.
