Confronting Barriers to Ecological Information Transfer in New Zealand's Fisheries Management System: Towards Developing a Trajectory for Trans-disciplinary Inquiry

Confronting Barriers to Ecological Information Transfer in New Zealand's Fisheries Management system: Towards Developing a Trajectory for Trans-disciplinary InquiryThis thesis confronts barriers to ecological information transfer in New Zealand's fisheries management system. The investigation reveals a wider problematic within the governmental institutions of the fisheries milieu. The thesis deploys Callon's (1991) concept of translation to ask new questions regarding the conduct of fisheries science and management, which since the introduction of the Quota Management System in 1986, has been defined through the practices of commercial stakeholder groups. These stakeholders enrol ecological information through a narrowly defined and non-reflexive discourse of sustainable utilisation to serve specific purposes that suit their own needs. The thesis uses imaginaries to illustrate how sustainable utilisation has marginalised those stakeholders with different views on how ecological information could be used in fisheries management decision making. Moreover, the thesis contends that the milieu's hegemonic ontological environment prevents translation by mitigating the potential for dialogue between stakeholder groups.The thesis engages with a wide range of literature and cuts through established modes of thinking, developing a trans-disciplinary discourse that re-conceptualises the fisheries management problematic in process terms. The thesis demonstrates how trans-disciplinary dialogue that might transcend the current impasses in the New Zealand fisheries milieu will only develop through a network of previously unconnected groups. The thesis proposes a series of policy and behavioural interventions aimed at shifting the existing hierarchies of power and realigning established networks to ensure such dialogue is possible.Keywords: trans-disciplinary research, translation, network alignment, New Zealand, ecological information transfer, fisheries management.