Shaping technology, building society; the industrialization of the Norwegian cod fisheries

• Published in: Marine policy Vol. 51; pp. 66 - 74
• Main Authors: Standal, Dag, Hersoug, Bjørn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2015
• Subjects: Acceptances; Cod fisheries; Construction industry; Economics; Employment; Factories; Fisheries; Industralization; Industrial development; Industrialization; Industry; Marine; Modernization; Norway; Perception; Processing industry; Production; Social values; Technology; Trawlers; Trawling; War; World War Two; ANE, Norway; Cod fisheries; Trawling; Industralization
• ISSN: 0308-597X; 1872-9460
• DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2014.06.009

After the Second World War the Norwegian government planned a large scale modernization of the entire fishing industry in northern Norway. The industrialization of the land-based processing industry and the construction of a totally new trawler fleet gained massive public financial support. The new technological adaptations were built around a vertically integrated corporate model. As a reference to the modernization concept, the seasonal coastal fisheries were defined as outdated and not able to meet the modern expectations of full-time employment and improved salaries. In this context, the trawler fleet was supposed to feed the processing industry with stable supplies of fresh fish and thus secure a fully vertically integrated production model. However, almost from the start, the model never functioned according to the political goals, i.e. an economically viable sector with secure and stable employment. Instead, the project was characterized by efficiency problems, internal disputes between the fleet and the processing factories, institutional inertia within the public sphere and finally a decoupling of the entire model. This article outlines how deep-sea trawling originally gained acceptance in the political landscape, how it developed over the years (1950–2013) and how the technological development finally was uncoupled from the needs of the processing industry. The article explains this development through the idea of technological changes as socially constructed and modified, emphasizing that successful technological transformations have to be in line with basic social values and perceptions.