Fishermen as Artists: Cultural Production in Times of Change

Allison Wigen, Truman State University

Every February, the Fisherpoets Gathering in Astoria, Oregon, brings together commercial fishermen from across the Pacific and Atlantic coasts to share poetry, storytelling, and songs. These fisherpoets reflect on the dangers of the industry, loss and grief, climate change, and strenuous labor. Since its inception in 1997, the gathering’s cultural significance and fishermen’s cultural production have evolved amid escalating environmental change. Yet, fishermen’s artmaking is not new. In the nineteenth century, American whalers adorned their journals and logbooks with poetry and illustrations, while sailors practiced scrimshaw, carving intricate designs into shells, walrus tusks, and whalebone. Whether during the Industrial Revolution or today’s climate crisis, fishermen’s cultural production offers insights into the material conditions of labor in times of social, economic, political, and environmental upheaval. This paper examines the material conditions of fishermen’s artmaking across two historical periods: the peak of the American whaling industry (1840–1860) and the contemporary commercial fishing industry (2000–2025). Using ethnographic, narrative, and historical methods, I explore: (1) How does the commercial fishing occupation shape cultural production? (2) When, how, and why do commercial fishermen engage in artistic practices? (3) How have these traditions shifted over time? and (4) How do commercial fishermen perceive their role in environmental change? Preliminary findings suggest that nineteenth-century whalers’ art was an instrumental, enterprising, and colonizing project, whereas twenty-first-century commercial fishermen’s art serves as a form of preservation, celebration, stewardship, and advocacy. By comparing these historical moments, this study contributes to sociological and historical understandings of culture-making, labor, and the environment by illustrating how the conditions of work shape artistic expression and how laborers respond to shifting social and environmental pressures through cultural production. More broadly, I propose a theory of division of labor, arguing that work and art are both co-constitutive and dialectically opposed, continuously shaping and challenging each other.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 131. Community, Consumption, and Creative Industries