Political ethics and social movement: The virtues and vices of a ‘fishing scab’

Abstract

In the 1980s, local mobilization to turn a mangrove swamp, the Manguezal do Jequiá, into an environmentally protected area in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, brought distinct motivations together under one vision: that of regenerating what was once a resource-rich commons for local fishers. However, conflicts emerged when framings ceased to coincide, thereby curtailing the network, and compromising the co-existence of humans, fish and mangroves. Prompted by the ethnographic category of pelego, or ‘scab’, used by people from outside the community to explain political disengagement amongst fishers, this paper sheds light on what being political means. Following the tropes of nets and networks, it unveils the tension between adaptation and resistance. At the threshold between traditional ways of living and progress, between continuity and change, adaptation emerges as a means to survive for both the mangroves and the fishers, who are political insofar as they affect the relations that constitute the network.