Responses to global transformations: gender and ethnicity in resource-based localities in Iceland

Abstract

This article examines the impacts of burgeoning globalisation on small fishery-based villages in Iceland. With economic restructuring, new technologies in production, and changing labour migration, the inhabitants are not uniformly able to take advantage of current changes, and some have lost while others have gained. The paper examines the effects on people's lives and experiences and how they cope with these changes locally. The discussion is based on ethnographic field research in the 1990s. It takes a particular look at aspects of local identities that are related to gender and nationality. Since gender and ethnic differences are embedded in social institutions, they are integral parts of individuals' strategies to make better lives for themselves. Gender and nationality are constructed in the process of societal transformations. The primary goal of this paper is to shed light on gender in relation to current transformation. However, nationality is a new marker of difference within the localities — with the growing number of immigrants — that is important to consider. Combining attention to gender and ethnic constructions gives a broad picture of life in fishery villages in the Arctic and the various strategies applied by the inhabitants.