Sharing or Appropriation? Share Systems, Class and Commodity Relations in Scottish Fisheries PENNY MCALL HOWARD Fishing share systems that distribute ‘fishing surplus’ among crew are widespread in global fisheries. One recent analysis identifies the New England ‘lay’ share system as a form of ‘non-capitalism’ because of the way that surpluses are shared (St Martin 2007). Through ethnographic, historical and economic analysis of Scottish commercial nephrops trawler fisheries, this paper demonstrates that fishing share systems are adaptable to the exploitation of labour.While share systems seem to have their origins in shared ownership of fishing boats and gear, it is the present lack of this link in Scotland that has created the conditions for labour itself to become a commodity and share systems to function as a variable and casual wage.This paper argues that the dependence of the fishery on commodity production and its reliance on labour as a commodity makes it fully capitalist, even in the presence of a share system, and explores the social and ecological consequences of the development of these more conventionally capitalist class relations. Keywords: fishing, Scotland, fishing share system, wage, capitalism, nephrops INTRODUCTION With the focus of most fisheries literature on property rights and management of fisheries, 1 the ‘question of the distribution of costs, of capital and labor, has been largely ignored’ (St Martin 2007, 534). The distribution of costs and surpluses is not just a question of accounting, but affects social relations among fishers and the trajectory of whole fisheries (Lummis 1985; Menzies 2002; Sider 2003). In fisheries, one of the widespread mechanisms for distributing surpluses are customary share systems (ILO 2003). In such systems, the surplus remaining after paying for fishing expenses is allocated between boat owner and crew by giving each an agreed percentage – a share – of the value of the catch after landing, instead of a fixed wage. Fisheries economists have conducted very little research on fisheries share systems (McConnell and Price 2006), as they have been ‘preoccupied with solving the problem of rent dissipation’ (St Martin 2007, 534). 2 Essentially, this means that fisheries economists have been focused on how fishing boat owners can maintain their profits, rather than how crew are Penny McCall Howard, Level 2, 365 Sussex Street, Sydney, NSW 2000,Australia. E-mail: suilven2@yahoo.com I am grateful to my co-editors, Liam Campling and Elizabeth Havice, for their constant intellectual stimulation and extraordinary editorial capacity.The thorough and thoughtful comments of two anonymous reviewers greatly improved this paper, as did Alison Sandison’s lovely map. I am indebted to Alasdair MacPhail, Iain MacKenzie and many others on the west coast of Scotland for their trust, hospitality and generosity, and to Arnar Árnason,Andrew Whitehouse and Tim Ingold for their support throughout this project. Funding provided by the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Aberdeen made this research possible. 1 See the introductory article to this issue (Campling et al. 2012). 2 In standard fisheries economics, ‘rent’ is the increased value of outputs over inputs. ‘Rent dissipation’ refers to the tendency for over-investment in inputs leading to declining value of outputs, and hence declining profits. See Homans andWilen (2005) for a recent but uncritical review of how fisheries economists have addressed this issue. Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 12 Nos. 2 and 3, April and July 2012, pp. 316–343. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd