Means, meanings, and contexts: A framework for integrating detailed ethnographic data into assessments of fishing community vulnerability

- Quantitative indices can provide inaccurate summaries of community vulnerability.
- Detailed ethnographic data can provide more accurate community portraits.
- Qualitative ethnographic data can be easily summarized for management.
- St. George, Alaska is a highly vulnerable community when assessed qualitatively.

Current efforts at assessing the vulnerability of fishing communities center around the creation of quantitative indices. The quantification of social data, however, has several drawbacks. These include the loss of detail, removal of historical context, and obscuring of power dynamics. The Means, Meanings, and Contexts (MMC) Framework is presented as an alternative methodology, one that allows for the integration of qualitative social science into the understanding of community vulnerability, drawing upon ethnographic research techniques and theories of place-making. Place-making refers to the changing relationships between the physical support offered by a landscape (means), and the relationships among place, people, and lifestyle in a community (meanings). To adequately assess community vulnerability, researchers can collect data on both means and meanings within a community. Using these data, community vulnerability is assessed by responding to a series of 12 broad prompts. Responses to these prompts are summarized at three levels of detail: detailed textual description, tabular summary, and graphical summary. Using the Pribilof Island communities of St. George and St. Paul, Alaska as examples, this framework indicates that St. George is a highly vulnerable community, while St. Paul is moderately vulnerable. These results are in stark contrast with quantitative assessments of community vulnerability, which indicate that St. George is a low to moderately vulnerable community, while St. Paul is a highly vulnerable community. Tools like the MMC Framework, therefore, help make a place for important, but complex, qualitative social data, in fisheries management.