M Fabinyi
Biographic Data
| ID | 13224 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Fabinyi |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Fabinyi |
| SIGNATURE | FABINYI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Technology Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5293-4081 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 182 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Land Tenure, Small-Scale Fisheries, and Vulnerability in Coastal Palawan, Philippines
Small-scale fisheries in the Philippines are characterized by various practices, diverse social identities, and multiple challenges that affect fishers’ well-being. While studies have identified various forms and causes of fishers’ vulnerabilities, less well studied is the role of insecure land tenure in shaping vulnerabilities. Using qualitative methods including seventeen focus group discussions and twenty semi-structured interviews, we investi…
IUU fishing in the value chains of live grouper and squid exports: A case study of Palawan, Philippines
China and seafood trade after coronavirus: The role of state actors
What are the Impacts on Community Wellbeing of Social Relations in Conservation Projects
Organisations working on conservation and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects with communities have sometimes damaged the wellbeing of those communities. The social and political dynamics between organisations funding or implementing projects and the communities in which they work might be a factor causing this damage. This review paper explores the literature for evidence of and methods for evaluating impacts on communit…
Institutional dimensions of coral reef restoration in the Philippines
While the Philippines is mostly known for its experiences on marine protected areas, local governments and non-government organizations are increasingly using coral restoration with the aim of rehabilitating degraded reef areas. Since the establishment of artificial reefs in the 1970s, the application, techniques and corresponding policy directives for reef restoration have evolved over time, and restoration has recently generated significant int…
Industrial and small-scale fisheries relations in Ghana: A political ecology perspective on blue economy exclusion
China's approach to global fisheries: Power in the Governance of Anti-Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing
As a significant actor in global governance, China has become increasingly active in addressing global environmental challenges. However, Chinese fishing practices do not conform with its policies. How do we understand China’s apparently incoherent stance? Using the case of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing governance, we explore why China shifted its approach from reluctance to engagement while still allowing the Chinese fleet’s…
Asia-Pacific Fishing Livelihoods
This open access book synthesizes current approaches to the social science of fisheries and draws on detailed empirical research from the Asia-Pacific.
China’s 21st century maritime silk road: Challenges and opportunities to coastal livelihoods in Asean countries
Despite growing interest in how the emerging blue economy affects coastal livelihoods, there is a lack of understanding of Chinese investment in this context. This study explores ongoing practices of Chinese maritime investment in ASEAN countries and emerging patterns of the interaction between Chinese investment and coastal livelihoods. We reviewed the literature on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to create a framework for assessing the chall…
Coastal transitions: Small-scale fisheries, livelihoods, and maritime zone developments in Southeast Asia
Across Southeast Asia, coastal livelihoods are becoming more diverse and more commodified, as maritime zone developments intensify. We review literature from the ten maritime states in Southeast Asia to assess how older and emerging forms of maritime zone developments influence the viability of small-scale fishing livelihoods. Applying a political economy lens to small-scale fisheries and maritime zone developments at regional scale, we show how …
Seascape shadows: Life in the ruins of the edible bird's nest harvest in northern Palawan, the Philippines
The intensifying extraction, privatization, and conservation of maritime spaces are transforming seascapes globally. Amidst rapid coastal change and the ambiguous reconfiguration of oceans as frontiers are coastal dwellers who occupy the shadows of these seascapes. In contrast to the capture of high-profile marine species, the harvest of the edible nests of balinsasayaw (swiftlet, Aerodramus fuciphagus) remains largely concealed at the interstiti…
From a Fishing Village to Tourist Destination: Hongjia Village in Northeastern China
Economic transitions from fishing into coastal tourism are common in many contemporary coastal communities globally, and particularly in the case of China. Drawing on interviews from a village in Liaoning province in Northeastern China, we use a political economy framework to more systematically understand the drivers and outcomes associated with the transition from fishing to tourism. We find that while state policies and market forces have enco…
China’s Blue Economy: A State Project of Modernisation
The blue economy is a globally emerging concept for ocean governance that seeks to tap the economic potential of the oceans in environmentally sustainable ways. Yet, understanding and implementation of particular visions of the blue economy in specific regions diverge according to national and other contexts. Drawing on a discourse analysis of Chinese language documents, this article assesses how the blue economy has been conceptualised in Chines…
Blind spots in visions of a “blue economy” could undermine the ocean's contribution to eliminating hunger and malnutrition
Morals and climate decision-making: Insights from social and behavioural sciences
The role of voluntary commitments in realizing the promise of the Blue Economy
From conversion to conservation to carbon: The changing policy discourse on mangrove governance and use in the Philippines
The current focus on mangroves as key ecosystems in mitigating the impacts of climate change has largely neglected the livelihoods of coastal dwellers interacting with mangroves. This article provides a review of scholarly and policy attention paid to these social groups and their means of struggle. It argues that the latest dominant governance discourse tying mangroves to blue carbon signifies a departure from catering to coastal people's intere…
China at a Crossroads: An Analysis of China's Changing Seafood Production and Consumption
Changing inland waterbody livelihoods in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan
This paper examines livelihood transition along inland waterbodies, drawing on secondary literature and interviews to examine a case study of Issyk-Kul, a large Lake in Kyrgyzstan. Livelihood activities along Issyk-Kul are diverse and seasonal, and include fruit, vegetable and cereal farming, livestock management and pastoralism, tourism, remittances and fisheries and aquaculture. We focus in depth on tourism and fishing. While both activities ha…
Securing a Just Space for Small-Scale Fisheries in the Blue Economy
The vast development opportunities offered by the world’s coasts and oceans have attracted the attention of governments, private enterprises, philanthropic organizations and international conservation organizations. High-profile dialogue and policy decisions on ocean futures are informed largely by economic and ecological research. Key insights from the social sciences raise concerns for food and nutrition security, livelihoods and social justice…
Access to fisheries in the maritime frontier of Palawan Province, Philippines
Globally, capital investments are intensifying extraction and contestation over resources in frontier spaces, yet most discussion has focused on terrestrial frontiers. This paper shifts this focus to bring a scaled political ecology approach to examine the access dynamics of fisheries trade in the maritime frontier of Palawan province, the Philippines. We adapt the linked concepts of access and exclusion to highlight how access dynamics unfold at…
Governability of High-Value Fisheries in Low-Income Contexts: A Case Study of the Sea Cucumber Fishery in Papua New Guinea
High demand and prices in global markets for luxury seafood fished by coastal communities in low-income contexts causes overfishing. There are few alternatives for fishers to earn money, most institutions for controlling effort are weak, and markets are beyond the control of fishing states. The mismatch between desires for development and governance measures to enable that development is shared across many high-value low-income contexts. Using th…
Maritime disputes and seafood regimes: A broader perspective on fishing and the Philippines–China relationship
In much discussion surrounding the relationship between maritime disputes and fisheries resources, emphasis is given to the role of fisheries resources as a driver of the dispute or how states use fishing to further their interests through territoriality. Yet a narrow focus on maritime disputes obscures the broader ways in which fishing contributes to interstate relationships. This paper uses a political ecology and food regimes approach to demon…
Access to marine ecosystem services: Examining entanglement and legitimacy in customary institutions
Value from Ruin? Governing Speculative Conservation in Ruptured Landscapes
This paper examines how state and non-state actors govern through pursuing speculative conservation among resource-dependent people who must renegotiate altered livelihoods amidst extractivism in ruptured landscapes. As donor aid declines and changes form, bilaterals, state agencies, and civil society now pursue advocacy in overlapping spaces of intensifying extractivism and speculative governance in the ruptured frontiers of Southeast Asia. In t…
Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: Insights From Anthropology and Political Ecology
A social-ecological system (SES) framework increasingly underpins the "resilience paradigm."As with all models, the SES comes with particular biases.We explore these key biases.We critically examine how the SES resilience literature has attempted to define and analyze the social arena.We argue that much SES literature defines people's interests and livelihoods as concerned primarily with the environment, and thereby underplays the role of other m…
From conversion to conservation to carbon: The changing policy discourse on mangrove governance and use in the Philippines
The current focus on mangroves as key ecosystems in mitigating the impacts of climate change has largely neglected the livelihoods of coastal dwellers interacting with mangroves. This article provides a review of scholarly and policy attention paid to these social groups and their means of struggle. It argues that the latest dominant governance discourse tying mangroves to blue carbon signifies a departure from catering to coastal people's intere…
The Intensification of Fishing and the Rise of Tourism: Competing Coastal Livelihoods in the Calamianes Islands, Philippines
Transnational Relationships, Transforming Selves: Filipinas Seeking Husbands Abroad
The desire of Filipinas to find husbands abroad, particularly of European extraction, is difficult to ignore for the anthropologist who continually finds him/herself positioned as a potential transnational dating agent, chat-room tutor or even highly eligible marriage prospect. Extending analyses that view this phenomenon as multifaceted and irreducible to economics, we situate the search for transnational marriages in the context of imaginings o…
Coastal transitions: Small-scale fisheries, livelihoods, and maritime zone developments in Southeast Asia
Across Southeast Asia, coastal livelihoods are becoming more diverse and more commodified, as maritime zone developments intensify. We review literature from the ten maritime states in Southeast Asia to assess how older and emerging forms of maritime zone developments influence the viability of small-scale fishing livelihoods. Applying a political economy lens to small-scale fisheries and maritime zone developments at regional scale, we show how …
Social Relations and Commodity Chains: The Live Reef Fish for Food Trade
This paper considers the relationship between anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of commodity studies through an examination of an important commodity chain in the Asia-Pacific, the live reef fish for food trade. Using an ethnographic perspective, I focus on how particular social relationships within this commodity chain have significant implications for two key concerns of commodity studies-the distribution of benefits through commodit…
Environmental fixes and historical trajectories of marine resource use in Southeast Asia
Rethinking environmental leadership: The social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development, and conservation
Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the “crisis of governance” facing the Earth's natural systems. While political, economic, and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated, narratives of environmental leadership remain relatively neglected in the academic literature. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, to highlight the centrality and importance of environmental science's construction…
Access to marine ecosystem services: Examining entanglement and legitimacy in customary institutions
Seascape shadows: Life in the ruins of the edible bird's nest harvest in northern Palawan, the Philippines
The intensifying extraction, privatization, and conservation of maritime spaces are transforming seascapes globally. Amidst rapid coastal change and the ambiguous reconfiguration of oceans as frontiers are coastal dwellers who occupy the shadows of these seascapes. In contrast to the capture of high-profile marine species, the harvest of the edible nests of balinsasayaw (swiftlet, Aerodramus fuciphagus) remains largely concealed at the interstiti…
Maritime disputes and seafood regimes: A broader perspective on fishing and the Philippines–China relationship
In much discussion surrounding the relationship between maritime disputes and fisheries resources, emphasis is given to the role of fisheries resources as a driver of the dispute or how states use fishing to further their interests through territoriality. Yet a narrow focus on maritime disputes obscures the broader ways in which fishing contributes to interstate relationships. This paper uses a political ecology and food regimes approach to demon…
The role of voluntary commitments in realizing the promise of the Blue Economy
Value from Ruin? Governing Speculative Conservation in Ruptured Landscapes
This paper examines how state and non-state actors govern through pursuing speculative conservation among resource-dependent people who must renegotiate altered livelihoods amidst extractivism in ruptured landscapes. As donor aid declines and changes form, bilaterals, state agencies, and civil society now pursue advocacy in overlapping spaces of intensifying extractivism and speculative governance in the ruptured frontiers of Southeast Asia. In t…
Farmer Gone Fish'n? Swidden Decline and the Rise of Grouper Fishing on Palawan Island, the Philippines: Swidden Decline and Grouper Fishing on Palawan Island
Considerable research has focused on understanding how upland farmers adjust land-based livelihoods to the influences of agrarian change in Southeast Asia. In the process, an 'upland bias' has emerged where researchers focus narrowly on the uplands as localities with distinct, coherent features, neglecting how families engage place, social relations and ethnicity as they access opportunities in proximate spaces. This paper considers how the Tagba…
China's approach to global fisheries: Power in the Governance of Anti-Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing
As a significant actor in global governance, China has become increasingly active in addressing global environmental challenges. However, Chinese fishing practices do not conform with its policies. How do we understand China’s apparently incoherent stance? Using the case of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing governance, we explore why China shifted its approach from reluctance to engagement while still allowing the Chinese fleet’s…
Morals and climate decision-making: Insights from social and behavioural sciences
Changing inland waterbody livelihoods in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan
This paper examines livelihood transition along inland waterbodies, drawing on secondary literature and interviews to examine a case study of Issyk-Kul, a large Lake in Kyrgyzstan. Livelihood activities along Issyk-Kul are diverse and seasonal, and include fruit, vegetable and cereal farming, livestock management and pastoralism, tourism, remittances and fisheries and aquaculture. We focus in depth on tourism and fishing. While both activities ha…
Social trust and luxury seafood banquets in contemporary Beijing
China is marked by rising levels of consumption, but also high levels of social distrust. This paper offers an empirical study of luxury seafood consumption in banquets in Beijing as a way of understanding perceptions of and responses to a lack of trust in abstract social institutions in Chinese society. We focus on the chronic distrust Chinese people have in the food system and the economic system. Governance of the food system is marked by fail…
Luxury seafood consumption in China and the intensification of coastal livelihoods in Southeast Asia: The live reef fish for food trade in Balabac, Philippines
An important contemporary driver of livelihood change in coastal Southeast Asia is the growing demand for luxury seafood in China. Based on fieldwork in the municipality of Balabac in Palawan province, western Philippines, this paper takes stock of this trend, and investigates the implications of the relationship between Chinese patterns of luxury seafood consumption and the intensification of coastal livelihoods in Southeast Asia. The paper focu…
The Politics of Patronage and Live Reef Fish Trade Regulation in Palawan, Philippines
Recent critiques of decentralized approaches to fisheries management have focused on problems related to poor governance. This paper aims to extend such critiques by considering in greater depth local perceptions of governance in the Philippines. Specifically, it deals with a set of regulations addressing the live reef fish trade in the Calamianes Islands. The paper shows how the entire process of implementing a closed season, the fishers' critiq…
Transnational Relationships, Transforming Selves: Filipinas Seeking Husbands Abroad
The desire of Filipinas to find husbands abroad, particularly of European extraction, is difficult to ignore for the anthropologist who continually finds him/herself positioned as a potential transnational dating agent, chat-room tutor or even highly eligible marriage prospect. Extending analyses that view this phenomenon as multifaceted and irreducible to economics, we situate the search for transnational marriages in the context of imaginings o…
The Intensification of Fishing and the Rise of Tourism: Competing Coastal Livelihoods in the Calamianes Islands, Philippines
Farmer Gone Fish'n? Swidden Decline and the Rise of Grouper Fishing on Palawan Island, the Philippines: Swidden Decline and Grouper Fishing on Palawan Island
Considerable research has focused on understanding how upland farmers adjust land-based livelihoods to the influences of agrarian change in Southeast Asia. In the process, an 'upland bias' has emerged where researchers focus narrowly on the uplands as localities with distinct, coherent features, neglecting how families engage place, social relations and ethnicity as they access opportunities in proximate spaces. This paper considers how the Tagba…
Luxury seafood consumption in China and the intensification of coastal livelihoods in Southeast Asia: The live reef fish for food trade in Balabac, Philippines
An important contemporary driver of livelihood change in coastal Southeast Asia is the growing demand for luxury seafood in China. Based on fieldwork in the municipality of Balabac in Palawan province, western Philippines, this paper takes stock of this trend, and investigates the implications of the relationship between Chinese patterns of luxury seafood consumption and the intensification of coastal livelihoods in Southeast Asia. The paper focu…
Social Relations and Commodity Chains: The Live Reef Fish for Food Trade
This paper considers the relationship between anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of commodity studies through an examination of an important commodity chain in the Asia-Pacific, the live reef fish for food trade. Using an ethnographic perspective, I focus on how particular social relationships within this commodity chain have significant implications for two key concerns of commodity studies-the distribution of benefits through commodit…
Seafood Banquets in Beijing: Consumer Perspectives and Implications for Environmental Sustainability
Understanding the social drivers of increased seafood consumption in China, such as consumer perspectives in banquets, will be crucial if practical strategies to introduce sustainability into this market are to be successfully implemented. Based on 34 semi-structured interviews with key informants including seafood restaurant operators, seafood consumers and seafood traders, this study investigated seafood consumer attitudes and behaviours in Bei…
Local Realities and Practical Engagement in Environmental Management in the Philippines
In this reflective essay, I discuss how my academic and applied engagement with a major commodity fishery in the Asia-Pacific has led me to consider the role of anthropology in environmental management. Local realities regarding environment and development issues in the parts of the Philippines where I have worked are overwhelmingly dominated by two inter-related processes, which can be broadly understood in terms of aspirations for an improved q…
Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: Insights From Anthropology and Political Ecology
A social-ecological system (SES) framework increasingly underpins the "resilience paradigm."As with all models, the SES comes with particular biases.We explore these key biases.We critically examine how the SES resilience literature has attempted to define and analyze the social arena.We argue that much SES literature defines people's interests and livelihoods as concerned primarily with the environment, and thereby underplays the role of other m…
Social trust and luxury seafood banquets in contemporary Beijing
China is marked by rising levels of consumption, but also high levels of social distrust. This paper offers an empirical study of luxury seafood consumption in banquets in Beijing as a way of understanding perceptions of and responses to a lack of trust in abstract social institutions in Chinese society. We focus on the chronic distrust Chinese people have in the food system and the economic system. Governance of the food system is marked by fail…
Rethinking environmental leadership: The social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development, and conservation
Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the “crisis of governance” facing the Earth's natural systems. While political, economic, and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated, narratives of environmental leadership remain relatively neglected in the academic literature. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, to highlight the centrality and importance of environmental science's construction…
Fish, Trade and Food Security: Moving beyond ‘Availability’ Discourse in Marine Conservation
Value from Ruin? Governing Speculative Conservation in Ruptured Landscapes
This paper examines how state and non-state actors govern through pursuing speculative conservation among resource-dependent people who must renegotiate altered livelihoods amidst extractivism in ruptured landscapes. As donor aid declines and changes form, bilaterals, state agencies, and civil society now pursue advocacy in overlapping spaces of intensifying extractivism and speculative governance in the ruptured frontiers of Southeast Asia. In t…
Environmental fixes and historical trajectories of marine resource use in Southeast Asia
Securing a Just Space for Small-Scale Fisheries in the Blue Economy
The vast development opportunities offered by the world’s coasts and oceans have attracted the attention of governments, private enterprises, philanthropic organizations and international conservation organizations. High-profile dialogue and policy decisions on ocean futures are informed largely by economic and ecological research. Key insights from the social sciences raise concerns for food and nutrition security, livelihoods and social justice…
Access to fisheries in the maritime frontier of Palawan Province, Philippines
Globally, capital investments are intensifying extraction and contestation over resources in frontier spaces, yet most discussion has focused on terrestrial frontiers. This paper shifts this focus to bring a scaled political ecology approach to examine the access dynamics of fisheries trade in the maritime frontier of Palawan province, the Philippines. We adapt the linked concepts of access and exclusion to highlight how access dynamics unfold at…
Governability of High-Value Fisheries in Low-Income Contexts: A Case Study of the Sea Cucumber Fishery in Papua New Guinea
High demand and prices in global markets for luxury seafood fished by coastal communities in low-income contexts causes overfishing. There are few alternatives for fishers to earn money, most institutions for controlling effort are weak, and markets are beyond the control of fishing states. The mismatch between desires for development and governance measures to enable that development is shared across many high-value low-income contexts. Using th…
Maritime disputes and seafood regimes: A broader perspective on fishing and the Philippines–China relationship
In much discussion surrounding the relationship between maritime disputes and fisheries resources, emphasis is given to the role of fisheries resources as a driver of the dispute or how states use fishing to further their interests through territoriality. Yet a narrow focus on maritime disputes obscures the broader ways in which fishing contributes to interstate relationships. This paper uses a political ecology and food regimes approach to demon…
Access to marine ecosystem services: Examining entanglement and legitimacy in customary institutions
China at a Crossroads: An Analysis of China's Changing Seafood Production and Consumption
Changing inland waterbody livelihoods in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan
This paper examines livelihood transition along inland waterbodies, drawing on secondary literature and interviews to examine a case study of Issyk-Kul, a large Lake in Kyrgyzstan. Livelihood activities along Issyk-Kul are diverse and seasonal, and include fruit, vegetable and cereal farming, livestock management and pastoralism, tourism, remittances and fisheries and aquaculture. We focus in depth on tourism and fishing. While both activities ha…
China’s Blue Economy: A State Project of Modernisation
The blue economy is a globally emerging concept for ocean governance that seeks to tap the economic potential of the oceans in environmentally sustainable ways. Yet, understanding and implementation of particular visions of the blue economy in specific regions diverge according to national and other contexts. Drawing on a discourse analysis of Chinese language documents, this article assesses how the blue economy has been conceptualised in Chines…
Blind spots in visions of a “blue economy” could undermine the ocean's contribution to eliminating hunger and malnutrition
Morals and climate decision-making: Insights from social and behavioural sciences
The role of voluntary commitments in realizing the promise of the Blue Economy
Geography (22 works) · Business (20 works) · Economics (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · Fishery (18 works) · Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies (13 works) · Fishing (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Biology (11 works)