What is the relationship of diversity to difference? This essay approaches the question through an examination of a wild salmon fishery in southwest Alaska and the industry dynamics through which salmon are reconfigured into changing commodities. Drawing on recent scholarship from the ecological sciences, the paper considers the link between biological population diversity and associated patterns of both variability and stability, whose interplay has been critical in the composition of the social forms of salmon fishing in the Bristol Bay region.
DOI: doi.org/10.5282/rcc/6191