The virtual aquarium: Commodity fiction and cod fishing

This article deals with the commoditization and pricing of environmental 'goods', in particular the practice and social theory of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) in fisheries, emphasizing ethnographic material related to the management system introduced in Iceland in 1984. Icelandic fisheries discourse, I argue, is increasingly textual and hegemonic, dominated by marine scientists, resource economists and state officials. At the same time, the allocation and exchange of quotas are matters of an ongoing moral debate. This debate, I suggest, reflects the politics of independence and equity in Icelandic history as well as a deeper concern in Western society with the status of money and monetary exchange, a concern that has a number of parallels in other parts of the world.