5 



the finest economic concepts will do little good if their 

 implementation results in dangerous depletion of the fish 

 stocks and massive social disruption with attendant political 

 agitation. In the recent past, some attempts have been made 

 to integrate biological and economic data to obtain a bio- 

 economic model of fisheries. There has been virtually no 

 attempt to bring in social or cultural factors. Indeed, this 

 kind of synthesis poses many problems. For example, biological 

 and economic variables can be expressed in terms of a continuous 

 mathematical series. Many critical social 



and cultural factors can be expressed mathematically, if at all, 

 only with some difficulty. This is particularly true of factors 

 concerning social structure, values, symbolism, etc. It is no 

 accident that when social and economic factors are modelled to- 

 gether the social factors show up as constants in the econometric 

 equation. Moreover, the basic paradigm.s of these three academic 

 fields are very different. Economics is strongly deductive; 

 anthropology is inductive. Ultimately, social, economic and 

 biological information will have to be synthesized if social 

 scientists are going to present information of maximum use to 

 agencies and units charged v;ith managing the fisheries. However, 

 there is no sense attempting such a synthesis at present. Our 

 knowledge of the way in which these communities operate as sys- 

 tems is too inadequate at present. It is only after we have 

 discovered what the critical social variables are that we can 

 begin to think in terms of integrating social data with biological 



