| Summary: | This thesis explores the role for social work in addressing government policies that
threaten the sustainability of small coastal communities. The response of government and
industry to the globalization of trade and resource degradation is at odds with the needs of people.
Utilizing a case study methodology the development and implementation of the Pacific Salmon
Revitalization Plan is explored. This department of fisheries plan to rationalize the fishery was
highly contested on the grounds that it took jobs out of small coastal communities. It was accused
of benefiting the large fishing corporations and the urban based fishing fleet, which had the
capital to profit from the plan. Concentrated opposition from coastal communities, fishers,
advocacy groups and academics was unsuccessful in changing the plan. The assumptions of
modernism - expert knowledge, scientific rationality and orthodox economics - as well as
distorted communications, were postulated to be behind this lack of success. A post modern
analysis suggests that a successful challenge to the plan would have incorporated the local
knowledge of fishers and coastal communities within a process of fair and equitable public
discourse aimed at reaching intersubjectively mediated understanding. For social work this
demonstrates the need to work conjointly with communities and affected groups to identify the
modernist assumptions on which policy decisions are based and develop locally derived
alternatives to these assumptions. And most importantly, that the focus of social change efforts be
on demanding a process for discussion and decision-making that ensures that the concerns of
effected individuals will be fairly addressed. === Arts, Faculty of === Social Work, School of === Graduate
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