Paper short abstract:

Azenha do Mar is a small fishing village on the southwest of Portugal. Its historical roots are recent. As the inhabitants say, the sea rules. We may so explore questions on “nature” as being of the “culture” realm, and vice-versa.

Paper long abstract:

Azenha do Mar is a small fishing village on the southwest coast of Portugal. Its historical roots are quite recent: from the later years of 1960 a number of families moved from, first, from nearby failing agricultural homesteads trying to survive collecting seaweeds (agar-agar) from the shore and, at the same time, essaying ways of fishing from the over the rocks of the rough coastline. During the years to come, until the decade of 1980, others joining these first families and what was initially no more than a handful of temporary and improvised constructions made of reed and zinc, became a small but permanent village of small scale fishery in which, remarkably, no one had any previous experience in such activity. The number of inhabitants and boats/crews floats slightly during the last 40 years, but taking into account the anthropological literature on fishing communities, Azenha do Mar complies to all ethnographic descriptive items. This allows us, and most importantly, the local fishermen to say: the sea rules the village, i.e. there is an ecological context that is fully interconnected with the social/cultural local manifestations. We may so explore questions about "nature" as being of the "culture" realm, and matters of "culture" as being of "nature". These conclusions follows a long-term fieldwork commenced in 1992 to which we return frequently.