Bring the Salmon Home! Karuk Challenges to Capitalist Incorporation
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Date
2009
Authors
Norgaard, Kari M.
Hormel, Leontina M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sage Publications
Abstract
With capitalism’s introduction, Karuk people have experienced radical declines in the productivity
of Klamath River salmon fisheries, dire impoverishment, and a new order of threats in the form of
hunger and diet related diseases. We use interview, survey, medical and archival data to describe
how capitalism has been an unsustainable system in the case of the Karuk because it is organized
around market extraction and destroys cultural knowledge and behaviors that served to keep fish
harvests sustainable. Using world-systems theory, we propose a fifth frontier exists, that of health.
Despite the impacts of 150 years of direct genocide, Karuk people continue to survive and are revitalizing
culture and community, which supports the idea that capitalist incorporation is not fully
complete but partial. Karuk resistance and revitalization is epitomized in the campaign to remove
four dams on the Klamath River and thereby ‘Bring the Salmon Home’ to the upper basin.
Description
25 pages
Keywords
capitalist incorporation, frontiers, indigenous resistance,, Karuk Tribe of California, world-systems theory
Citation
Leontina M. Hormel and Kari M. Norgaard Crit Sociol 2009; 35; 343