Fishing in the Amazonian forest: a gendered social network puzzle

We employ social network analysis (SNA) to describe the structure of subsistence fishing social networks and to explore the relation between fishers' emic perceptions of fishing expertise and their position in networks. Participant observation and quantitative methods were employed among the Tsimane' Amerindians of the Bolivian Amazonia. A multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure was used to explore the extent to which gender, kinship, and age homophilies influence the formation of fishing networks. Logistic regressions were performed to determine the association between the fishers' expertise, their socio-demographic identities, and network centrality. We found that fishing networks are gendered and that there is a positive association between fishers' expertise and centrality in networks, an association that is more striking for women than for men. We propose that a social network perspective broadens understanding of the relations that shape the intracultural distribution of fishing expertise as well as natural resource access and use.