Competition, payment and flexible trust on a Sierra Leonean fishing boat

Abstract

This article analyses a competitive payment practice common aboard artisanal fishing boats in Sierra Leone. The competition for payment between crew members on board fishing boats complicates common discursive claims about generalized mistrust in post-war Sierra Leone. Through a phenomenological ethnography of working relations at sea, I show how competitive practices generate flexible trust between crew members. Competing in what is known as handfailure produces moments where others’ intentions and moral character become legible, allowing fishermen to forge and revise trust in light of shifting evaluations of trustworthiness. The trust forged through handfailure differs from older patron–client relationships between boat owners and fishermen, and from the interpretations of social breakdown in fishing communities given by government officials. The article contributes to recent anthropological conversations about mis/trust by showing how, in contexts where people question trust or claim that mistrust is widespread, trust can nevertheless be forged anew on more flexible and negotiable terms.