Methodological reflection

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Contrary to governance of marine communities, in governance through marine communities, relational power is not perceived as a threat but rather as a means to involve and empower the community. However, there appears to be a threshold to which networking, facilitated by mobility systems, can empower governance through marine communities; the network structure should stay intact and not become too institutionalised or bureaucratic. The use of dispositional and structural power otherwise compromises trust relationships which are essential for governance through marine communities to be successful.

Governance of and through marine communities is theoretically possible by both the user and policy communities. However, in this thesis governance of marine communities was dominated by the policy community and governance through marine communities by the user community.

The marine community concept contributed to the understanding of the complexity of governance by tracking changes in governance modes, shifts, styles and processes. The spatial scale of the maritime activity appeared to be crucial, as it defines the mobility of the activity and subsequently of the marine community. As a result, the maritime activity had a larger influence on environmental governance by marine communities than the marine region in which the activity occurs.

157 the marine community exists depending on the governance context.

The methodological approach to operationalise the marine community concept requires reflections on the internal and external validity of the research. The introduction mentioned that the internal validity of this thesis was expected to be enhanced by means of triangulation, semi-structured interviews with a large group of relevant stakeholders, semi-prolonged periods of fieldwork which lengthened the exposure time of the researcher with the object and the cross-checking of findings. However, there are some limitations to how these factors enabled internal validity.

Although semi-structured interviews were conducted with a large representation of stakeholders, the number of interviews per case study differed. For the Hammerfest case, only 14 interviews were conducted compared with 25-35 interviews for the other three cases. In relation to the cases on cruise tourism, this can be explained by the larger size of these marine communities which required more interviews to obtain a proper representation of relevant stakeholders. Statia was a complex case because of the new constitutional status, and it required more interviews to gain a good understanding of the political complexity at stake. The 14 interviews for the Hammerfest case, nevertheless, were conducted with 19 interviewees and reached the point of data saturation, rendering additional interviews unnecessary.

Because of the limited fieldwork budget, only semi-prolonged periods of fieldwork could be conducted. The fieldwork was successful because of a large collection of interviews, but extended fieldwork periods could be more beneficial to have an even greater submersion in the case study at stake. The research would benefit from this because the cases selected in this thesis were not well studied before in the literature, meaning there was limited secondary data available on which the researcher could rely, strengthening the need for the cross-checking of findings. Participatory observation over a long period of time also has its drawbacks as the researcher is the main instrument of data collection; thus, his/her interpretation or focus on a particular issue can lead to bias (Bryman, 2004, p. 284). Regarding the role of the researcher during fieldwork, it is important to mention that during fieldwork in the Caribbean Netherlands, the researcher was advised by other researchers and stakeholders to mention her Belgian identity instead of introducing herself as a researcher from a Dutch university, due to the tension between Bonaire, and especially Statia, with the Netherlands, since they became special municipalities.

An unforeseen factor which complicated data collection was inaccessibility to the field and interviewees in Svalbard. Fieldwork was planned to take place in

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Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard, and in Ny-Ålesund, the international research centre in Svalbard. Funding for the fieldwork was obtained by the researcher through the Arctic Field Grant 2014 of the Svalbard Science Forum. However, successful funding did not automatically translate into access to the field. Ny-Ålesund is a centre for international arctic scientific research and environmental monitoring, comprised of research stations from ten countries across the world. Social scientific research for this thesis is not the typical research conducted in the predominantly natural science research centre in Ny-Ålesund. This raised concerns among the scientific community in Ny-Ålesund and required additional permission for fieldwork to be granted by the Ny-Ålesund Science Managers Committee in which all research stations are represented.

Another factor that complicated the process was the funding of the fieldwork by a Norwegian and not a Dutch fund. Support or accommodation could therefore not be granted by the Netherlands polar research station. After a lengthy procedure of almost six months, permission was finally obtained for fieldwork. In light of the subject of this thesis, the special nature of the research community of Ny-Ålesund could be perceived as a marine community of scientists. Becoming a member of this marine community was not easy; however, once access was granted, the community was very welcoming.

In the introduction, external validity was sought to be strengthened by means of the cross-case comparative analysis which allows for analytical or theoretical generalisation across different contexts such as marine regions and maritime activities. The results of the cross-case comparative analysis showed that the framework can be flexibly used in research, rectified and transformed in many settings, different from the cases studies in this thesis in which it was developed.

In the individual case studies, marine communities have been studied in relation to theories on coalition-building, power, networks and flows and collective self-governance. The distinction in the cross-case comparative analysis between governance of marine communities and governance through marine communities for a relative static and a highly mobile maritime activity, respectively, covered both ends of the mobility spectrum for maritime activities in the globalising world in which we currently live. The inductive stance to develop the marine community concept has been successful. Now that the marine community has taken shape, a more deductive approach to study marine communities is necessary to test the external validity of this concept. Therefore, marine communities should be studied in relation to other maritime activities. Although the different nature of maritime activities influenced governance processes by marine communities more significantly, compared to the different marine regions in which the marine

159 activities occurred, marine communities should also be further investigated in other areas. In this thesis, two vulnerable ecosystems with very different climate conditions were selected. To compare the findings, marine communities in more temperate or less vulnerable ecosystems should be studied. Suggestions for other maritime activities and regions are provided in the next section. Afterwards, some policy implications will be given.