Because the Anthropocene by definition is an epoch during which environmental change is largely anthropogenic and driven by social, economic, psychological and political forces, environmental social scientists can effectively analyse human behaviour and knowledge systems in this context. In this subject review, we summarize key ways in which the environmental social sciences can better inform fisheries management policy and practice and marine conservation in the Anthropocene. We argue that environmental social scientists are particularly well positioned to synergize research to fill the gaps between: (1) local behaviours/needs/worldviews and marine resource management and biological conservation concerns; and (2) large-scale drivers of planetary environmental change (globalization, affluence, technological change, etc.) and local cognitive, socioeconomic, cultural and historical processes that shape human behaviour in the marine environment. To illustrate this, we synthesize the roles of various environmental social science disciplines in better understanding the interaction between humans and tropical marine ecosystems in developing nations where issues arising from human–coastal interactions are particularly pronounced. We focus on: (1) the application of the environmental social sciences in marine resource management and conservation; (2) the development of ‘new’ socially equitable marine conservation; (3) repopulating the seascape; (4) incorporating multi-scale dynamics of marine social–ecological systems; and (5) envisioning the future of marine resource management and conservation for producing policies and projects for comprehensive and successful resource management and conservation in the Anthropocene.

The current globalization of the world is resulting on entire regions suffering sudden structural reconfigurations through the re-organization of economic activities of industrial towns and agrarian landscapes. Contemporary Western societies have seen industries and its associated values move away to cheaper locales, replaced by a services economy focused on providing leisure to these urban dominated societies. Postindustrial landscapes, characterized by economic decay, depopulation, and abandonment, followed by reinvestment, resettlement, and rejuvenation, are not unique to the last century. But what marks out the last thirty years of the twentieth century is the technological revolution in travel and communication, accompanied by the rise of modern environmentalisms.

This introduction and the essays that it prefaces are taking forward a growing debate on how to re-theorize the concept of social nature, by reflecting upon it under the specific light of postindustrial social formations. They look at how nature is imagined and pursued as an aesthetic, a moral compass, and as diverse locations inside and outside the cultural and material separations already made in the social construction of industrial space. The emergence of distinct postindustrial social imaginaries, where divisions like folk and rational thought are not only questioned but also newly remade, is of particular interest to this collection of essays.

At the dawn of the twenty first century, nature, in the valley of Lillet, is represented by luxuriant forests, the return of charismatic animal species and dramatic landscapes. The valley of Lillet is located in the Catalan Pyrenees in Northeast Spain. Its complex recent history has left deep tracks on its landscape. The wilderness that currently characterizes this area is a direct result of this history. In the last two centuries this valley sequentially experienced a transition from traditional agricultural life to a modernized and hyper-industrialized mode of production. Once covered by farms and agricultural terraces, the valley became an industrial center. After the seventies and the global oil crises, mines closed and factories fled the valley, and with them most of its population. Subsequently, the landscape was ready for the postmodern takeover: protected areas and ski resorts occupied the ranges. Thus, the deindustrialization of the valley did not bring the farms back. The postindustrial landscape that emerged from the transformation is not just the product of this double transition, but the result of a simultaneous cohabitation of elements from each “period”. In postindustrial and mostly urban Catalonia, wilderness and eco-leisure have become an extremely desirable commodity. Depopulated rural Catalonia provides an ideal setting for a new wave of urban re-appropriation of the landscape.