Fisherman’s Survival Pattern Toward Poverty

Traditional fishermen in Indonesia were commonly positioned as the poorest people. Actually, the society had owned the strategy to face the social economic difficulties. Generally, poor people had more spirit of survival because they needed to survive their life. That kind of potency might be in the form of personal-social asset, adaptation strategy and problem solving (coping strategy) used locally based on their house condition. This research aimed to explore the way of poor fishermen to survive, conducted in Tanjung Tiram. Methodologically, this research used qualitative approach focusing on people strategic way to survive toward poverty. The data were collected and interpreted simultaneously. The result showed that various strategy combinations of poor fishermen in surviving were the point between social structure awareness and self-correction through reflexive monitoring of action responding to the situation faced. The structural aspect included unbalance economy access and patron-client relation which limited the fishermen's ability to increase their social economic status exploitatively. That condition created adaptive behavior such the optimality of coastal resource in their environment involving the whole members of family to earn livelihood. These three strategies became the common thing among them to survive toward social economic crisis.