DescriptionThis dissertation posits a feminist theory of access by examining how fisherfolk benefit from sardinella (yaboy) in Senegal. Once a byproduct of artisanal fisheries and used as baitfish, today, sardinella is a nutritional staple and precious commodity in West Africa in both fresh and less perishable forms (i.e., keccax). This shift points to the historical importance of political ecologies as profoundly gendered processes that are co-produced with class and age in the studied setting of Joal-Fadiouth, an urbanizing town in the region known as La Petite Côte. I argue that an analysis of structure, technology and work are key to identifying when and how intersecting lines of social difference matter—and become strategic—in contestations over who is entitled to fish, and at what price. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, I analyze primary data from 125 semi-structured interviews, an in-depth survey of 93 boats owners and 5 focus groups, to triangulate original findings with internal government data sets and other secondary sources from the francophone literature that have been largely unavailable to anglophone audiences until now. This project responds to the relative lacuna in the literature on agrarian change by excavating and specifying a seascapes framework, to highlight points of potential synergy between often parallel conversations on the dynamics of land-based and sea-based systems of production.