Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts a historical analysis of how long durations of human-animal-thing entanglements in labour processes in molluscan fisheries (for pearl and chank) in the Gulf of Mannar (India) re-produce representations of identity hierarchy, and value in contemporary fisheries.

Paper long abstract:

Economic, social or environmental histories of molluscan products such as pearl, cowries or conchs from across the world rarely incorporate effects produced in the life-world of divers within analytical frames of valuation except as labour (slave, wage, exploited, skilled or otherwise) located at a disadvantaged periphery. Likewise, within contemporary narratives regarding the management, use or conservation of molluscs, there is little attention paid to the knowledge, techniques, technologies and devices wielded by divers to obtain greater control and power in these fisheries. This paper draws from historiographic ideas and practice that engage with a sociology of knowledge and 'the agency of things' as a means to understanding the relational politics over molluscan fisheries in the Indian side of the Gulf of Mannar.

The paper examines a wide range of historical accounts of pearl fisheries (both academic and popular), official administrative reports and detailed interviews with present-day divers and other actors in the Gulf of Mannar region. From these, I trace how practices in human-animal-thing entanglements embedded in labour processes of molluscan fisheries persist over long durations to re-produce identity, hierarchy, and value in contemporary fisheries.

Through specific illustrations of interactions between the sets of actors (human and non-human), I attempt a reading of the influence of these long durations of repeated structurations in the production of contemporary controversy over the use of hookah diving for the collection of chank shells off the Thoothukudi coast the only active fishing site among the world's ancient molluscan fisheries environments.