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- Convenors:
-
Noriko Tahara
(Shitennoji University)
Noriko Ijichi
Setsuko Nakayama
- Location:
- 101a
- Start time:
- 17 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on beach management, in response to fishing activities, to understand how beach use practices were carried out on the ground. On the basis of research conducted in South Korea, Malawi, and Uganda, we argue that how beach use decisions were made at local and regional levels.
Long Abstract:
In this panel we combine elements of governance theory, political ecology, and a form of institutional analysis.
Setsuko Nakayama (Kanazawa University) examines how exogenous attempts to govern Lake Malawi's beaches have failed to capture fishers' organizational principles that have persisted since precolonial times. She attributes the failure to constrictive views of fishery as a male-exclusive commercial activity on water which precludes the significance of female ritual and technological involvement on terrestrial domains, and to the notion of governance which fishers seem keen to avoid. Noriko Ijichi (Osaka City University) will present that fishers have always corresponded with beach governance amongst the globalization of the market economy in the areas they belong. Given a way of life managed by diverse dynamics like ritual, the body, cooperation of labor, and the environment, she is concerned with the possibility of discussing the social structure and methods that developed in her research area.
Noriko Tahara (Shitennoji University) illustrates how people construct their life-world through difficulties in their communities, which are heterogenic and diverse in language and economic activity. People's resources are more likely to affect their living situation, which is affected by national policy and economics. To demonstrate the limitations and possibilities of a community in transition, conflicts between pastoralist and fisher/famer involving a fishing village are discussed.
Each beach management is encompassed with clustering of institutions, economic interests, histories, cultures, and ethnicities. The common practice on the ground will be linked with the sense of legitimacy through the discussion.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
My presentation examines the dynamics of everyday life in waterside areas in Jeju island, South Korea. Based on research performed in this area, it focuses on the meaning of fishing and the manner in which diving women recognize intervention from the outside world.
Paper long abstract:
Amongst the globalization of the market economy, diving women have always corresponded with beach governance in the areas to which they belong. In response to changing demands, diving women have had to adapt the kinds and amount of fish and shells they collect, in addition to the timing and location of the fishery; tools and fishing organizations have been influenced as well. Concerning these points, almost all existing research has concentrated on calculating the extent and level to which local life is globalized in a scientific manner. In a word, such research extracts fishing as an element of life and examines it.
My presentation, however, differs from said research by approaching fishing from the context of everyday life. Given a way of life managed by diverse dynamics like ritual, the body, cooperation of labor, and the environment, this panel is concerned with the possibility of discussing the social structure and methods that developed in this area.
Paper short abstract:
This paper reclaims female agency in African inland fishery based on a study in Lake Malawi. Through an assessment of women’s contributions in the sector in terms of material agency and its efficacy in work on the lake, it seeks to reestablish women’s centrality in an emic notion of fishery.
Paper long abstract:
Apart from a few obvious exceptions as presented in this panel, women in fishery are generally considered to play ancillary roles in post harvest activities such as fish processing and trade. The case applies to African inland fisheries, where women’s presumed lack of primary access to catch and weak negotiation power in a male-dominated sector are thought to subject them to fish-for-sex transactions much problematized in face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The paper seeks to destabilize such gendered stereotypes through a reappraisal of female agency in fishery in northern Lake Malawi.
Lakeside Tonga women’s traditional roles as processers of fish caught by men would seem to place them within the aforementioned stereotype. Despite their absence in actual “ntchito yam’maji (work in water),” however, women have claimed that the fish were originally and rightfully theirs. The claim has been substantiated, at least in part, through women’s material contributions to fishery in ritual and non-ritual terms, which may range from torch fodder to bodily substance. By discussing these contributions in terms of material agency and their efficacy in “work in water,” I attempt to reestablish women’s centrality in an emic notion of fishery.
Paper short abstract:
My presentation illustrates how people construct their life-world through difficulties in their communities, which are heterogenic and diverse in language and economic activity. I will discuss the limitations and possibilities of a community in transition.
Paper long abstract:
Fish and water, the natural resources of Lake Albert in Uganda, attract people from a wide range of areas, for example, fishing people from the West Nile and the DRC, pastoralist from Kasese, refugees from Acholiland and Rwanda. My focus is on a multi-ethnic village located on the east side of the lake.
I will point out that the drastic development of globalization has not changed the mode of living in this community. People's resources are more likely to affect their living situation, which, in turn, is affected by national policy and economics. We could describe the situation as follows: the Alur, people who are peripheral in their socio-economic status become even more peripheral under a neoliberal political regime.
On the other hand, all these people persist in their everyday practices in the hope that they can improve their own lives. All of them are searching for their interests by themselves. It is possible to say the behaviour of searching for their own interests is a possibility to create solidarity of peoples in the community. Several community meetings have been organised by the Local Council and Beach Management Unit, and I would like to suggest such a possible political space, as multi-ethnic people engage with others to reach a mutual consensus. There is the possibility of the setting up of an interface between different ethnic groups to create of collective belonging consciousness.