Paper short abstract:

While unraveling how environment as a matter of concern obtains multiple values, this paper interrogates whether port-centric contestations can be framed as political-ecological critique drawing on pragmatic sociological rendering of ‘critique’ hinged on socioculturally mediated ‘orders of worth’.

Paper long abstract:

Just as our planetary future is turning more ‘oceanic’ in the wake of the Anthropocene, there has been a simultaneous stride to reap economic benefits out of the oceanic ecosystems through a plethora of technocapitalist ventures clubbed together as ‘blue economy’. The geography of South Asia being attuned with the oceanic and littoral ecologies, the impetus for ‘blue growth’ has been pushed for with much fanfare in this region. Building of new ports as well as expansion and modernization of existing ones have featured prominently as one of the mainstays for this proliferating regime of blue growth - for instance, India’s mega-infrastructure project “Sagarmala” has been launched with the catchy objective of ‘port-led prosperity’. However, the growing disquietude materialized in the form of resistance and contestations against the globalized and corporatized port-making has been unsettling the dominant imaginary of port-qua-prosperity. Fixing analytical gaze on the many visions and volitions, tactics and multiple imaginaries that drive the unfolding of resistance and/or negotiations around port-making, this paper interrogates whether anti-port resistance and port-centric contestations can be framed as political-ecological critique drawing on pragmatic sociological rendering of ‘critique’ that hinges on socioculturally mediated ‘orders of worth’. Instead of viewing the instances of mobilization against infrastructuring of ports as discrete cases, the paper seeks to unravel the ‘modes of valuation’ and evaluative repertoires for understanding how the environment as a matter of concern obtains multiple values in the different evaluative registers of actors involved in the making and unmaking of port.