Visualizing social economies

Notes for the visualization sub-group of WG1

MARE Conference proposal

Visualizing social economies: Dried Fish Stories from Asia

Presenters: Nireka Weeratunge, Tina Chen, Gayathri Lokuge, Eric Thrift, ...

A 20-minute montage of photos, video, soundscapes, and narration that seeks to convey the diversity entailed by social economies of dried fish in Asia.

Short commentary on the Visualizing social economies montage.

Presenter: Sara Ahmed

Video

Draft presented at the MARE Conference on June 30, 2021

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoKgWIvwWk0

Inputs requested

All country teams

Please provide feedback on the overall visualization presentation, especially what you consider important to be included in the Introduction and Conclusion slides. Keep in mind that these will be restricted to one slide each. The slides on Taste and Smell will be accompanied by narration/audio based on a discussion among visualization group members on Friday. Also please provide any final changes that you would like on your country contributions – each team has 2.5 minutes of video or slides (average of 4 slides with text).

We also need the names of all team members who have contributed to this presentation to be added to the list of contributors at the end.

Thailand and Cambodia teams

Photo credits

Bangladesh and Western India teams

Photo credits and any accompanying audios that you would like to be inserted, such as location or fishing-related music or sounds

Kerala, West Bengal and Sri Lanka teams

Any audio that you would like to insert into the video or slides, such as location or fishing-related music or sounds

If any music or location sounds are used from sources on the internet, copyright needs to be obtained. Alternatively, team members or their friends with musical talent can record some background music to be added to slides.

List of contributions

• Gujarat: Bombay Duck PowerPoint presentation from Tara – revised presentation (updated 2021-05-26), uploaded to OneDrive. Production largely in Maharashtra; “Western India” focus. Potentially to be presented as a self-playing slideshow with animations/transitions.
• Kerala: Cooking video from Nikita, with three recipes. Perhaps add more context?
• Sri Lanka: PowerPoint on fish curry, etc.; linking value chain, place, culture, tradition, with smell and taste. Centred on a recipe located in the diaspora, obtained with permission; Dilanthi interviewed fisherman elder (oral history). This is a collaborative effort (Dilanthi, Madu, Anupama). To add: better photos and recipes – lockdown, so no further data collection.
• West Bengal: PowerPoint (from April; not presented)
• Bangladesh: Videos and images from fieldwork; coordinated by Mahmud. Also in lockdown.
• Thailand: Kapi story from Ratana - see the PowerPoint and 2-minute video of someone making kapi paste. No narration yet, only the sound of pounding mortar; the goal is to put text on the video and describe how it connects to Thai culture and cuisine. Not “how to make” kapi, so much as a reflection on the importance of culture, identity, etc. The final shot will be eating, as condiment. Kapi has a nice smell -- note the challenge of conveying smell and taste!
• Cambodia: (Gayathri) starting to put some pictures together; narrative on prahoc. Taste, smell; centrality of prahoc to Khmer culture. Traditional methods have changed, having become more mechanized, e.g., crushing by machine. Pictures and videos of production process. Storyboard, not video.
• Karnataka: have some photographs, recipes. (Priya) Indigenous recipes that are falling out of use; dried fish consumed less commonly than fresh fish.

Other teams

• Andhra Pradesh
• Telangana
• Mizoram & Manipur
• Myanmar

Commentary and framing

SARA: Connections to taste, sound, culture, music, identity. How to weave all this together? Possibility of creating a virtual cookbook, with embedded clips, using Issu. Presentation could be presented as flipping through a cookbook, rather than PowerPoint.

Coming back to the question of the role of (virtual) museums: where do living repositories go? How do we keep them for future generations? What happens to the materials after the conference – schools, for example? How do we reach out to younger generations?

Some key ideas evoked by the presentations:

• Passing on of recipes to new generations – do they like this, or do they prefer burgers and fries?
• Strong visualization around women; are men involved in markets as well, or is the usual dichotomy of domestic vs market at play?
• Mechanizations
• Slow Food vs fast food. Talk about sustainability of fishing, but not much about dried fish within the Slow Food movement.

NIREKA: Best not to have a preface. Interpretation and contextualization should come at the end. Better to keep an element of surprise, rather than analyze before they see it.

TINA: Colonial knowledge framings are a central theme. We have local specificities, but also an overarching theme. Try to bring these together; not view individual presentations voyeuristically, as views of the “authentic local”. PowerPoint slide decks may play as video essays; others are actual videos; there is good diversity.

RATANA: We have been working iteratively, starting with Nireka’s storyboard. It would be good to have a whole narrative that ties the different pieces together. It this becomes part of a standalone production (e.g., YouTube video), we should think about piecing things together editorially. Some stories could be shorter or longer. 2-3 minutes for each might work. Can be a longer version and a shorter version.

Guiding approaches

Cultural dimensions of dried fish

Themes that might capture the non-material value of dried fish (NIREKA):

1. Myth and ritual, e.g., Murugan and Utappan: we have a story about the god who doesn’t like dried fish; but contrast the god in Kerala who likes dried fish.
2. The taste of dried fish.
3. The smell of dried fish – we have literature on what it smells like.
4. Heritage: countries have unique dried fish products, that are considered part of their cultural heritage.
5. Diaspora: nostalgia for dried fish; how it is consumed and accessed overseas; for example Ben’s pictures of shops in Bangladesh that Communicate all this through pictures.

Other points and suggestions:

• DILANTHI: Sri Lanka team has been collecting recipes
• TASLIMA: Bangladesh also has stories and recipes collected
• TARA: The visual presentation can emphasize that this project approaches culture as a form of value, moving beyond standard economic perspectives
• NIREKA: Given the timeframe, we may wish to avoid over-conceptualizing or working toward a finished product

Methodological reflection

TINA: We should keep in mind the importance of methodological reflection, resisting the impulse to think about images as “documentary information”. We need to think about how we are actors in knowledge creation.

Knowledge in and around Asia often privileges the documentary format. We may begin to play on that: provide context (who the people and places are), but also comment on the relationship between viewer and image. We can reach out to those who work in social justice, creativity, etc. in Asia. A goal can be to confront what we see, and problematize it by encouraging critical perspectives; think about what the viewer might see and what else they should think about.

Options considered

These are options considered at the initial meeting of the sub-group.

• Participatory video and play: The video itself can be a less refined, more playful type of process (Ratana)
• Maybe five 3 or 3½ -minute presentations, one per theme: this could be more doable than a 20-minute video. The videos can foreground different activities, can look very different. (Tina)
• Idea of “story maps” (Nireka): “An advantage with story maps is that they are many layered, so the viewers can focus on the broad messages or delve into as much complexity as they wish to, by scrolling down a pane or into different panes.”
• We should engage the Research Teams in the process, and have them think about these themes and types of evidence in new ways (Derek)
• Use the concept of “framing” – how the visual “frames” research questions, methodology, and collection of visual materials. What topics are captured in the visual frame, in the analytic frame? How do we frame the idea of “value” regarding dried fish? (Tina)
• Bangladesh team has some “found footage” produced by tourists / amateur videographers.

Comment from Nireka

Since our last meeting and as the group concerns ‘visualization’, I have been thinking of how to visualize the ideas that have emerged in our various discussions so far and have come up with a sort of preliminary storyboard, which I am attaching for discussion at our meeting on the 8th. I have outlined this incipient storyboard in the form of two overarching themes - smell and taste – and woven the other themes discussed previously around these. Please note that this is a sketch of some initial ideas for types of narrative, stories and photographs that could be considered, and not a proposed draft for the MARE output. The substance is merely examples of potential stories from the Sri Lankan team, as well as some contributions by Ben on Myanmar and Bangladesh. Decisions will need to be made on whether we want more elaborated/complex types of stories or concise vignettes, on the coherence of how it all hangs together, and what kind of media (photos, videos, sound recordings, etc.) would be available to us.

This initial sketch of stories is based on the following considerations:

• The MARE ‘visualization’ output is seen as a distinct type of presentation, providing a break to the audience from the other more cerebral contributions to the round table. It is suggested as something creative, engaging and fun (as emphasized by Ratana at the last meeting), based on a narrative approach that avoids social science jargon to the extent possible, while providing food for thought (literally and metaphorically).
• Since the timeframe until MARE is short, I think it is important to be realistic and avoid burdening the country teams who are at various stages of completing the scoping and/or moving on to next steps. Considering this output as an on-going process (similar to preliminary findings from the scoping) would enable teams to contribute whatever material in hand, as most I would guess have inadequate time, resources and/or skills to gather new material in the field, especially in the context of COVID conditions.
• A vignette approach under a few overarching themes, I think, would support inclusivity, with all country teams having the opportunity to contribute one or more stories that have so far emerged from their fieldwork or literature reviews, enhanced visually/audibly though photos, videos or sound recordings (either their own or gathered on-line). These vignettes could be seen as building blocks for elaborating some of these themes on the long-term.

From the perspective of the Sri Lankan team, we have several stories and visual material that would contribute to a photo essay (photos of good quality would not necessarily be our own), and which could potentially include a sound recording. We do not have any videos of adequate quality or the practical skills for producing quality videos at this time.

Reference resources

• Draft PowerPoint storyboard