DFM WG1 Themes and outputs

Note
Group members: This is a draft list of suggested themes and outputs for DFM Working Group 1: Social Economy. You are welcome to add ideas here, or leave general comments or questions on the "Discussion" page.

Themes of interest

The following themes were identified at the WG1 meeting of December 16, 2020.

• feminist ecology, intersectionality, political ecology
• intra-household dynamics
• Migration (as affecting production and consumption of dried fish)
• Child labour, forced labour, exploitation
• Relational well-being (defining?)
• Value creation at each node in value chains -- socio-economic dimensions
• Gender-based labour, pay gaps, harassment
• Visualization as methodology; mapping, creative expression, visual displays, and collaborative authorship
• Distributive justice
• Changes in value chains (e.g., technological changes) and how they are experienced by actors within them
• Sensoriality of dried fish

Key questions grouped by theme

This list is based on questions extracted from the presentations of DFM WG1 Country team priorities, grouped here into thematic categories.

How dried fish processing contributes to the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people

This is a more descriptive project, and we may already have a good sense of the answers based on existing data.

• How much dried fish do the poor and vulnerable produce and eat?
• How does dried fish production/processing/consumption fit within other livelihood options / activities?
• How secure are dried fish-based livelihoods?

Political economy

• Possible tensions between nutritional, economic livelihoods/development, environmental, and social priorities (well-being, security, or sustainability). Potentially consider this in the context of the SDGs and national development plans -- intersection with WG3. Focus on how some actors/priorities are more powerful than others.
• Competition between dried fish and fish meal (animal feed) value chains.
• Competition between SSF and LSF.
• Migrant workers vs. locals.
• Competition over access to new or existing water bodies and other resources.
• What these tensions tell us about the implications of power (political relations) on priorities.

Social relations (gender and kinship) in changing dried fish economies

• Explore intersectionality of gender, kinship, ethnicity, generation, etc.
• Focus on women's labour in the context of broader shifts from household to commercialized labour; address women's change in status as they lose control of household economies.
• More broadly, explore how economic changes are connected to changes in social networks, organization, and identities. Solidarities, mutual aid. But also competition between groups.

Taste

• Cultural preferences, views of dried fish
• How taste for dried fish changes or depends on context (e.g., as an emergency food).
• Connect dietary preference to nutrition: there may be stigma against dried fish, leading to consumption of less nutritious or less secure (imported) foods. \
• Look at domestic production but also consumer demand.

Work and exploitation

• How exploitative labour relates to gender, ethnicity, migration, etc.
• Perhaps a rights-based approach to dried fish value chains. Look at "blue economy" and related discourses.
• Bonded labour and credit.

Adaptation

• How do fishers, processors, traders, and retailers adapt to environmental, technological, economic, and social change?
• Describe and evaluate the significance of new practices -- e.g., migration, dietary change, use of new fishing sites, different forms of fish processing.
• Product/market diversification and innovation (esp. retail, community-based, small-scale enterprises), both demand and supply driven.

COVID-19 impacts

Potentially a dimension of the "adaptation" theme above?

• Impacts of COVID-19 on dried fish value chains
• Methodological implications for research in a state of emergency

Cultural heritage

• Dried fish in literature, religion, ceremony, etc.
• Culinary tradition as heritage.
• Impacts of migration and social change on the trade and consumption of dried fish.
• Efforts to preserve/safeguard and promote culinary heritage.
• Sensorial dimensions.

Outputs

• conference panel
• video screening at MARE Conference
• ebooks (popular writing?)
• Research article linking value chains and social well-being
• Book or special issue synthesizing social economies of dried fish (based on country-level literature reviews?)
• Publishable versions of Scoping studies
• Collection of ethnographic studies
• Set of theoretical description documents (on wiki), as point of reference but also as support for future theoretical papers on dried fish.