DFM Newsletter

This internal newsletter, prepared for members of the Dried Fish Matters Partnership, lists recent updates from our project calendar, Zotero publications library, blog, and wiki.

Upcoming events

To add DFM events to your personal calendar application (e.g., Outlook), import our iCalendar file. To submit a new event, please send the details and/or a calendar invitation to dried.fish.matters@umanitoba.ca.

2023-11-11. Remembrance Day

Commemoration of Armistice

From our blog

Our blog is managed by DFM Central and includes news about reports and events that are of interest to an audience within the DFM network and beyond. Blog posts are also shared to our Twitter account.

The Passing of Dr. Mostafa Hossain

Dr. Mostafa Ali Reza Hossain – or Ranu, as he was known to many friends – was born on 16th March, 1967 in the district of Chapainawabgonj in Northwest Bangladesh. Mostafa completed a BSc in Fisheries from Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) in 1990, and an MSc and PhD from the University of Stirling, UK, in […]

Recently listed DFM research outputs

All DFM reports and publications – including newsletters and Working Papers – are currently stored in the Dried Fish Matters Zotero group library. See the Zotero library help page on our wiki for instructions on how to get started.

Items added to the collection *DFM Reports and publications are automatically shared to our project bibliography. Please add your publications and other research outputs there.

1. [thesis] Aung, Myo Zaw. 2023. “Gender Analysis of Micro and Small-Scale Dried Fish Business in Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar.” Thailand: Asian Institute of Technology.
2. [thesis] Sokmoly, Uon. 2023. “GENDER ANALYSIS OF THE CHANGES IN PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION PATTERNS OF FERMENTED FISH PASTE (PRAHOK): A CASE STUDY OF WOMEN PRAHOK MAKERS AROUND TONLE SAP LAKE, CAMBODIA.” Thailand: Asian Institute of Technology.
3. [thesis] Zu, A Myint. 2023. “ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF TRIPLE CRISES ON THE MEN AND WOMEN OWNED SMALL-SCALE DRIED FISH PRODUCTIONS: A CASE STUDY IN AYEYARWADY REGION, MYANMAR.” Thailand: Asian Institute of Technology.
4. [journalArticle] Hasan, Jabed, Evanan Yesmin Dristy, Anjumanara, Pronoy Mondal, Md. Sazedul Hoque, Kizar Ahmed Sumon, Mostafa Ali Reza Hossain, and Md Shahjahan. 2023. “Dried Fish More Prone to Microplastics Contamination over Fresh Fish - Higher Potential of Trophic Transfer to Human Body.” Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2023.114510. Hasan et al. - 2023 - Dried fish more prone to microplastics contaminati.pdf
5. [journalArticle] Sivramkrishna, Sashi, and Amalendu Jyotishi. 2023. “Dammed Waterways and a Colonial Legacy: Statutory Law-Making in the Conservancy of Indian Fisheries, 1867-1897.” Global Environment 16: 559–93. https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2023.160305. Sivramkrishna and Jyotishi - 2023 - Dammed Waterways and a Colonial Legacy Statutory .pdf

Featured wiki pages

The DFM Wiki is the main platform for project working documents. Working papers, reference documents, etc. are available here for internal discussion and, where appropriate, contributions from people outside the project. To create an account and edit documents on the wiki, see https://driedfishmatters.org/wiki/Help:Getting_started.

Currently there are 430 pages and 1,049 media files in the DFM wiki, with a total of 4,732 edits by 57 users. The pages below were most recently added to the "Featured" category on the DFM wiki; older pages are listed at https://driedfishmatters.org/wiki/Category:Featured. To see recently added media (images, videos, and other media), see https://driedfishmatters.org/wiki/Special:NewFiles.

4WSFC planning

This is a planning document for the two Dried Fish Matters sessions at the 4th World Small-Scale Fisheries Congress (4WSFC).

4WSFC roundtables proposal

This is the DFM proposal for the 4WSFC Asia-Pacific. The title of the session is "Collaborative process in research on dried fish in Asia: social economy, nutrition, and ‘improvement’".

About "Dried Fish Matters"

For many of the most vulnerable peoples of the South and Southeast Asia region, dried fish is of vital nutritional, economic, social, and cultural importance. Despite this, the diverse and complex economy that produces and distributes dried fish, and the threats to it, are all but invisible in research and policy. The Dried Fish Matters project brings an interdisciplinary team to address this major oversight.

The scale and significance of dried fish production, trade and consumption is rarely acknowledged and poorly understood … in part because of a tendency for fisheries research to focus on fishers, thereby overlooking actors and processes in mid- and downstream value chain segments. —Ben Belton, Mostafa A.R. Hossain, and Shakuntala H. Thilsted The project director, and other key members of the project team, have been major contributors to the small but growing literature on the dried fish economy of South and Southeast Asia.

About stacked value chains

The model of Stacked Value Chains represents a new way to look at the social economy of dried fish. Value chains are networks of actors whose activities enable the production and distribution of goods or services to consumers. All value chain actors use assets to transform inputs into goods or services (outputs). These become inputs when used by other actors further ‘downstream’ in the value chain. For example, fishers use boats and nets (assets) and labor, fuel, ice and credit (inputs), to ‘make’ an output (raw fish).

E-book

Building on the success of the three Dried Fish Matters roundtables at the MARE 2021 "People and the Sea" Conference, we are preparing a DFM e-book that will explore the socio-cultural value of dried fish. The e-book will be formally released on 18 June, 2022 to coincide with global observance of Sustainable Gastronomy Day. We intend this e-book to celebrate the role of dried fish as one that is deeply "gastronomical" – in the sense of being embedded in cultural life and foodways – while also vitally linked to sustainable development. The publication will include contributions that describe dried fish products and value chains, share the stories and experiences of people who produce and sell dried fish, and reflect on our efforts to find new ways to learn and to communicate knowledge about dried fish. Individual contributions will describe preliminary results, reflect on the research process, invite readers to contemplate, present field notes or raw data, or convey the original works of research participants and collaborators.

Maritime Studies special issue

This is a draft proposal for a Special Issue of Maritime Studies, to be edited by Amrita Sen and Jenia Mukherjee, on the topic Social and political ecologies of small-scale fishing in South Asia: co-producing knowledge through transdisciplinary research and stakeholder engagement. Small-scale fishers in South Asia both marine and inland, are underrepresented and undervalued in policy agendas and discourses. Structural challenges encumbering their livelihoods include environmental risks, increase in intensive industrial and commercial fishing, habitat loss, displacements and weaker agencies associated with limited subsistence-based assets . An increasing emphasis on the ‘Blue Economy’, as many studies have recently begun to point out, further undervalues and threatens the foundations of small-scale fishing, threatening basic considerations of food security and human rights [1][2]. In many rapidly growing coastal cities in the South, as a recent (urban) political ecology framing has shown, biophysical shifts in built nature have reconfigured images of how small-scale fishing communities can stake claims to newer and even more dynamic coastal spaces that are under the influence of economic and political transformations [3].

Publications

This page lists the research outputs of the Dried Fish Matters project. It is updated regularly from the *DFM Reports and publications collection in our Zotero library.

Research team midterm activity summaries

These activity summaries were provided by the DFM Research Teams as part of the project Mid-Term Reporting exercise in October 2021. Although all of our research teams experienced setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our teams were successful at conducting research through online channels, in partnership with third-party organizations, or drawing on secondary sources.

SSHRC Midterm report feedback

These comments were shared by SSHRC in response to our Midterm Report. The contents of the report are included on the wiki page Strategic planning and were presented at the Plenary meeting on 2021-12-09. The feedback is strongly positive overall, while noting the possibility of improvement in several areas: increasing the number of academic publications, updating research activities on the project website, and increasing partner contributions.

Stage two planning

This document lists some planning suggestions the starting point of which was the outcome of discussions at the Plenary meeting of 2022-01-25. We have set up an associated discussion Page where we are trying to collect feedback on (1) routine communications strategies, and (2) planned outputs for the remainder of the project. In particular, we are looking for ideas and preferences for brown bag meetings, webinars, or in-person meetings; suggestions for pilot projects; ideas about how to involve students in the second half of the project; and thoughts about potential collaborative writing outputs, such as the proposed edited volume or collaborative monograph. Please press the "Comment" button or one of the "reply" links to join the discussion.

Strategic planning

This document, which incorporates material from the DFM Milestone and Midterm Reports submitted to SSHRC, outlines our progress to date and outlines strategic directions for the second phase of the Dried Fish Matters project.

WOW panel transcript

This transcript is taken from the DFM panel discussion at the Small-Scale Fisheries Open House held during World Ocean Week in June 2021, facilitated by Ben Belton. The discussion follows a presentation of the video What Is the “Value” in Dried Fish Value Chains? [1], and features comments on value and governance in the dried fish sector from Tara Nair, Sisir Pradhan, Gayathri Lokuge, Mostafa Hossain, Anupama Adikari, and Shalika Wickrama. The text has been edited for clarity.

Help:Images

For help on uploading images please see the page Help:Image_uploader.

Category:Cox's Bazar workshop 2019

Materials from the DFM Scoping research planning and training workshop, held in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh in February 2019. This collection includes photographs taken during pilot fieldwork at the Nazirar Tek fish drying yards.

Category:DFYWA

Photographs and other research materials produced by DFYWA.

Category:Derek's Travels

This category includes a collection of over 100 images taken from the Travels into Several Familiar Nations of South and Southeast Asia by Professor Derek S. Johnson (2019). Images in the collection are georeferenced but lack descriptions from the author. Many of the images depict diverse and sundry dried or fermented fish products that captured the interest of the photographer. Some images, notably within the series beginning with figure 89, depict Co-Investigators and Collaborators of the Dried Fish Matters project in various poses.

Category:Infographics

This category contains infographics produced by, or with support from, the Dried Fish Matters project. Please circulate widely!

Category:Mizoram and Manipur

Resources related to Mizoram and Manipur. This category includes photographs submitted by VSS from their field research in the Northeastern states of India, featuring geo-tagged images of dried fish processors, sellers, markets, and products.

Category:Myanmar

Research from DFM Myanmar. This category contains photographs, primarily taken by Ben Belton, representing different dried fish products from Myanmar as well as consumption graphs. These items were uploaded by Wae Win as part of work on the Myanmar Dried Fish Consumption Survey.

Credits

This research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.