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].

The purpose of this special issue is to strengthen collaborative perspectives on small-scale fisheries’ wellbeing through intersectional, transdisciplinary and participatory approaches. Complementing the wide-ranging scholarship on small-scale fishing in South Asia, this special issue aspires to create a landmark point of reference on the study of small-scale fisheries in South Asia. It will highlight how the contemporary political economy and power relations around intensifying social struggles, which along with socio-economic constraints imposed on fisheries, risk a significant weakening in small-scale fisheries value chains.

We welcome contributions that explore political ecologies of small-scale marine and inland fishing, and associated value chains and consider institutional and policy implications, governance principles, and human rights. A major focus of the special issue is to understand the prospects of ‘intersectional and inter-sectoral knowledge-coproduction’ towards addressing vulnerabilities around small-scale fishing. To this end, we invite joint/multi-authored contributions from academics, policy actors, civic groups and local fisheries institutions that operate at grassroots.  Contributions that offer roadmaps for small-scale fishery-oriented policy studies, towards the usefulness of knowledge co-production in evolving ‘sustainable fishing economies’ and improving fisher livelihoods would be welcome. We are interested in reflections on what ‘rights’ implies for marine and inland fishers, what kind of rights are valued by them while coping with uncertainties, and what range of institutional, structural and policy supports they define as significant towards enhancing their capabilities while mobilizing towards rights. Consistent with the knowledge co-production interest of the special issue, we solicit close reflections on methodologies appropriate to addressing larger questions of justice and sustainability in small scale fisheries governance.

Within the context of the declaration of 2022 as the ‘International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture’ by the United Nations, with international focus on intersections between wellbeing and eradication of poverty in small-scale fisheries, this SI is an attempt to assemble and assert plural voices across multiple (mediating) institutions and actors that are relevant to South Asia.

The themes of submission can be (but not limited to) any of the following in relation to small-scale fisheries and associated value chains in South Asia:

1. Political economic and political ecological analyses
2. Ecological risks and (situated) adaptive practices
3. Culture, identities and ‘small-technologies’ of fishing
4. Blue Economy and Blue Justice
5. Transdisciplinary and inter-sectoral knowledge co-production