Gender and social economies of dried fish meeting summaries

Full meeting minutes will be uploaded to the wiki as time permits.

Meeting 1: December 15, 2023 (full notes)

• DFM’s scoping phase has generated substantial insights into the gendered aspects of the social economy of dried fish
• Collective analysis of this wealth of material can help sustain the project’s momentum in the project’s second phase
• We need to work towards identifying a set of guiding analytical points of reference to help bring out the insights of our research
• Simultaneously, research teams need to think about how their findings fit with the emerging conceptualization
• Suggested outputs are first summary collaborative pieces followed by either a special issue or edited volume
• One approach to the summary pieces might be to write a thought piece for Yemaya followed by a literature review that identifies gaps, followed by a substantive rejoinder to the first (building on Madu’s suggestions)

Meeting 2: February 23, 2023 (full notes)

• This meeting was intended to talk about the conceptual basis for DFM's approach to gender in dried fish social economies
• The meeting focused primarily on the theorization of space and gendered work
• Attention was directed at power and gendered public, household, and online spaces (see Kyoko's powerful example of the politics of public-private reproductive space in Thailand)
• Holly suggested that the Gendered Commodity Chains volume by Dunaway could be the basis to deepen our analysis further
• Holly also suggested that we try to identify (three) guiding research questions to focus our attention
• Possibilities (Derek):
  • How are dried fish spaces gendered across the value chain (processing, trading, retailing, consuming, online)?
  • How might relational approaches like feminist materialism, social wellbeing, and intersectionality provide a novel basis for insights into the social economy of dried fish?
  • How best to compare our findings on the gendered social economy of dried fish across our study sites?
  • What does the shape of dried fish value chains look like when households are included as sites of production and reproduction?

Meeting 3: March 29, 2023 (full notes)

• Highlighting the substantial role of women in subsidizing the dried fish informal economy.
• Emphasizing the impact of working spaces’ proximity to home on women’s engagement.
• Comparative analysis of household centrality in petty commodity production across countries.
• Highlighting the variation in dried fish production spaces among different countries.
• Support for the concept of wellbeing with an empowerment pathway.
• Focusing on the duality of formal and informal sectors.
• Recognition of undervaluation of women’s work and international export integration.
• Stressing the connection between women’s labour at the community level and their market relations.
• YouTube recording

Meeting 4: April 26, 2023 (full notes)

• The discussion underscored that women’s involvement in the market is contingent on specific support structures, indicating a significant entry point for intervention and revealing a critical gap in recognizing and addressing the structural barriers restricting women’s participation.
• Stressed the importance of capturing women’s innovative strategies and aspirations, particularly focusing on their entrepreneurial potential and the need to recognize and mainstream these aspects for scholarly exploration.
• Acknowledged the critical need for careful documentation and exploration of women’s engagement within dried fish value chains and highlighted the significance of knowledge sharing and relation-building in this context.
• Nireka Weeratunge emphasized a comprehensive understanding of gender relations, highlighting the importance of space, time, and agency in shaping gender relations, and expressed interest in examining networks, historical relations, and how capitalist relations shape gender relations and agency.
• Sayeed Ferdous stressed the critical evaluation of the narrative of women’s involvement in economic activities, warned about the simplistic linear progression view, highlighting the diversity among women in terms of space, location, religion, and work, and emphasized the importance of capturing these differences in research.
• Tara Nair stressed the significance of examining women’s relationships with the market and institutions and advocated for a critical examination of the belief in entrepreneurship, highlighting hidden inequalities in these arrangements.
• Holly Hapke proposed using life courses and oral history analysis to capture differences in women’s entrepreneurship driven by various life circumstances.

To-do list for next meeting –

·      Formalize your ideas for contributions to the collective output.

·      Begin developing abstracts as assigned homework.

·      Be ready to share your abstracts to facilitate grounded discussion.

• YouTube recording

Meeting 5: December 20, 2023 (full notes)

• Holly emphasized the importance of research questions leading to theoretical approaches. For example, key concepts derive from the feminist commodity chain and material feminist approaches intersect with empirical work across different countries.
• Tara suggested several papers instead of a single synthesis paper, considering the number of broad themes that evolved in the discussion.
• Instead of a pure theory paper, Derek prefers giving energy to the discomfort and diversity that comes up through empirical observation.
• Nireka echoes Derek and emphasizes looking at specificity. Since DFM teams are working in different geographies, we can bring that specificity into the paper and challenge them.  She highlighted first looking into the empirical evidence and then building theory on it. She proposed two conceptual approaches: political ecology and anthropological approaches to space and time (Bourdieu 1990; Low 2000).
• Derek highlighted the need to represent geographies not yet covered, especially Bangladesh, West Bengal, and Myanmar.
• Kyoko shared insights into non-economic influences on dried fish production in Cambodia, emphasizing the impact of ideology, identity, livelihood, risks, and changes in the economy on women’s roles.
• Key concepts came out of the discussions: agency, ideology, wellbeing, modus operandi, time and space, ecology, political ecology, political economy, and materialist feminism.
• The outcome of the discussion was to publish the synthesis paper in a high-level geography journal: Economic Geography or Gender, Place and Culture.