Abstract

This article applies an (Urban) Political Ecology lens to an urban fishing community in India to understand how people are affected by coastal transformations involving intertwined socio-economic and biophysical processes. Despite urbanization proceeding swiftly across most of the world, the literature on Small-Scale Fisheries has only partially included urbanization processes in its analysis. This is unfortunate, we argue, since urban fisheries can enrich the field by providing insights into complex settings of emerging economic opportunity colliding with traditional livelihoods and community belonging. In such settings rapid biophysical shifts, including those of built nature, become intimately entangled with social transformations under intensifying, politically contested, economic activities. To capture these dynamics, we construct a framework consisting of three theoretical concepts from Political Ecology and Urban Political Ecology; the assemblage of the social and the natural, contested urban landscapes, and identity politics. We conclude that theoretical insights from (Urban) Political Ecology can help Small-Scale Fisheries research understand the inter-relatedness of human and biophysical environments in co-constituting contested coastal transformations. This is since fishing lives and livelihoods do not only depend on the ability to access and control marine resources, but also on the possibilities to stake claims over dynamic coastal spaces, under the influence of wider political and economic transitions like those generated by urbanisation.

Keywords

Urban Political Ecology; Small-Scale Fisheries; Assemblage; Contested urban landscape; Identity politics; Coastal transformations

Published in

Geoforum
2020, Volume: 108, pages: 237-245

SLU Authors

• Kadfak, Alin

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Oskarsson, Patrik

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development


UKÄ Subject classification

Human Geography


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.11.008

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/102691