What Is Decolonization?

What Does It Mean to Decolonize Universities?

A conversation to launch Contingencies: A Journal of Global Pedagogy

Friday, Apr 16, 2021 at 02:00 PM EDT, 7:00 PM BST

Contingencies managing editor Jennifer Zoble will make opening remarks, which will be followed by a conversation on decolonizing the university featuring:

Dr. Priyamvada Gopal
University of Cambridge

Dr. Satya Mohanty
Cornell University

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April 1.  “Long Rivers, Deep Histories.” Hosted by Sunil Amrith and featuring Ruth Mostern, Faisal Hussain, Maya Peterson, and Hieu Phung. 

Rivers connect and divide Asia.  Himalayan sourced rivers provide water for almost half the world’s population, in east, south, central, and southeast Asia, crossing the boundaries of nearly every state in these regions before reaching ocean shores.  The headwaters and delta of the Tigris likewise connect and divide West Asian states.  What do these histories look like in a comparative, connected, and collective perspective?

            Historians have long studied how people adapt to riverine environments, which count among the most important site of early settlements, states, and population growth.  Now we are learning much more about how histories shape rivers and the livelihoods they sustain.  Panelists with expertise across the Asia reflect on new and enduring questions, older and more recent trends in scholarship, and on how the concept of the Anthropocene changes the way we practice history.

March 25. 9:00-10:30am EST

“Himalayan Water Security: An Unfolding Global Challenge,” with David Michel (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), Sophia Kalantzakos (NYU/AD), and Mark Swislocki (NYUAD).

With climate change accelerating, the Himalayan region is experiencing mounting pressure on shared water resources.  A combination of growing water insecurity and fraught regional geopolitics threaten the stability and prosperity of billions of people in Himalayan Asia.  Join us in conversation with David Michel (Senior Researcher, Environment of Peace 2022, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), Sophia Kalantzakos (NYU/NYUAD), and Mark Swislocki (NYUAD).

Here is a link to register for all the NYUADI Global Asia webinars: https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-aC0p9clReSHihGkXCiY-Q

Webinar

“Coastal Development and Coastal Livelihoods,”

Hosted by Vidhya Raveendranathan and featuring the EquiP project (Madras Institute of Development Studies/ French Institute Pondicherry) and R. Sridhar

Abstracts

The Vision of the Blue Economy on the East Coast, S.Sridhar.

The objective of this presentation will be to introduce the audience to the East Coast of India along with some of the key programmes being implemented and proposed to set the tone for discussions ahead. We will begin by briefly describing the various coastal ecologies as well as the fishing communities that inhabit these coasts – from the Kaibartas of Sundarbans to the Paravars of Gulf of Mannar! This would highlight how the livelihood specificities are attuned to the geographic and ecological specificities of the region.

This would be juxtaposed with the various interventions by capital on these coasts – which come from a very different vision and understanding of the coast, including the various components of the Blue Economy from ports, logistics to energy, fisheries and the like through programmes like Sagarmala, Swadesh Darshan, Hydrocarbon Exploration, etc. The current era of Blue Economy would be shown as an extension of a paradigm of capital accumulation on coastal resources, with massive infrastructural and industrial projects as well as a reshaping of the fisheries sectorby global majors with the active enabling of the state.

This would be done by listing out some of the key projects currently being undertaken and being planned along these coasts in the 4 states of West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu[1]. An attempt would also be made to provide a glimpse into some of the key players in these new projects, who are the drivers of capital’s vision for these coasts.

In summary, the presentation will bring into focus the divergence in the visions of capital and those of the fishers and coastal communities who inhabit these coasts – which would be discussed in greater detail through specific cases in subsequent presentations.

Industrializing Cuddalore: The State, Private Capital and the Promises of Development, Ajit Menon and Arun Kumar A. S.

Since the early 1980s, the Tamil Nadu government has earmarked coastal Cuddalore as an industrial corridor. This was set in motion through the establishment of the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) in 1971. In 1984, SIPCOT Phase I was started in Cuddalore; SIPCOT Phase II and Phase III followed thereafter. SIPCOT Cuddalore was initially envisaged as a chemical and pharmaceutical hub, but subsequently was to be part of a larger petrochemical investment region (PCPIR) extending into neighbouring Nagappatinam district as well. More recently, the coastline of Cuddalore has become a preferred destination for investments in energy infrastructure projects, promoted by the Government of India. Part of the industrialization drive has also been the modernization of the Cuddalore port, the transformation of the oceans and coasts as part of the Sagarmala project launched in 2016 and the expansion of aquaculture.  All of this is part of a wider Blue Economy Vision. 

Central to the state’s industrialization drive and the more recent Blue Economy agenda has been the promotion of private capital. The state has promoted private-led investment through enabling policies such as land acquisition and the setting up of special purpose vehicles to promote public private partnerships and/or by diluting coastal zone regulations and environmental impact assessment requirements. Discursively, the state has promoted this agenda by labelling the district as  ‘backward’ and one in need of development.

This presentation will focus on the state’s promotion of private capital led industrialization in Cuddalore. It will highlight the ecological impacts of industrializing the coast in terms of changing marine and coastal ecosystems, enclosure of coastal commons and the changing dynamics of livelihoods. Part of this story is how the state has attempted to ‘manufacture consent’ of local people through the promises of development, be it the provision of jobs or better health and education facilities, the latter often as part of corporate social responsibility initiatives. Finally,  an attempt is made to highlight how fishers and other coastal communities respond.

Frictions Among Fishing Settlements: Two Case Studies from the Coromandel, Bhagat Singh, Nicolas Bautès, Prabhakar Jayaprakash

From the 1980’s and more clearly, during the last three decades, the fast changing landscape of the Coromandel Coast of India has been generating frictions among the fishing settlements which are spread all along the coastline. The combination of State-led initiatives both toward the establishment of industrial complexes and infrastructures of all sizes, and government’s orientations aiming at enhancing fishing resources[2] tend to generate not only local fisher’s oppositions against the State, but also complex situations of frictions among the fishers themselves. These frictions not only involve political stands but tend both to confront positions, ethics and values among fisherfolks, and to weaken the very role of their local institutions.

Two types of frictions will help us illustrate the upheaval of the social and political life of fishing settlements in front of exogenous changes happening in space and in relation to fishing economic activity.

The first type of friction analysed in this papers involves the changing influence of the Ur Panchayat, institution historically in charge of local affairs and of mediating issues both within the fishing settlements and with external parties. Within fishing hamlets, the coastal commons and production relations have been traditionally administered by this local governance structure. However, in the post-colonial period, with the advent of mechanization, fishing of targeted species, expansion of market, coastal industrialization and legislation of parallel governing institutions (village panchayat), the structure and the function of Ur panchayat has been fast changing. The asymmetrical power relation between this local institution, private capital and the state have left the fishing communities struggling to find ways of negotiation and resistance on the one hand, and not being capable of arbitrating increased conflicts within the community over differential access to resources on the other. The State as a regulating authority is also avoiding its duties in the guise of “less government and more governance” to build a business-friendly State. Such problems surface acutely in times of crisis (both man-made and natural). In such context, the State opts for a language of monetary compensation rather than addressing fundamental causes. Added to this is the emergent phenomenon of sections of the community yielding to the lure of promises of development, often couched in employment and minor construction projects such as cyclone shelters, not to mention ways of rent seeking from capital. This further alienates fishing labour, women fish workers and the artisanal fishing communities in most cases. This example would capture the experience of these sections to question the hegemony of this prevalent local governance models and suggest ways to nurture agencies for collective action.

The second friction to be explored in this paper lies at the level of families and at the scale of the neighbouring relations between fishing settlements, where the pressure on productivity, associated with the transformations of their living and working spaces due to infrastructuredevelopment, make it difficult to perpetuate the very routine in which artisanal fishers has been involved since centuries. Such heavy constraints force many of them to adapt and adopt new practices under forced choices in order to secure their livelihood, while others choose to remain within their artisanal way of living out of fishing resources. The priority given by the Tamil Nadu Fisheries Department, under the guidelines of the National Fisheries Policy, to industrial fishing, not only turned the everyday resource of fishers into a commodity, but also created the conditions for them to adopt technics used in industrial fishing, namely ring seine, which tend to generate strong oppositions between fishing communities. If conflicts among fishers over accessing and sharing resource tends to be universal, the coastal villages of Cuddalore are highly concerned by conflicts opposing users and non-users of this technics. The ring seine fishing clearly came into use in the coast of Cuddalore and Nagai districts along with the migration of Sardinela longiceps from the western coast of India. It allows catching this fish species in due numbers, as it has good market value in Kerala and provides high exporting value. While ring seine technology has been banned by the Tamil Nadu government (2003) for its ecological destruction and dwindling of fishery resource, few profitable individuals and villages are maintaining this practice, at the cost of facing the opposition and condemnation from other villages and the Fisheries Department. The government has miserably failed to regulate and prevent the use of this technology even after it was legally banned, in spite of various laws and orders issued in the last ten years. Some fishing villages, which voiced their concerns against mega companies like thermal power plant and chemical industries, are now fully focused on ring seine issues, revealing the very necessity of part of the fishers to adopt such illegal practice due to livelihood concerns.

By deploying these two examples of frictions happening at the level of fishing settlements, this contribution aims at analysing the conditions through which new economic policies, both applied through industrialisation and through rationalisation of fishing, reveals the rather ambiguous or failure of the State to create the conditions of addressing the stakes of a socially and spatially anchored coastal development.

Activism and research: Challenges and Opportunities on the Coramandel Coast, Senthil Babu D.

In this presentation, we will outline the changing forms of political activism on the coast, with the onset of aggressive industrialization. Recounting experiences from the sites of attempted resistance to particular industrialization projects, we will discuss the varieties of engagement that became possible. Transient coalitions, formation of specialized collectives doing rights based advocacy and litigational work, and consolidation and fragmentation of political formations of coastal communities pervade this landscape. Through such experiences have emerged a particular body of action research which has brought renewed attention to coastal commons, spatial rights, forms of entitlements, and limitations of legislative and legal instruments, in the process, forging a body of knowledge of political economy and ecology of the coast. These are embedded in localized activist led experiments to mobilize evidence to demonstrate how injustice is orchestrated, manifest in a language of politics at the local, be it in the context of land acquisition, demands for compensation or fighting pollution. The activist-researcher is then burdened to make her evidence credible in the court room as much as to the local public. It is in this fight for credibility that social science research today could play an active role. Validating evidence has become more political than before and scholarship has to contend with active partisanship. What could be the new modes of meeting such a challenge and what kind of possibilities does such research bring  to the ongoing struggle for justice and dignity are compelling questions we need to collectively reflect upon.

Bio Details

Ajit Menon is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and researches primarily the political ecology of forests and fisheries in south India. His interests include the workings of development and capitalism, how they shape nature and conservation, and the environmental justice implications thereof. He is an Editor of the journal Conservation and Society.

Arun Kumar A.S.is an anthropologist currently working in the EQUIP funded Coastal Transformation and Fisher Wellbeingproject as post–doctoral fellow at the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. He is interested in the political economy of coastal infrastructure and development, coastal commons and local livelihoods. E.mail: arunkumar.as@ifpindia.org.

Bhagat Singh A. is a post-doctoral fellow in the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. He is working among the fishers in the Coromandel coast and interested in tracing the social history of the fisher folk and documenting their traditional knowledge, customary laws and systems of coastal governance.  Email. bhagath.singh@ifpindia.org

Nicolas Bautès is working in the field of urban studies, social and political geography. He is currently Research Fellow at the Department of Social Sciences of the French Institute of Pondicherry (UMIFRE 021 CNRS), India, where he works on the city-makers and on the social memories of artisans, among them potters and fishers. He is coordinating the IFP team involved in the research project Coastal Transformations and Fisher’s wellbeing (FisherCoast, Equip ES/R010404/1). nicolas.bautes@ifpindia.org

Prabhakar Jayaprakash is a doctoral scholar from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. He has been working with the fishers of Pamban Island, Tamil Nadu, for his doctoral thesis. His thesis is grounded in labour history and theories of the frontier. He is a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship in 2015 and the International Research Staff Exchange Scheme in 2016. Email: Prabhakar.jp@gmail.com

Senthil Babu is part of the Coastal People’s Right to Life Movement, a platform of action in the coastal regions of the state of Tamil Nadu which continues to resist spurious models of growth and fake promises not to mention the hypocrisies of project finance as an instrument of accumulation. He is trained as a historian and works at the Department of Social Sciences in the French Institute of Pondicherry. 

R.Sridhar is an independent coastal researcher based out of Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu. He has been working with fishing community organisations assisting them on various campaigns and advocacy initiatives towards reaffirming and safeguarding their rights over coastal and marine commons including the recent ‘People’s Tribunals on the Blue Economy in South and South East Asia’ under the leadership of the National Fishworkers Forum, India. He was previously involved with community initiatives for sustainable farming through groundwater management and better market outreach for their produce in ST dominated regions of Madhya Pradesh. He holds an M.A in Development Studies. Email: sridhar.rao@apu.edu.in

[1]It would not include Kanyakumari district of TN, since it would technically be on the west coast of India.

[2] The more recent of these schemes is the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) which aims to enhance fish production to 220 lakh metric tons by 2024-25 from 137.58 lakh metric tons in 2018-19, at an average annual growth rate of about 9%.

Taming the Shore and taming mobile coastal labour in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth Madras

 Much of the existing historiography on archiving the multifarious histories of mobility in the Indian Ocean have privileged the study of the lascar, dock labour and the indenture migrant as constituting objects of maritime labour. In thinking about littoral labour in colonial Madras, this talk moves away from the deep sea proletariat to documenting the amphibious and contingent histories of coastal communities who served as vital channels of transport and communication for colonial state formation and empire building in South India. In the absence of a natural harbor in Madras, the colonial state in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was dependent on the hard labour of a motley group of fishermen to transport essential supplies from the ships to the shore. The fluid boundaries between land and sea and the anomalous juridical status of the beach enabled the coastal communities to pilfer and land the precious cargo at strategic points without getting impounded by the port officials. As the port attracted increased shipping traffic in the nineteenth century, multiple channels of pilferage and smuggling via cheaply manufactured masulah boats threatened to unsettle the colonial rule of law. Coastal local labour resisted the bureaucratic and jurisdictional logics of a commercial economic space constructed around labor discipline and contractual obligations mediated by legal jurisprudence and jurisdictions. Given that shore lines were underwritten by regimes of illegality and border crossings, this talk focuses on how the colonial state embarked on a project to design the urban coastline in Madras through property making, pier building and policing of labour.  

The Interwoven Globe at the tip of India

Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 was a beautiful exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 2013, exploring “the international transmittal of [textile] design from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century.” Like the fishermen who hauled those textiles from shore to ship, the weavers, dyers, and designers who produced that cloth are now largely forgotten. They lived in coastal regions of monsoon Asia where people now imagine their past locked into the nation; but a wider overseas world also thrived on the coast. Coastal environments have distinctive histories that reflect deep entanglements with the spatial trends that we now call globalization. This presentation concerns textile producers at the tip of India, who were dynamic local actors in the global economy, well into the nineteenth century, but disappeared from local memory. This paper participates in a research collaboration exploring coastal histories in monsoon Asia that energized the original heartland of the world textile economy and sustained port city foundations for early imperial capitalism. 

Sea coasts around the world are now wrapped securely in national states and their separate national histories, but they also have connected histories as homelands of globalization, as productive spaces, woven together by networks of oceanic mobility, which continue to nurture global capitalism. The world’s most productive coastal environments had been connected from ancient times by sailors across the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and South China Sea, but in the centuries running through and following the Mongol Empire, overland and overseas mobility expanded rapidly; this dramatically increased productive powers in coastal environments around the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, where commercial capital fed by local communities enriched Europeans who would then go on to imagine themselves as inventors of capitalism. This Webinar focuses on coastal environments around the Bay of Bengal, where local societies sustained militant European merchant companies. This is the start of a Coastal Histories Collaboration, and we invite others to share research on other coastal environments.

Vidhya Raveendranathan explains how fishing communities became the labor force and transportation infrastructure enabling global deep-sea merchant networks to attach themselves to the land to reap profits from the labor of inland weaving communities along the Tami coast in southeast India.

Marina Kaneti explains how social environments evolved on the coast over centuries to generate supportive host communities for sailors and merchants from overseas, becoming in the process vibrant inter-cultural spaces where women played critical roles in forging connectivity among locals and foreigners. 

David Ludden explains how post-Mongol centuries of inland mobility traveling north to south down the Indian peninsula produced ever more complex and productive agrarian economies, generated cloth that fed world markets and enriched Dutch and English merchants, and eventually yielded the taxes that fed the growth of the British Empire.           

Gendering the ports: mapping hospitality and care in the Indian Ocean World

Marina Kaneti’s talk interrogates the nature of interactions at maritime ports as well as the broader system of circulation and exchange. She explains how such interactions were contingent on practices and traditions of hospitality and care; and shows how decisions on the inclusion, exclusion and care of strangers depended on the consideration, consent and labor of women.  The talk also maps out the gradual restructuring of gender dynamics in maritime ports and at sea, showing how the careful restructuring of social relations by various European colonial administrations transformed the system of interactions that had propelled pre-colonial maritime connections and exchanges. With the arrival and spread of European control over multiple maritime ports, the multifaceted practices of hospitality and care were (re)conceptualized and (mis)construed as signs of licentious and wanton sexual intercourse, therefore unraveling the social standing, economic prospects, and autonomous decision-making of women. The European colonial monopoly over the maritime trade in the Indian Ocean was therefore not just a function of war and imposition of colonial control over the land, but was also a direct product of the transformation of a networked system of hospitality, care, and social reproduction where women had played a primary role. 

This post is only for participants in Frank Perlin’s book discussion, Feb 5, 2021.

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and Frank can then respond. You can also email Frank: fperlin@orange.fr