Locating effective commons and community in Maharashtra State's Fisheries, India
Creators: name: Karnad, Divya
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2017

description: This thesis views commons and resource management through a lens of plurality.  Through discussions of plural identities, diverse economies and multiple legal  systems, this work seeks to challenge the bounds of commons thinking, pushing past  static understandings of people, social networks, the environment and resources.  Principles created by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues have largely defined the commons  management discourse, but my work follows that of St Martin, McCay and Jentoft in  realizing the limits to a systems approach to commons research. The commons  institution that I study does not fit Ostrom's criteria, and therefore could be assumed  to be a failure, except that I have found evidence of key outcomes of successful  commons institutions. These include management based on goals of social equity and  ecological sustainability, as well as clear examples of the existence of community.  Understanding this so-called 'anomalous' institution as successful requires a re-  examination of commons theory. Thus my work uses post structural thinking,  iiinfluenced by Jean-Luc Nancy and JK Gibson-Graham, to develop a more grounded  theory approach to understanding commons management.  My research is based on the case of marine fisheries across two districts of the  state of Maharashtra in India. Mismanagement of Indian fisheries could have ripple  effects on global seafood availability because India, along with China, contributes  50% of the world’s seafood exports to Europe and the United States. Several studies  have called for greater state intervention in fisheries (e.g Devaraj and Vivekanandan,  1999), although state fisheries legislation is plagued by large gaps in enforcement and  lack of compliance (Bavinck and Johnson, 2008; Karnad et al., 2014). My PhD  research describes a alternate solution, by finding evidence of continuing fisheries  management by non state actors.  I examine the emergence of commons through fishing issues and conflicts that  prompted village discussions and rule-making. I ask how and why people participate  in these associations, and whether there is evidence, in these associations, of the type  of ethical relationships that could be called community. I probe people's motivation to  participate in these communities despite economic and political pressure to follow  individualistic, neoliberal practices. In particular I focus on the creation of 'traditional  fishermen', a term that is used by fishermen to signify a particular ethical formation  that comes into being through practices unrelated to the technology that they use to  fish, and to class or caste. I find that successful commons management can exist in  culturally heterogeneous, market-linked, technologically advanced societies, which  are typically assumed to operate using the logic of neoliberal economics. I identify  processes of territoriality, group and consensus based decision making, social  iiidependence and ostracism as some of the key processes that allow commons and  community to come into being. The degree of sophistication and independence from  state law with which these institutions operate allows them to be thought of as  alternate legal systems. This allows decision making within the local context, in the  local language with locally effective punishment, such as social ostracism. From the  perspective of government authorities, allowing local bodies to deal with conflicts  reduces the requirement of authorities' intervention in issues that often cannot be  officially heard due to a lack of appropriate state laws. Thus the continued existence  of alternate legal systems is seen as a win-win from both perspectives. Finally, I study  challenges to commons management in the form of class distinctions within the  fishing community.