Fissures of a Blue Revolution: The Ramponkars’ Response to Mechanised Fishing in Goa

Social Change ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ganesha Somayaji ◽  
Joanna P. Coelho

This article is a critique of the project modernity from the vantage point of an indigenous occupational community of Goa which for centuries has been pursuing sustainable livelihood practices. It revolves around the traditional occupation of fishing in the context of modernist threat it faces. Informed by the theoretical insights provided by Frank’s theory of development of underdevelopment, this article argues that our understanding of environmental change as a social process is inextricably linked with the expansion and contradiction of the world economic system. While delineating Frank’s theory of underdevelopment as theoretical support, it captures the indigenous knowledge systems of the fishing community of Goa, highlighting its ecological sensitivity. It then addresses the changes that have affected this community in the wake of enforced modernisation and development. It specifically focuses on the social movements carried out by the traditional fishermen of Goa in an attempt to protect their traditional fishing practices.

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 339
Author(s):  
Louise I. Lynch-O’Brien ◽  
Wayne A. Babchuk ◽  
Jenny M. Dauer ◽  
Tiffany Heng-Moss ◽  
Doug Golick

Citizen science is known for increasing the geographic, spatial, and temporal scale from which scientists can gather data. It is championed for its potential to provide experiential learning opportunities to the public. Documentation of educational outcomes and benefits for citizen scientists continues to grow. This study proposes an added benefit of these collaborations: the transference of program impacts to individuals outside of the program. The experiences of fifteen citizen scientists in entomology citizen science programs were analyzed using a constructivist grounded theory methodology. We propose the substantive-level theory of transference to describe the social process by which the educational and attitudinal impacts intended by program leaders for the program participants are filtered by citizen scientists and transferred to others. This process involves individual and external phases, each with associated actions. Transference occurred in participants who had maintained a long-term interest in nature, joined a citizen science program, shared science knowledge and experiences, acquired an expert role to others, and influenced change in others. Transference has implications for how citizen scientists are perceived by professional communities, understanding of the broader impacts and contributions of citizen science to wicked problems, program evaluation, and the design of these programs as informal science education opportunities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
Matthew DelSesto

This article explores the social process of criminal justice reform, from Howard Belding Gill’s 1927 appointment as the first superintendent of the Norfolk Prison Colony to his dramatic State House hearing and dismissal in 1934. In order to understand the social and spatial design of Norfolk’s “model prison community,” this article reviews Gills’ tenure as superintendent through administrative documents, newspaper reports, and his writings on criminal justice reform. Particular attention is given to the relationship between correctional administration and public consciousness. Concluding insights are offered on the possible lessons from Norfolk Prison Colony for contemporary reform efforts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239386172110146
Author(s):  
Prama Mukhopadhyay

Internal migration constitutes a major source of steady flow of population in India, and reports published by the World Economic Forum (WEF),1 2017 state that interstate migration in the country has doubled during 2001–2011, compared to the previous decade.2 In developing countries, such migration is often considered to be an effective way for income diversification for the economically marginalised sections of the society, even though its effect on ‘human development’ is oft debated. This article would engage with this debate and bring out how migration from the Indian part of the Sundarbans to other parts of the country is not only changing the demography of the region but is also having a strong impact on the local perception and attachment towards the deltaic landscape. By bringing in ethnographic details from a village in the Indian Sundarbans, which was predominately inhabited by the fishing community earlier, this article would bring out how traditional occupations like fishing are slowly losing their popularity in the face of the lure of out-migration, as the very identity of the ‘indigenous’ Sundarban fisher folks—who were once rightfully considered to be the true conservator of the forests—is changing. From there, this article would engage with the broader debate of rethinking whether migration can be considered as a positive indicator of development in such ecologically fragile areas like the Sundarban deltas, which used to indeed have a distinct economic, social and cultural life of its own.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond J Higham

Abstract The friendship paradox states that, on average, our friends have more friends than we do. In network terms, the average degree over the nodes can never exceed the average degree over the neighbours of nodes. This effect, which is a classic example of sampling bias, has attracted much attention in the social science and network science literature, with variations and extensions of the paradox being defined, tested and interpreted. Here, we show that a version of the paradox holds rigorously for eigenvector centrality: on average, our friends are more important than us. We then consider general matrix-function centrality, including Katz centrality, and give sufficient conditions for the paradox to hold. We also discuss which results can be generalized to the cases of directed and weighted edges. In this way, we add theoretical support for a field that has largely been evolving through empirical testing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Michaeline A Crichlow ◽  
Dirk Philipsen

This special issue composed of essays that brainstorm the triadic relationship between Covid-19, Race and the Markets, addresses the fundamentals of a world economic system that embeds market values within social and cultural lifeways. It penetrates deep into the insecurities and inequalities that have endured for several centuries, through liberalism for sure, and compounded ineluctably into these contemporary times. Market fundamentalism is thoroughly complicit with biopolitical sovereignty-its racializing socioeconomic projects, cheapens life given its obsessive focus on high growth, by any means necessary. If such precarity seemed normal even opaque to those privileged enough to reap the largess of capitalism and its political correlates, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic with its infliction of sickness and death has exposed the social and economic dehiscence undergirding wealth in the U.S. especially, and the world at large. The essays remind us of these fissures, offering ways to unthink this devastating spiral of growth, and embrace an unadulterated care centered system; one that offers a more open and relational approach to life with the planet. Care, then becomes the pursuit of a re-existence without domination, and the general toxicity that has accompanied a regimen of high growth. The contributors to this volume, join the growing global appeal to turn back from this disaster, and rethink how we relate to ourselves, to our neighbors here and abroad, and to the non-humans in order to dwell harmoniously within socionature.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 259-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Brownlie

Responding to Charles Tilly's call to map how individuals and groups encounter big structures or large processes, this article is concerned with experiences of one particular social process: the move towards emotional openess. Drawing on a mixed methods study of emotions talk, the article questions this ‘en bloc’ narrative of social change ‘in our own time’ (Tilly, 1984). In particular, through analysis of survey data, it highlights the life-stage and cohort effects shaping the experiences of those in their middle years, ‘the age of grief’; and through indepth analysis of qualitative interviews, it embeds these effects in particular local contexts and relationships and within a particular historical time, the time of talk. In doing so, it concludes that while Tilly is right to suggest stories about social change do social work, he underestimates the extent to which they also offer crucial insight in to the nature of the social, particularly through the reckoning of relationships and their emotional legacies.


Author(s):  
Annabelle Lukin

AbstractWithin the framework of Halliday's text and context relations, with key extensions of this model by Hasan, this paper presents an analysis of a TV news report by Australia's public broadcaster (the ABC) concerning the 2003 “Coalition” invasion of Iraq, in order to present a thesis about the context-construing work done by the register (i.e., functional variety) known as “news.” Sociologists have argued that news is a symbolic commodity, in the business of purveying forms of consciousness. How does news do this? And what, more specifically, can be said about the social process which news texts realize? This paper considers these questions, drawing on the analysis of the texture of the ABC TV news report, based on Hasan's “cohesive harmony” schema. The findings from the analysis are the basis on which I argue the news item relied for its continuity on the derived and abstract notion of “the Iraq war,” while failing to present a coherent picture of the actualized violence perpetrated by the “Coalition” as it rolled out its invasion of Iraq.


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