EMPTYING THE SEA OF WEALTH: GLOBALISATION AND THE GUJARAT FISHERY, 1950 TO 1999

ABSTRACT EMPTYING THE SEA OF WEALTH: GLOBALISATION AND THE GUJARAT FISHERY Derek Stephen Johnson Advisor: University of Guelph 2002 Dr. Marta Rohatynskyj Between the 1950s and the late 1990s the Gujarat marine fishery underwent a dramatic period of expansion as a result of its integration with the global market for fish and its exposure to new ideas and technologies of production. Until the 1970s the primary source of innovation in the fishery was the state government of Gujarat. After that point, the fishers of Gujarat, led by an emerging dominant entrepreneurial elite in the major urban areas, assumed control of the direction of change. Growth in the fishery had an immense impact on the economic and social position of Gujarat’s fishers and transformed the entire coastal region. By the early 1990s, Gujarat had become the most important producer of fish products of all Indian states and a significant source of supply for international markets. At the end of the 1990s, however, seemingly inexorable growth of the fishery halted and reversed under the weight of too much capacity and sudden declines in global fish prices. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a frame of reference by which the pattern of growth and ensuing crisis in the Gujarat fishery may be understood in relation to broader global trends as a first step in the conceptualisation of strategies to redress the current situation. The thesis takes the position that the complexity and rapidity of change in the Gujarat fishery requires a theoretical and methodological approach that mirrors those dynamic conditions even if it can only aspire to partially represent them. A dialectical epistemology best meets this goal by providing a way to link fundamental capacities for human thought and action with the broader conditions of global change. For the specific purposes of this thesis, a dialectical approach to globalisation clarifies a process of change where ‘global’ forces of capitalism and modernity were reconfigured in locally distinctive ways. The coastal fishing village of Dhamlej serves as the key site for the examination of that process. A dialectical approach also provided the basis for the multi-scale ethnographic methodology through which the data for the thesis were gathered and acts as the starting point for the recommendations with which the thesis concludes.

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