Exclusion and Counter‐exclusion: The Struggle over Shrimp Farming in a Coastal Village in Bangladesh

Abstract

This article explores the processes whereby control over land and water is exercised in the context of commercial shrimp cultivation in coastal Bangladesh. The authors draw on the insight that the exercise of control over resources implies both inclusion for some and exclusion for others, and that shifting the boundary between the two involves the deployment of four interacting ‘powers of exclusion’ — regulation, the market, force and legitimation — the effectiveness of which depends on specific historical conjunctures. The article uses a case study of a village in Khulna District to explore: (a) the processes by which poor farmers were excluded from their land by large shrimp farmers; (b) the ways in which villagers experienced the changes in land use and social relations associated with the shrimp boom; and (c) the conjunction of internal and external factors that enabled smallholders to collectively mobilize to reverse their exclusion from the land. Understanding these messy and contingent processes of exclusion and counter‐exclusion helps to inform strategies aimed at securing the property rights and livelihoods of the rural poor.

Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh

“…In response, they offer political solutions focused on autonomous local agricultural production and greater equality among agrarian producers. These movements have focused on a return from shrimp cultivation back to traditional rice agriculture, a transition with significant implications for the ecologies and populations of rural communities (Paprocki and Cons 2014;Afroz, Cramb, and Grünbühel 2017). Their mobilization stands in stark contrast to the antipolitics of adaptation that proposes the death of the peasantry as a foreordained consequence of an impending climate crisis.…”

The climate change of your desires: Climate migration and imaginaries of urban and rural climate futures

“…For several decades, social movements led by farmers in this coastal region have mobilized to defend continued agricultural production in their villages, resisting a transition toward commercial shrimp aquaculture and the agrarian dispossessions it entails (Adnan 2013;Paprocki and Huq 2018). Today these movements continue to gain traction, not only supporting continued rice production, but also championing a return to rice agriculture in communities that had earlier transitioned to shrimp (Afroz, Cramb, and Grünbühel 2017;Paprocki 2019). Their alternative visions of the persistence of agrarian futures contrast sharply with visions and discourses of rural decline.…”

Farmers' perceptions of and responses to environmental change in southwest coastal Bangladesh

“…In addition, to validate farmers' perceptions of recent climate change, climate data from the Khulna Climate Station were analysed. While acknowledging that farmers' perceptions and choices are shaped by the broader political economy of resource access, social vulnerability and decision‐making at local, regional and national levels (Rubin ; Eriksen et al ; Afroz et al , ), this study focuses mainly on the technical and managerial adaptation strategies pursued by farmers within their existing goals and circumstances. Our contribution to the politics of adaptation is thus the more limited but still crucial one of giving voice to vulnerable farmers.…”