Leopold’s Land Ethic in the Sundarbans

Paul, Kalpita Bhar; Baindur, Meera

doi:10.5840/enviroethics201638327

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…With a rate of sea‐level rise higher than the global average (Hazra, Ghosh, Dasgupta & Sen 2002), climate threat has become an overarching framework to understand life in the delta even as this overlooks several other long‐standing risks and everyday vulnerabilities of the region (Bhattacharyya & Mehtta 2020). Residents of the Bengal delta conceptualize climate change quite differently from those in the corridors of power among international development organizations, bureaucrats, and climate scientists, and also express that experience through very distinct vocabularies and emotions (Dewan 2021; see also Paul & Baindur 2016). Nevertheless, the image of climactic catastrophe and ‘anticipatory ruination’ (Paprocki 2019; see also Cons 2018) has allowed the region to attract funds from several international organizations, such as the WWF, the World Bank Group, the International Water Association (IWA), and innumerable others, in order to conserve its biodiversity and defend against the effects of climate change.…”

Section: The Sundarbans: From Being Pathologized To Becoming Pristinementioning

confidence: 99%

Crab antics: the moral and political economy of greed accusations in the submerging Sundarbans delta of India

Mehtta

2021

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The livelihood of crab collecting, practised for generations in the Sundarbans forest of India, has undergone a radical moral makeover in recent years. Largely landless crab fishers are now the subject of frequent public denunciations by local authorities for their supposed greed and reckless endangerment of the entire ecosystem. While greed and its related category of need emerge from a local moral ecology of the region, internationally funded conservation campaigns and recent disruptions in the global crab supply chain reveal how accusations are activated and the means through which they play out amidst pre-existing village hierarchies. This article accounts for the political, economic, and moral shifts that underpin these accusations. In counterpoint, I present the defences of the accused, and explore crab collectors' notions of a sufficient life and the rich moral distinctions they themselves make between greed (lobh), need (aubhav), desire (chahida), and habit (swabhav). I then step back to show the broader political contours that shape the discourse of 'greedy' crab collectors. I argue that both the conservation movement and allied state actors have distorted the material and moral resources intended to combat climate change and other environmental threats by scapegoating the politically disenfranchised: local fishers. Powerful stakeholders, as a result of their own political impotency, are deployed in a game of crab antics that fails to address the underlying environmental catastrophe while displacing the psychic burden of greed onto the poor.Crab antics is behaviour that resembles that of a number of crabs who, having been placed in a barrel, all try to climb out. But as one nears the top, the one below pulls him down in his own effort to climb. Only a particularly strong crab ever climbs out -the rest, in the long run, remain in the same place.

show abstract

Section: The Sundarbans: From Being Pathologized To Becoming Pristinementioning

confidence: 99%

Crab antics: the moral and political economy of greed accusations in the submerging Sundarbans delta of India

Mehtta

2021

Royal Anthropological Inst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Relationships First: Introducing Phenomenological Research Methodology in Hydrosocial Scholarship

Paul

2022

Riverine Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Stakeholders' assessment of feed produced from nutrients recovered from aquaculture waste in an emerging economy

Vu,

Chi

2024

Aquaculture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Leopold’s Land Ethic in the Sundarbans

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Crab antics: the moral and political economy of greed accusations in the submerging Sundarbans delta of India

Crab antics: the moral and political economy of greed accusations in the submerging Sundarbans delta of India

Relationships First: Introducing Phenomenological Research Methodology in Hydrosocial Scholarship

Stakeholders' assessment of feed produced from nutrients recovered from aquaculture waste in an emerging economy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About