Artisanal Communities Research Articles

The "Other" Culture: Craft Societies and Widow Remarriage in Early Modern India

By juxtaposing the deployment of sati, an elitist custom that dominates historical scholarship, with the coexisting custom of widow remarriage (nata) practiced by vast majorities in early modern, precolonial India, this article draws attention to multiculturalism, the multiplicity of patriarchal manifestations, and the politics of difference in the South Asian context. It is an attempt to write a social history of gender relations from below, based on archival materials on craft communities from a region and culture that current literature has identified almost exclusively with Rajput ruling elites. Examining how widow remarriage was conceptualized and practiced in artisanal communities, it highlights a facet of "Indian Culture" that has remained invisible. Through an analysis of hitherto untapped archival documents from the Jodhpur Sanad Parwana Bahis in the Rajasthan Archives, this article engages with and interrogates the uniform typifications of a singular "Indian Culture" and the position of women therein.

Artisans, the state, and the politics of wajabi in eighteenth-century Jodhpur

Recent historiographical approaches have recognised the multi-centred nature of power in pre-colonial state systems, and have explored the networks between the state and already dominant or emerging groups that occupied the upper echelons of society. Shifting the gaze from the study of elitist discourses to state-artisan relations, this article has argued for the expansion of the constitutive scope of state formation by including lower strata like the artisanate and its politics. While doing so, it has emphasised the meanings of wajabi or ‘legitimate practices’, and their deployment both by artisanal communities and the eighteenth-century state agencies to ensure the observation of normative conduct in intra-caste relations, and in their interactions with one another. Adherence to this ideology, however, could not always dispel the stresses in their relationship because alternate readings of the notion by artisans and the state, and negotiations between the two over the ‘legitimate’ course of action, resulted in contestations and redefinitions of the concept of wajabi.

Gender, fisheries and development

Abstract Although West African fisheries have been the subject of considerable study, little attention has paid to the role of gender in the development process and, more specifically, the work done by women in the overall management of fisheries. Lack of attention to the gender dimension of fisheries management can result in policy interventions missing their target of creating sustainable livelihoods at the community level. There is little doubt that fishing-dependent communities have a vital role to play in the overall development process of many coastal West African States, but without a complete understanding of the complexity of gender roles, the goal of sustainable livelihoods is unlikely to be achieved. In a bid to improve knowledge about gender roles in fishing communities, and to provide policy makers with some guidance as to where interventions might be most useful, a workshop was held in Cotonou, Benin (West Africa) in December 2003. This paper provides a brief introduction to the theory on gender and fisheries development and then goes on to report the findings of the workshop. The most significant conclusion is that policy interventions which help strengthen institutional capacity in coastal artisanal communities would have the greatest over all impact. A move toward collecting gender and fisheries disaggregated data would also help expand existing knowledge about what are often marginal and isolated economic sectors.

Sustainable development and traditional knowledge: a case study in a Brazilian artisanal fishermen's community

Sustainable development and traditional knowledge: a case study in a Brazilian artisanal fishermen's community