Locating effective commons and community in Maharashtra State's Fisheries, India

This thesis views commons and resource management through a lens of plurality. Through discussions of plural identities, diverse economies and multiple legal systems, this work seeks to challenge the bounds of commons thinking, pushing past static understandings of people, social networks, the environment and resources. Principles created by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues have largely defined the commons management discourse, but my work follows that of St Martin, McCay and Jentoft in realizing the limits to a systems approach to commons research. The commons institution that I study does not fit Ostrom's criteria, and therefore could be assumed to be a failure, except that I have found evidence of key outcomes of successful commons institutions. These include management based on goals of social equity and ecological sustainability, as well as clear examples of the existence of community. Understanding this so-called 'anomalous' institution as successful requires a re- examination of commons theory. Thus my work uses post structural thinking, iiinfluenced by Jean-Luc Nancy and JK Gibson-Graham, to develop a more grounded theory approach to understanding commons management. My research is based on the case of marine fisheries across two districts of the state of Maharashtra in India. Mismanagement of Indian fisheries could have ripple effects on global seafood availability because India, along with China, contributes 50% of the world’s seafood exports to Europe and the United States. Several studies have called for greater state intervention in fisheries (e.g Devaraj and Vivekanandan, 1999), although state fisheries legislation is plagued by large gaps in enforcement and lack of compliance (Bavinck and Johnson, 2008; Karnad et al., 2014). My PhD research describes a alternate solution, by finding evidence of continuing fisheries management by non state actors. I examine the emergence of commons through fishing issues and conflicts that prompted village discussions and rule-making. I ask how and why people participate in these associations, and whether there is evidence, in these associations, of the type of ethical relationships that could be called community. I probe people's motivation to participate in these communities despite economic and political pressure to follow individualistic, neoliberal practices. In particular I focus on the creation of 'traditional fishermen', a term that is used by fishermen to signify a particular ethical formation that comes into being through practices unrelated to the technology that they use to fish, and to class or caste. I find that successful commons management can exist in culturally heterogeneous, market-linked, technologically advanced societies, which are typically assumed to operate using the logic of neoliberal economics. I identify processes of territoriality, group and consensus based decision making, social iiidependence and ostracism as some of the key processes that allow commons and community to come into being. The degree of sophistication and independence from state law with which these institutions operate allows them to be thought of as alternate legal systems. This allows decision making within the local context, in the local language with locally effective punishment, such as social ostracism. From the perspective of government authorities, allowing local bodies to deal with conflicts reduces the requirement of authorities' intervention in issues that often cannot be officially heard due to a lack of appropriate state laws. Thus the continued existence of alternate legal systems is seen as a win-win from both perspectives. Finally, I study challenges to commons management in the form of class distinctions within the fishing community.