Abstract
Dried fish products play an important role in the diets of fish consumers and in the livelihoods of actors in fisheries value chains throughout Africa and Asia. In Bangladesh, a large proportion of marine and freshwater fish landings are processed by drying. The scale and significance of dried fish production, trade and consumption is rarely acknowledged and poorly understood, however, in part because of a tendency for fisheries research to focus on fishers, thereby overlooking actors and processes in mid- and downstream value chain segments. Adopting social wellbeing as an analytical framework, this chapter explores the material conditions faced by labourers engaged in drying fish in Bangladesh, and the ways in which their subjective experiences and objective circumstances are meditated by and constituted through a range of social relations. Case studies are presented from three field sites, where laborers with very different social origins are employed in fish drying under a diverse mix of relations of production, resulting in widely variable but frequently negative social wellbeing outcomes for the women and men involved. The case studies reveal how institutions and identities that constitute important components of social wellbeing for fishers may also be implicated in the exploitation of subordinate groups of labour.
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Notes
- 1.
Data for 56 types of fish were analyzed. Only the 10 most important in terms of consumption are presented. The dataset can be accessed at: http://www.ifpri.org/dataset/bangladesh-integrated-household-survey-bihs-2011-2012
- 2.
Further analysis of the dataset indicated that consumption of dried fish products was unevenly geographically distributed. Consumption levels of more than 1000 g (dry weight)/capita/annum were found in Sylhet and Chittagong Divisions to the east, while intakes in the northern Divisions of Dhaka and Rangpur averaged around 800 g/capita/annum. Much lower levels of consumption were found to the west and south in Rajshahi, Barisal, and Khulna Divisions, the latter with a consumption of just 11 g/capita/annum. These differences reflect strong local cultural preferences, the historical origins of which are unclear.
- 3.
The book Slaves for a season: Bonded child labour in the dried fish industry (Blanchet et al. 2006) is a notable exception.
- 4.
This list is probably not exhaustive, so some commercial coastal and inland fish drying may occur in locations not reported here. Household based drying of small quantities of fish for subsistence is also thought to occur widely, particularly in inland areas, but this was not investigated.
- 5.
Following Reardon et al. (2012), the dried fish value chain was divided into three segments for analytical purposes. In the context discussed here, ‘upstream’ refers to all supply chains providing raw materials (most importantly fresh fish) and other inputs and services that support activities in the ‘midstream’ segment. ‘Midstream’ includes all activities related to the transformation of fresh fish into processed product, and its distribution as far as primary wholesale markets. ‘Downstream’ includes all activities that facilitate trade in and marketing of finished product, from primary wholesale to consumer.
- 6.
Some of the dried fish producers interviewed operated fishing boats, but utilized most of their catch for drying. They are recorded as dried fish producers in Table 10.1.
- 7.
Bangladesh is a net importer of dried fish, sourcing significant quantities of dried marine product from neighbouring India and Myanmar, particularly outside the periods of domestic peak production.
- 8.
The Rohingya are an ethnic group of South Asian origin who practise Islam and inhabit Rakhine State, in the west of Buddhist majority Myanmar. They have been rendered stateless and subjected to state-led persecution and communal violence since the mid-twentieth century, resulting in several mass migrations to Muslim majority Bangladesh.
- 9.
USD 1 was worth approximately BDT 80 during the period when fieldwork took place.
- 10.
In Bengal, fishing was traditionally a profession dominated by specific low-caste Hindu groups. However, fishing and fish trading were also the hereditary professions of several groups of Muslims, for whom caste-like characteristics in terms of the social segregation to which they were subject were applied (Barman 2008). More recently, the entry of Muslims from outside these hereditary groups into fishing businesses has increased. Recent entrants are not subject to the same degree of stigma as those who inherited their profession. However, as the text above indicates, this persists to some degree for those whose forebears were professional fishers by birth.
- 11.
Fish drying also occurs at four sites on a nearby island sometimes also considered part of Dublar Char, but these are of lesser importance, and were not visited in this study.
- 12.
This difference may be due to declining numbers of fish drying operations on the island since 2010, as a result of piracy.
- 13.
The protection afforded from piracy is not total. In 2010, a bohaddar was captured in a mass raid on his fishing camp at Meher Ali, and held at ransom for USD 70,000. The extremity of this event caused a reduction in fishing activity in subsequent years.
- 14.
A marine fish, phaisa, is increasingly used in shidol production as a substitute for the freshwater puti, which is becoming scarcer and more expensive. The lower value shidol produced using phaisa is consumed almost exclusively in the impoverished Northeast of the country.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter is a contribution to the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH). The authors wish to thank Mr. Mofizur Rahman for his contributions to the fieldwork and preparation of Fig.10.2, and Ms. Naveen Abedin for her assistance with preparing Fig. 10.1. They are also very grateful to Dr. Thérèse Blanchet for taking time to read an earlier draft.
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Belton, B., Hossain, M.A.R., Thilsted, S.H. (2018). Labour, Identity and Wellbeing in Bangladesh’s Dried Fish Value Chains. In: Johnson, D., Acott, T., Stacey, N., Urquhart, J. (eds) Social Wellbeing and the Values of Small-scale Fisheries. MARE Publication Series, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60750-4_10
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