Resisting the blue revolution: Contending coalitions surrounding industrial shrimp farming

Human Organization, Spring 2000 by Stonich, Susan C, Bailey, Conner

Current efforts to develop a theory of political ecology center around understanding how the environmental arena reflects the structured relations of power and inequality in contemporary societies and in establishing the articulations between "local" and "globalizing" processes. These include a concern with the relationship between political ecology, social movements, and civil society, and with the integration of discursive approaches that address diversity in perceptions and meanings of environmental problems (Peet and Watts 1996). Especially relevant to the research reported here is the work of the growing number of scholars concerned with varieties of resistance (e.g., Fox and Stern 1997).

Previously, we have used a political ecological approach to examine various dimensions of human and environmental consequences of industrial shrimp farming, including the emergence of local resistance to the industry (Bailey 1988; Bailey et al. 1996; Bailey and Skladany 1991; Stonich 1991, 1995, 1996; Stonich, Bort, and Ovares 1997). This article expands these analyses by focusing on the formation and dynamics of global resistance and industry backlash. While most political ecological analysis has concentrated on situating a specific locale in its regional, national, and international context, this study attempts to establish linkages among many local contexts into a transnational/global phenomenon. The conclusions may have wider application to other recent examples of global resistance to the mobility and expansion of capital.

Research Methods

This article reports on one aspect of a larger project. The overall project integrates ethnographic, rapid assessment, survey research, and spatial research methods. A number of different qualitative and quantitative data were collected, including semistructured individual and focus-group interviews; electronic surveys administered over the Internet; mailed and faxed questionnaires; tape-recorded sessions at workshops and meetings; texts from World Wide Web sites, email listservers, newsgroups, newsletters, and fieldnotes; and environmental and spatial data. The synthesis presented in this article is based primarily on the results of fundamental ethnographic research (supplemented by electronic surveys) carried out in a systematic and rigorous manner. The research does, however, significantly expand the notion of an anthropological research "community"-in this case a predominantly virtual community whose members engage in essential, face-to-face encounters on a regular but infrequent basis. The following research methods were of most use in preparing this article.

Focus-group and in-depth semistructured interviews with NGO leaders and industry personnel were conducted during the annual meeting and trade show of the World Aquaculture Society (WAS) and subsequent NGO strategy meeting in Seattle in February 1997. These interviews were supplemented by additional interviews with NGO leaders, government officials, and academics during fieldwork conducted in India, Vietnam, and Thailand from July through September 1997. These and other interviews, as well as textual/archival materials, were analyzed following the systematic theme approach (Peterson et al. 1994).