Development, Marginality, and ‘Contested Space’ in South India

Abstract

This paper explores the disenchantment of development in the social life of the fishers in the coastal areas of Kerala. The essay has two parts. By following a political ecology perspective, the first part analyzes the historical and structural factors that condition coastal villages as a 'contested space' of disenchantment. The second part demonstrates how the disenchantment of development leads to various forms of routine conflict and everyday crisis in the life of coastal communities. Though the entire coastal belt of the state has been referred to in the study, examples are gleaned mostly from instances in the coastal belts of Thiruvananthapuram, the district under which the most of the field study for this paper has been carried out, with the Vizhinjam fishing village area being the focal point.