Quilting the ‘Brown Hole’ in Environmental History: Muddy Materialities of Bengal

Raktima Ghosh is a doctoral student in social ecological research at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Her research interests span across political ecology, coastal studies and environmental governance in contexts of dried fish and small-scale fisheries. As a part of the Dried Fish Matters (DFM) global partnership project, her research follows ethnographic, visual and participatory approaches to study dried fish social economy in deltaic West Bengal, India. Broadly, her doctoral work explores the ways in which the social economy in dried fish is shaped by relationships and values, emerging within socio-spatial interactions along the value chain.

Pritwinath Ghosh is a Research Fellow at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He was engaged in an IUCN-funded project which mapped and documented ecosystem services in the chars (river islands) of Bengal. His Ph.D. research focuses on lives, livelihoods, and worldviews of choruas inhabiting the volatile river islands dotting the upper stretch of the Lower Ganga Basin. He is using a wide range of archives and ethnographic methods to document adaptive practices prevalent in chars.