Food, power and agency: revealing local post-harvest fisheries practices to improve food access from small-scale fisheries in coastal Kenya.

Abstract

This article proposes the case of Kenyan coastal fisheries as a potentially crucial reservoir of food-related benefits for the marginalised and those living in poverty, but where a food-centred lens or approach is seldom mainstreamed in local and national governance. Borrowing insights from post-structuralist marine social sciences, this article presents an ethnographic account of grassroots practices in-the-making such as handling, sorting, and allocating fish once caught, and how these practices lead to local categorisations and classifications of fish. This sort of evidence and knowledge around local categorisations and classifications of fish spotlights the importance of considering the post-harvest sector (as opposed to the activity of fishing alone), that is, how the use of catch determines access through micro relations of power and agency. Through the analysis of two different locations of Watamu and Shimoni in terms of the fisheries economy and overall development, the analysis of these categories and classifications highlights the necessity to account for a fairer access and distribution rather than solely production (of fish) that is overly market-oriented.