Unpacking the life cycle of shrimps: Domestication, industrial dynamics, and hydro-social lives

Keywords: hydro-social life, domestication, industrial dynamics, multi-speices relations, shrimp aquaculture
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 10

Abstract

Due to climate change and saline water intrusion, in the Mekong Delta seawater is increasingly flowing back into land, the balance of fresh and salt water is changing, and humans in the delta are living in amphibious worlds again. From 1995 to 2017, the production of shrimp aquaculture in the Mekong Delta increases from 47,121 to 598,690 ton, which is 12 times growth. This research proposes the concept of hydro-social life to understand how biological life forms and social forms of life are articulated for the construction of shrimp economies. The concept of hydro-sociality has been addressed in water research and urban political ecology in various terms, such as hydro-social metabolism, hydro-social cycle, hydro-social territory, and hydro-social lifeworlds. This research focuses on the segment of hydro-social metabolism that water is entangled with biological, environmental, and social processes. Shrimp aquaculture domesticates shrimps through unpacking the life cycle of shrimp, mimicking their living (aquatic) environments, and producing and reproducing them on a commercial scale. To achieve these goals, shrimp aquaculture spatially and temporally reassembles the life cycle of shrimp and their living environments in the hatchery. With the capital investment, shrimps are multiplied in hatcheries, and the ecological conditions of production are industrialised. Furthermore, shrimp aquaculture draws algae, brine shrimp, pathogen, and other species into the shrimp industry, which stimulates the development of algae, brine shrimp, and shrimp feed industry. This paper contributes to metabolic geographies by analysing relations of water-shrimp-humans-environments in shrimp economies.