ABSTRACT
Muslim boys, and to a lesser extent girls too, play an important role in fishing, in particular if we understand this activity as the totality of the offshore and onshore operations necessary to render a fishing expedition successful. But only in limited, distinct work arrangements are they conceived of as workers. Most often, however tangible the returns from these activities are, what they do has no name. What do these activities boil down to? Why is it that they often seem too mundane to warrant serious concern? In this chapter, as in the following one, I ponder on these questions from the perspective of the empirical data obtained from the field-work in Poomkara, leaving to Chapter 6 the task of broadening my argument and discussing their relevance for Kerala’s economy at large.
