Page last updated 10/22/2005
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Civil Society Foundation
The domain of ‘civil society’ has emerged as one of the most significant spheres of fashioning collective action in modern democratic polities. Considered, by definition, to be a domain ‘outside’ the purview of the state-bureaucratic apparatus and political parties, today civil society organizations are considered integral to the proper functioning of the democratic process and promises of collective upliftment that a democratic nation-state puts forth for its citizenry.
This organisation, Civil Society Foundation (henceforth, CSF), identifies explicitly with the ideal of the concept from which it draws its name. In that, CSF commits itself to create and provide a non-state, interactive space for collective life through its activities. Focusing primarily on the fishing sommunities in the coastal districts of Tamilnadu, it seeks to form new collectivities, forge linkages, and foster dialogue between existing ones both within and across the fisher-folk that are spatially dispersed along the coast-line of the aforementioned region. CSF believes that this line of action has become necessary particularly in the aftermath of the December tsunami, which brutally exposed the vulnerability of the fishing communities to the vagaries of nature and betrayed the civil and social weaknesses therein to cope with the crises that followed. CSF, through field research, intends to collect and collate raw data, differentiated in terms of gender and economic status, and identify the stumbling blocks that appeared in the context of the tsunami induced crises. In this, particular attention will be paid to practical knowledge pertaining to the primary occupation of community - fishing, and modern formal education that has become an imperative to deal with any crisis concerning the community. The outstanding objective will be to find a working balance between the knowledge-capital that already exists within the fishing community, that is ‘artisanal knowledge,’ transmitted through extant traditions and customs, and modern, technical know-how that can only be accessed through formal education. CSF firmly believes that for the collective betterment of the fishing community one form of knowledge cannot be privileged over the other. Artisanal knowledge and that acquired through formal education must reinforce each other. Also, this balance can never be reached if discrimination along gender lines and economic status persist in the manner that they do today.
