Littoral Marginality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7474632 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amrita Dasgupta (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 423-437 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00219118-12258305 |
| OpenAlex | W7127097895 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
The word “margin” has many meanings. This article considers geographical, gendered, and occupational marginalities and their intersection in deltaic Bengal, theorizing the idea of “littoral marginalities.” The East India Company extended its influence via trade; hence, with time the ports of Bengal grew important. This article draws support from land revenue maps, oral history, and institutional archives to contextualize the growth of sexual economies around the port of Canning, once situated in the geographical margins of the Sundarbans, India, the world's only mangrove tiger land. Thus, it examines how the history of littoral sexual culture, nourished by far-flung maritime trade routes related to the empire's tendency to generate revenue on its “wasteland” frontiers. But contempt for the sex workers’ trade—their use of their bodies to satisfy the sailors of the empire—has led to them being mostly erased from memory with the passage of time
BENGAL · Contempt · Intersection (aeronautics · Oral history · Port (circuit theory · Revenue · Situated · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Sex work and related issues
The Spoils of Partition
Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia
The Sole Spokesman
Boats in a Storm
A Revenue History of the Sundarbans
Notes on the theory of the actor-network
Rule of Experts
A Harbor That Never Was
Seeing Like the Sea
Resources, Agency, Achievements
Scientific Empire and Imperial Science
After the Individual in Society
On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications, Plus More Than a Few Complications
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |