Doctoral Dissertation Research: Legal Regulatory Regimes and Small-Scale Business Productivity

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Small-scale businesses have long been viewed as crucial to community livelihoods. They constitute the largest block of employers, are significant in creating new jobs in growth industries, and are critical for diversifying the local economy. Artisanal production in particular has been identified as an important channel for economic revitalization in areas afflicted by increased unemployment and declines in the agricultural and industrial sectors. But they face challenges when entering larger regional and global markets. Existing research on artisanal economies has long debated whether artisanal production can remain separate from processes of mass production as their popularity increases in global markets. It is not clear what influence legal property certifications, such as a geographic indication (GI) and origin trademarks, are having in expanding and protecting market access for new businesses. This research project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, explores what impact introductory legal regulatory regimes have on the productive capacity of small-scale enterprises. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, findings will be disseminated to aid organizations that explore and manage the causes, consequences, and complexities of intellectual and cultural property. Aditi Halbe, under the supervision of Dr. Akhil Gupta of the University of California, Los Angeles, will explore the impact of legal property certifications on artisanal production. This research will be conducted in Kachchh district of India's third largest industrialized state, Gujarat. Home to many artisan communities that make traditional crafts as their primary means of livelihood, Kachchh experienced a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in 2001 that devastated community livelihoods. Following the earthquake, development organizations, social enterprises, and government programs helped reengage and expand markets for traditional crafts, reaffirming the importance of artisanal production. Kachchh is thus uniquely situated to understanding how daily practices of artisanal production intersect with larger development agendas, attuned to livelihood concerns in the face of current, social, ecological and political uncertainties. Focusing on collaborations between artisans and designers to innovate products for international markets, the research will examine how artisans negotiate the demands of global consumers through adjustments to everyday processes of traditional craft production. Methods include traditional ethnographic data collection techniques such as participant observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and oral histories with artisan producers and stakeholders, development workers, and for-profit organizations. Attending to the authentication and regulation of these products through legal cultural property designations like origin trademarks and geographic indication, this research will analyze the institutional mechanisms by which economic development strategies are enacted upon small-scale artisanal producers. The research findings will address how artisanal producers and consumers envision and negotiate their relationship within the global market.