Biosocial Security: Social Science Transformations of Biosecurity (BIOSSCI)
The WorldFish component of the BIOSSCI project aims to advance a transformative, context-specific understanding of biosecurity within Bangladesh’s inland aquaculture systems, with a focus on improving rural livelihoods, addressing gendered and social inequalities, and strengthening food and protein security. As outlined in the proposal, WorldFish collaborates closely with the Principal Investigator and research team to examine how biosecurity is currently practiced across diverse aquaculture settings, how these practices shape knowledge and outcomes, and how they can be re-imagined to better fit the social and environmental realities of Bangladesh’s farming communities The goal is to generate rich, mixed-method empirical evidence—through workshops, farm surveys, qualitative interviews, participatory rural appraisal techniques, and immersive ethnographic work—to document how farmers, hatchery workers, researchers, commercial actors, and officials understand and enact biosecurity in practice. This includes analysing the drivers of practice, the tensions between formal institutional expectations and everyday farming realities, and the effects of gender, economic precarity, and environmental variations (such as rising salinity or rapid intensification) on biosecurity behaviours WorldFish seeks to embed this evidence into inclusive knowledge-production processes, strengthening in-country social science capacity and ensuring that marginalized groups—particularly small-scale farmers and women—are represented in the creation of new biosecurity framings. The project ultimately aims to co-develop improved, contextually grounded approaches to biosecurity by engaging farmers and stakeholders through final workshops that revisit findings and explore alternatives for safer, more equitable and sustainable aquaculture systems. In doing so, WorldFish contributes to the broader BIOSSCI ambition of re-conceptualizing bio-social security by demonstrating how social, material and ecological factors can be aligned to support healthier farming systems and strengthen national food security in Bangladesh
1. Generate grounded empirical accounts of biosecurity practices in Bangladesh’s inland aquaculture systems. 2. Analyse key tensions, inequalities and contradictions in biosecurity adoption and policy implementation 3. Co-develop and assess context-appropriate, socially responsive pathways for strengthening biosecurity.
Bangladesh’s inland aquaculture sector is undergoing rapid intensification, environmental change and increasing livelihood pressures, yet biosecurity practices remain uneven, fragmented and poorly aligned with the realities of small- and medium-scale producers. The proposal highlights that farmers, hatchery workers, extension agents and commercial actors operate within complex social, material and institutional environments that shape how biosecurity is interpreted and applied in practice. Rising salinity, climatic stress, financial constraints, market dependencies and labour vulnerabilities all influence disease-management decisions and create gaps between formal biosecurity expectations and what farmers can feasibly implement A major problem identified in the proposal is the mismatch between policy frameworks and real-world aquaculture practice. While national and institutional guidelines emphasise ideal standards, farmers rely on experiential knowledge, informal networks and improvisation, often due to limited resources, inconsistent advice or conflicting incentives. This results in variable chemical use, inconsistent pond hygiene practices, and limited adoption of risk-reduction measures. The proposal also notes that power relationships, gendered roles and economic inequalities significantly shape access to knowledge, labour, inputs and decision-making, yet these social dimensions remain under-researched in current biosecurity strategies Another core need identified is for high-quality, mixed-method empirical evidence on how biosecurity is understood, negotiated and enacted across different regions and farming systems. Existing studies are either technical or policy-driven and fail to capture the lived experiences, constraints and innovations of farmers and workers. The proposal emphasises the need for ethnography, qualitative inquiry, and participatory methods to illuminate hidden tensions, institutional contradictions and the diverse ways stakeholders navigate disease risks in daily practice Therefore, the WorldFish component responds to a clear need for context-sensitive, socially grounded insights that can support more realistic, equitable and actionable approaches to aquaculture biosecurity in Bangladesh.
