Environmental Studies from India

The ecological crisis at a planetary scale has heightened our awareness of the geological impact of human activities and the possibility of human species extinction. Within the heightened consciousness of hubris and vulnerability encoded in the Anthropocene discourse, how do we comprehend the human place in nature and analyse the multiple scales of time, space, and capital movements that characterize specific socio-natures?Addressing the methodological challenge of studying metabolic relations, flows, and processes across these multiple scales, Environmental Studies from India brings together distinguished scholars who explore such questions from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Empirical studies grounded in specific contexts are employed to develop a perspective suited to a society saturated with Anthropocene discourses.
The volume is structured around five interwoven themes: reframing space, rethinking the region; commons and commodification; environmental subjectivities and socio-natures; metabolic social ecologies and infrastructural labour; and the Anthropocene as everyday experience. Each section comprises essays that approach the theme from different angles, encouraging conversations rather than coherence across disciplinary boundaries. From rivers and marshes to forests, grasslands, orchards, fields, cities, and industries, contributors draw from diverse landscapes in India to develop pathways for Environmental Studies that can effectively engage with the contemporary planetary crisis.

Sudha Vasan is a Professor at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Following a PhD from Yale University, she held research and teaching positions at Yale University, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Institute of Economic Growth, and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, before joining the University of Delhi in 2006. She was a Ruth Glass Fellow at the London School of Economics and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. She teaches and writes on political ecology, with a focus on the entanglement of social institutions, stratification, and inequality with ecology and environmentalism. Professor Vasan's work has been published in Environmental Research Letters, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Developing Societies, Economic and Political Weekly, Sociological Bulletin, Conservation and Society, and Journal of Human Ecology.