Title: Amita Baviskar | From Dust to Dust: Air pollution and urban experience in the Indian Anthropocene
Delhi’s longstanding dust problem has evolved into a public health crisis of air pollution, yet remains overlooked. In her talk, Amita Baviskar, Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology, Ashoka University, explores why this issue is not treated as an urgent emergency within the cultural politics of environment and development.
Event moderated by Sharad Chari, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley.
ABSTRACT
Situated on the hot and dry north Indian plains, the city of Delhi has always lived with dust. But in the last three decades, dust has transformed into a problem: air pollution. In the world’s most polluted capital city, debates about dust rise and subside like seasonal storms, never quite becoming a public priority. Why? Despite its severe impacts on health, why does air pollution become yet another element in a deteriorating urban environment to be borne and lived with, rather than a public emergency that calls for urgent and drastic action? My talk will address these questions by situating them within a cultural politics of environment and development.
SPEAKER BIO
Amita Baviskar is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology, Ashoka University. Her research and teaching address the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India. She focuses on the role of social inequality and identities in natural resource conflicts. Currently, she is working on the politics of food and changing agrarian environments in Madhya Pradesh and studying the social experience of air pollution in Delhi.
After studying Economics and Sociology at the University of Delhi, she received a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. Besides working at the Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, and at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, she has been a visiting scholar at several universities including Stanford, Cornell, Yale, SciencesPo, University of California at Berkeley and the University of Cape Town.
Her first book In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley and other writings explore the themes of resource rights, popular resistance and discourses of environmentalism. Her recent publications include the edited books Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes (with Raka Ray) and First Garden of the Republic: Nature on the President’s Estate. In January 2020, she published Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi.
Her contributions to developing the field of environmental sociology in India and to the study of social movements have been recognised by her peers. She was awarded the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research, and the 2010 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences.
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PARKINGINFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.