Environmental Studies from India Engaging with the Planetary Ecological Crisis

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, Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi

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.

IntroductionEnvironmental Studies in the Time of Planetary Crisis, Sudha VasanPart I. Reframing Space, Rethinking the Region1. Monsoon Geographies, Assam, and Making of an Eco-Region, Arupjyoti Saikia2. Castescapes, Dalit Labour, and Environmental Inequality, Mukul Sharma3. Region as a Contested Socio-ecological Space: India's East Coast in the Capitalocene?, Purendra PrasadPart II. Commons and Commodification4. The Complexities of Commodification: State, Market, and Community Institutions in Arunachal Pradesh, Deepak K. Mishra5. Property in Fluid Nature: Legal Regimes and Chapories on the Brahmaputra in Majuli Island, Assam, Kh Neil Young6. Solar Futures and Persistent Injustices in Kerala, Heather Plumridge BediPart III. Environmental Subjectivities and Socio-Natures7. Territorialization and Interlocking Environmentalities: Political Ecology of Forest Governance in Satpura Hills, Madhya Pradesh, 1990-2015, Budhaditya Das8. Forest Gardens of Malnad: Agrarian Ecology and the Afterlives of Appiko Chaluvali, Manisha Rao9. Weaving the Threads of Entanglement: From the Lens of the Fishers in the Indian Sundarban Deltas, Prama Mukhopadhyay10. Fortress Conservation of Charismatic Carnivores in a Political Forest of Central India, Asmita KabraPart IV. Metabolic Social Ecologies and Infrastructural Labour11. Frontiers, Encounters, Metabolism: A Material-semiotic Approach to Fields and Forests in the Western Ghats, Daniel Münster,Ursula M. Frank, and T.R. Suma12. The Seed and the Well: Navigating Agrarian Risk in the Anthropocene, Tanya Matthan13. Metabolic Lives: Labour-grabbing under Formal Waste Management Regimes, Harsha Anantharaman and Vinay GidwaniPart V. The Anthropocene as Everyday Experience14. Markers of Anthropocene? Revisiting Early-modern South Asia, Mayank Kumar15. Public Policy in Response to Planetary Crises: Scale Matters in Augmenting Biodiversity and Improving Resilience of Financial Ecosystems, Nandan Nawn16. Water and Climate Change: Lived Experience of Untimely Weather, Dehydrated Earth, and Weathered Labour, Savyasaachi