Agrarian Environments: Resources, Representations, and Rule in India Contributor(s): Agrawal, Arun (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0822325748 ISBN-13: 9780822325741 Publisher: Duke University Press OUR PRICE: $27.50 Product Type: Paperback Published: October 2000 Annotation: "This volume brings a remarkable maturity of vision to the study of the environmental history and politics of India. Departing from the tired nature/culture dichotomy, it offers a fresh approach that situates the environment, agriculture, and politics within a single field. Our understanding of the politics of Indian environment and the academic field of environmental studies will never be the same after "Agrarian Environments,""--Gyan Prakash, Princeton University ""Agrarian Environments" is a volume of historically and empirically informed essays that represents a new generation of scholarship that promises to reshape the fields of agrarian and environmental studies. By confronting some of the received wisdoms that have separated the study of agriculture from that of the environment, this book opens up a whole range of new and refreshing questions that will be of relevance to scholars and policymakers in all parts of the world."--Akhil Gupta, author of "Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Science | Environmental Science (see Also Chemistry - Environmental) - Business & Economics | Development - Economic Development - Technology & Engineering | Agriculture - Agronomy - General |
Dewey: 333.760 |
LCCN: 00027442 |
Physical Information: 0.84" H x 5.83" W x 8.95" (1.04 lbs) 328 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Indian |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Agrarian Environments questions the dichotomies that have structured earlier analyses of environmental processes in India and offers a new way of looking at the relationship between agrarian transformation and environmental change. The contributors claim that attempts to explain environmental conflicts in terms of the local versus the global, indigenous versus outsiders, women versus men, or the community versus the market or state obscure vital dynamics of mobilization and organization that critically influence thought and policy. Editors Arun Agrawal and K. Sivaramakrishnan claim that rural social change in India cannot be understood without exploring how environmental changes articulate major aspects of agrarian transformations-technological, cultural, and political-in the last two centuries. In order to examine these issues, they have reached beyond the confines of single disciplinary allegiances or methodological loyalties to bring together anthropologists, historians, political scientists, geographers, and environmental scientists who are significantly informed by interdisciplinary research. Drawing on extensive field and archival research, the contributors demonstrate the powerful political implications of blurring the boundaries between dichotomous cultural representations, combine conceptual analyses with specific case studies, and look at why competing powers chose to emphasize particular representations of land use or social relations. By providing a more textured analysis of how categories emerge and change, this work offers the possibility of creating crucial alliances across populations that have historically been assumed to lack mutual goals. Agrarian Environments will be valuable to those in political science, Asian studies, and environmental studies. Contributors. Arun Agrawal, Mark Baker, Molly Chattopadhyaya, Vinay Gidwani, Sumit Guha, Shubhra Gururani, Cecile Jackson, David Ludden, Haripriya Rangan, Paul Robbins, Vasant Saberwal, James C. Scott, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Ajay Skaria, Jennifer Springer, Darren Zook |