Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sudha Vasan (Professor, Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
ISBN:  

9780198984092

ISBN 10:   019898409
Pages:   394
Publication Date:   28 February 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   To order  

Table of Contents

Introduction Sudha Vasan: Environmental Studies in the Time of Planetary Crisis Part I. Reframing Space, Rethinking the Region 1: Arupjyoti Saikia: Monsoon Geographies, Assam, and Making of an Eco-Region 2: Mukul Sharma: Castescapes, Dalit Labour, and Environmental Inequality 3: Purendra Prasad: Region as a Contested Socio-ecological Space: India's East Coast in the Capitalocene? Part II. Commons and Commodification 4: Deepak K. Mishra: The Complexities of Commodification: State, Market, and Community Institutions in Arunachal Pradesh 5: Kh Neil Young: Property in Fluid Nature: Legal Regimes and Chapories on the Brahmaputra in Majuli Island, Assam 6: Heather Plumridge Bedi: Solar Futures and Persistent Injustices in Kerala Part III. Environmental Subjectivities and Socio-Natures 7: Budhaditya Das: Territorialization and Interlocking Environmentalities: Political Ecology of Forest Governance in Satpura Hills, Madhya Pradesh, 1990-2015 8: Manisha Rao: Forest Gardens of Malnad: Agrarian Ecology and the Afterlives of Appiko Chaluvali 9: Prama Mukhopadhyay: Weaving the Threads of Entanglement: From the Lens of the Fishers in the Indian Sundarban Deltas 10: Asmita Kabra: Fortress Conservation of Charismatic Carnivores in a Political Forest of Central India Part IV. Metabolic Social Ecologies and Infrastructural Labour 11: Daniel Münster,Ursula M. Frank, and T.R. Suma: Frontiers, Encounters, Metabolism: A Material-semiotic Approach to Fields and Forests in the Western Ghats 12: Tanya Matthan: The Seed and the Well: Navigating Agrarian Risk in the Anthropocene 13: Harsha Anantharaman and Vinay Gidwani: Metabolic Lives: Labour-grabbing under Formal Waste Management Regimes Part V. The Anthropocene as Everyday Experience 14: Mayank Kumar: Markers of Anthropocene? Revisiting Early-modern South Asia 15: Nandan Nawn: Public Policy in Response to Planetary Crises: Scale Matters in Augmenting Biodiversity and Improving Resilience of Financial Ecosystems 16: Savyasaachi: Water and Climate Change: Lived Experience of Untimely Weather, Dehydrated Earth, and Weathered Labour

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Author Information

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.

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