Kiran Asher delivered a lecture on ‘Engendering Environmental Justice beyond Green Grandmothers and Divine Deities’. It was chaired by Awadhendra Sharan.
Discussions about the environment and development in the second decade of the 21st century bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the 1990s. The concerns over climate change and economic inequities is bringing about a resurgence in thinking about social and environmental justice. Now, unlike before, attention to gender, race, colonialism is central, though often rhetorical. Drawing on long-term research in the Pacific lowlands of Colombia and recent work in the semi-arid grasslands of Western India, the speaker will reflect on the need to think beyond romanticized ideals of traditional or “non-western” knowledges of women and other “subaltern” communities.
Kiran Asher is Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, UMass Amherst. A biologist-turned-social scientist, her research on environmental and social justice struggles in Latin America and South Asia appears in Antipode, Feminist Studies, GeoForum, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a book titled Fieldwork: Nature, Culture, and Gender in the Age of Climate Change.
Awadhendra Sharan is Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Monday, 9 May 2022, 4.30 pm, Zoom https://bit.ly/3rQCfhy
