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MANISHA ANANTHARAMAN

About

I am a multi-disciplinary scholar who combines critical theory with participatory and ethnographic methods to explore the politics of the ecological transition.

I study how economic and political ideologies, socio-cultural identities, and power relations impact how "environmentalism" and "sustainability" are conceptualized and organized at multiple scales, with a focus on how these transitions shape intersectional inequalities of race, class, caste and gender. Using ethnographic and community-based methodologies, I examine the dynamics of everyday sustainability practices and political mobilizations in relation to one another, as exemplified in my recent book Recycling Class (2024, MIT Press).

Please browse my website to learn more about my research and publications on Critical Sustainabilities, Circular Economy, Sustainable Wellbeing, and Digitalization. The Teaching tab also has links to several syllabi on environmental justice, sustainability, and development taught through the lenses of postcolonial theory, feminist geography, and cultural sociology.

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I am an Assistant Professor at the Center for the Sociology of Organisations, Sciences Po in Paris. Previously, I was an Associate Professor at Saint Mary's College of California in the Global Studies and Environmental Studies programs.

I received my PhD from the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management at the University of California Berkeley (2015) and have a Masters in Integrative Bio-sciences from the University of Oxford (2008), where I was an Inlaks Scholar. In Spring 2019, I was invited to the Alba Viotto Visiting Professorship in Sociology at the University of Geneva, and was a visiting professorial fellow at the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester. I serve as an Associate Editor for Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene (UC Press) and Consumption and Society (Bristol University Press).

I work with community organizations and provide guidance to policymakers who aim to reshape urban planning and consumption practices through institutional reform. I am an Associate Fellow at Chatham House's Environment and Society Program and was a Commissioner on the Cambridge Sustainability Commission report on Scaling Behavior Change.

Exacerbating inequality, enduring poverty, and widespread climate disruption are interrelated socio-environmental problems. To explore their intersections, I take a situated, relational, and intersectional approach in my research, collaborating with scholars in critical geography, sociology, environmental science and policy studies, and with grassroots organizations, policy-makers and practitioners.


New book- Recycling Class, MIT Press, 2024  (Open-Access here)

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