Anti-caste political ecologies
Organizers: Amani Ponnaganti (Wisconsin-Madison), Sahithya Venkatesan (Rutgers), and Tanya Matthan (UC-Berkeley)
What does the analytic of caste bring to political ecology, and vice versa? And what does it mean to practice an anti-caste political ecology? Inspired by calls to recognize the working of caste within and outside South Asia from Dalit and Bahujan activists, and building on conversations in the fields of critical caste studies, political ecology, and urban geography, this panel considers how caste as an organizing mode of socio-spatial injustice pushes us to rethink and broaden our understanding of environmental inequalities and struggles. Anti-caste scholars and Dalit revolutionaries from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1936) and Jotirao Phule (1873) to Gail Omvedt (1994), Gopal Guru (2012), Anand Teltumbde (2018) and others clearly recognized and articulated the inseparability of labor exploitation, spatial segregation, and ecological exclusion, and its centrality to caste violence. Recent scholarship has highlighted the operation and effects of ‘environmental casteism’ (Lee 2017) and ‘eco-casteism’ (Sharma 2017), showing how pollution and toxicity hamper the life-chances of Dalit communities but also how dominant environmentalisms are premised on and perpetuate caste supremacy. At the same time, rich traditions of Dalit literature, folklore, and testimonies emphasize Dalit ecological visions and mobilizations that counter Brahminical views of nature and showcase Dalit environmental knowledge and expertise (eg. Bama 2012, Kamble 2009, Valmiki 1997). Nonetheless, caste remains relatively undertheorized and often invisibilized within mainstream environmental studies (Aiyadurai and Ingole 2021).
Central to the task of building anti-caste political ecologies is therefore rethinking existing analytical frameworks for studying unequal socioecological relations in South Asia and beyond (Chairez-Garza et al. 2022) as well as moving beyond liberal framings of rights and justice that limit the potential for anti-caste, anti-racist, anti-colonial and abolitionist futures (Ranganathan 2022, Heynen and Ybarra 2021).
We invite submissions that: center anti-caste thought in their analysis of environmental questions; reconsider the ‘environmental’ through the lens of caste; examine how uneven geographies of caste, class, race, religion, and gender relate to struggles for environmental justice; and explore anti-caste spatial imaginaries and environmental futures.
Possible themes include:
Anti-caste narratives and struggles within environmental justice movements
Ideologies and practices of caste inequality within conservation, adaptation, mitigation projects
Caste within unequal regimes of environmental labor
The role of caste within practices of claim-making and place-making
Geographies of segregation, exclusion, and dispossession
Comparative political ecologies of caste and race
Intersections and contradictions of caste, class, and gender in ecological struggles
Caste, coloniality and racial capitalism
Caste and environmental casteism in a moment of neoliberal Hindutva
The spatialization of caste within and between the city and the countryside
Caste and (im)mobility
Dr. Malini Ranganathan (American University) will serve as a discussant.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words by October 31. Notice of acceptance will be sent out by November 4. Conference registration must be completed by November 10. Indicate your preference for in-person or virtual participation. Based on responses, we will plan for either a fully virtual or hybrid event. We encourage submissions from South Asia and other parts of the global South as well as papers from early career researchers, activists and organizers.
Please email abstracts and questions to Amani Ponnaganti ([log in to unmask]), Sahithya Venkatesan ([log in to unmask]), and Tanya Matthan ([log in to unmask]).
Works cited:
Ambedkar, B.R. 2016 (1936). Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition. London: Verso.
Aiyadurai, Ambika, and Prashant Ingole. 2021. “Invisibility of Caste in Environmental Studies.” The Indian Express, 29 November.
Bama. 2012. Karukku, Lakshmi Holmstrom (trans.) New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Kamble, Baby. 2009. The Prisons We Broke, Maya Pandit (trans.) Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan.
Valmiki, Omprakash. 2008. Joothan: An Untouchable’s Life, Arun Prabha Mukherjee (trans.) New York: Columbia University Press.
Heynen, Nik, and Megan Ybarra. 2021. “On Abolition Ecologies and Making ‘Freedom as a Place.’” Antipode 53 (1): 21–35.
Ranganathan, Malini. 2022. “Caste, Racialization, and the Making of Environmental Unfreedoms in Urban India”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 45 (2): 257-277.
Chairez-Garza, Jesus, M. Gergan, M. Ranganathan, and P. Vasudevan. 2022. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Rethinking Difference in India Through Racialization”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 45 (2): 193-215.
Guru, Gopal. “Experience, Space, and Justice.” In The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory edited by G. Guru and S. Sarukkai, 71–106. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Lee, Joel. 2017. “Odor and Order: How Caste is Inscribed in Space and Sensoria.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37 (3): 470–490.
Sharma, Mukul. 2017. Caste and Nature. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Omvedt, Gail. 1994. Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Teltumbde, Anand. 2018. Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva. New Delhi: Navayana.
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