How does agrochemical harm interact with caste relations in rural India?

• In Event: 50817 - Novel Approaches to Environmental Sociology

Abstract

Building on existing scholarship that foregrounds caste and its ecological entanglements this paper develops a framework that I call Critical Caste Ecologies. By challenging the dominant paradigms of environmental justice shaped by both Western epistemologies, the framework traces the materiality of caste relations and how they are maintained and reproduced by socio-environmental change. I first compare Critical Caste Ecologies with Critical Environmental Justice studies, demonstrating their shared concerns as well as how they differ. Drawing on ethnographic data, I then examine caste in conjuncture with agrochemical environmental harm. By analyzing the emergence of pesticide stores and agrochemical networks shaped by “Backward Caste” farmers, this article highlights how caste based social relations are actively reproduced by simultaneously transforming rural ecologies and Dalit livelihoods. I conclude by highlighting the advantages of using Critical Caste Ecologies as a tool to unpack caste-based differentiation and its impact on socio-ecological life.

Author

• Anupriya Pandey, State University Of New York ,Buffalo