Middle class environmental values in India: an inter-disciplinary dialogue

Researchers
Dr Emma Mawdsley
Glyn Williams

Institution
Birkbeck College

Summary of Project
Researcher Profiles
Researcher Contact Details
Publications
annual progress report - 2003 (pdf format)

Summary

This project will bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives to discuss the issue of middle class environmental values in India. This is a subject which has rarely been analysed in any detail, and has certainly not attracted this level of attention until now. About 20 British and overseas participants will be invited to write brief concept notes on various aspects of the relationship between India's middle classes and the environment. Papers will then be commissioned to develop arguments in more depth - a process that should give a degree of direction and coherence to the project. These will be pre-circulated to all the participants prior to a symposium meeting in London in August/September (the exact date is yet to be decided). It will include people working in geography, environmental history, anthropology, economics, environmental law, religious studies, sociology and politics. Although the meeting will have an Indian focus, scholars working in other areas of the world (including the UK) will be invited to comment on comparative issues and perspectives.

The project aims, therefore, to establish an innovative and original research agenda, by bringing together analysts working from very different perspectives on a wide range of environmental issues relating to the middle classes in India.

Background/Rationale
Most studies into environmental values in India have been concerned with the poor, rural and marginalized (such as forest dwellers, women, tribals and small farmers), and the relationship between poverty, livelihoods, 'indigenous identities' and the environment; and/or the influence over discourses of wildlife conservation and resource management by elites (such as princely families, scientists, hunters and the policy-makers of the colonial and post-colonial states). India's sizeable middle classes, on the other hand, who make up somewhere between 50-300 million people (depending on definition), have been relatively neglected within these debates. In fact the middle classes have a significant impact on India's environment, both through their (relatively) high consumption; and because of their very considerable influence on the public sphere (e.g. through their dominance in journalism, the law, the bureaucracy, through local resident's associations and so on). We suggest that this, therefore, is a subject which requires closer analytical attention. In particular, there is a need to capture some of the dynamism and complexity of India's middle classes in relation to various environmental issues and threats.

Key research questions

1. How do different middle class men and women construct and understand the 'environment', 'nature', and the very wide range of 'environmental' issues that confront them?
2. What impact does this have on their behaviours in relation to the environment?
3. What are the wider consequences of these beliefs and behaviours, for example, in relation to the poor; to specific environmental issues (locally, nationally and internationally); and to the structures and processes of governance in India?

Research approach
No direct research work has been commissioned through this project, although it does build upon research on middle class environmental values by Emma Mawdsley in 2001-2 (funded by a Fellowship from the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs), and on Glyn Williams long-standing work in India. But by bringing scholars together to address a topic that has received very little direct research attention, the project aims to develop an original and innovative research agenda. The intention is to promote inter-disciplinary dialogue by pre-circulated papers and through a focussed meeting. The project also includes a four week visit to India by the two organisers- following the workshop. The main aim here is to present a short concept paper to various organisations involved in environmental policy-formulation and critique in India (such as the Ministry of Environment and Forests; the Central Pollution Control Board; the Tata Energy Research Institute; and the Centre of Science and Environment).

Intended outcomes

• An edited collection based on the papers presented and discussed at the workshop.
• The formation of an informal inter-disciplinary research network, which will act as a useful basis for future discussion and empirical work.
• Dialogue with various policy-related institutions in India, including research units, NGOs and government institutions.

Researchers

Emma Mawdsley
Emma Mawdsley was a lecturer in the Department of Geography, Durham University, but is now based at Birkbeck College (London). She has published on regionalism, federalism and the creation of new states in India; forest struggles and social movements; and development practice and thinking more broadly. Emma has just finished a major DFID-funded project, with Janet Townsend and Gina Porter, looking at NGOs and the knowledge economy in India, Ghana and Mexico. A second large DFID grant will now fund an extension of this project, looking the relationship between the state, donors and environmental and gender-based NGOs. In 2001 she won a Fellowship from the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs to examine middle class environmental values in India.

Contact Details

Emma Mawdsley
School of Geography,
Birkbeck College,
Malet Street,
London, WC1E 7HX

Glyn Williams
Department of Geography,
King's College London,
Strand,
London WC2R 2LS