Elizabeth Chatterjee
Biographic Data
| ID | 139436 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Chatterjee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Chatterjee |
| SIGNATURE | CHATTERJEE E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8309-3174 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Solidarity Economy
Low-carbon histories for zero-carbon futures
Climate crisis has made the transition from carbon-rich to low-carbon energy systems an existential necessity for the future of our planet. This article sets out how greater attention to low-carbon energy history, currently a neglected component of modern energy development, should comprise an essential part of building a zero-carbon future. We argue for the usefulness of low-carbon as a capacious term that foregrounds the historic and ongoing re…
Dams and the Deep Earth
On 11 December 1967, a large earthquake devastated the village of Koynanagar in Maharashtra, western India. Many blamed the new Koyna hydroelectric dam nearby. Prompting international inquests, Koyna became perhaps the world's most famous case of reservoir-induced seismicity, a novel type of earthquake triggered by human activities. We use the dam's history to explore the emergent consciousness of human geophysical agency that characterizes the A…
Towards an Energetics of Class
From Iran and Mozambique to France’s Gilets jaunes , consumer energy protests are ubiquitous today. Little historical scholarship has so far explored such “fuel riots,” the problematic moniker bestowed by contemporary policy scholars. This article argues for disaggregating the homogenous crowd of so-called rioters, instead analyzing why particular socioeconomic groups persistently take to the streets. To do this, it sketches an energy-centered ap…
Late Acceleration
The energy crisis of the early 1970s briefly opened up a radically new horizon of energetic possibilities that played out differently around the world. For India, that energy crisis did not begin with the famous Arab oil embargo of 1973. Instead, like many poor oil-importing nations, it experienced the first oil shock as merely one component of a broader climate-food-energy emergency that reverberated throughout the political system. This crisis …
India’s Oligarchic State Capitalism
Almost nine years into Narendra Modi’s premiership, there is little sign of an ideological commitment to the free market at the apex of the Indian state. Instead, this article characterizes India’s developmental model as a form of state capitalism, structured by the government’s direct influence on economic relationships. The Modi government took office in the midst of a legitimacy crisis generated by the state-dominated financial system. In resp…
The poor woman’s energy
Solar energy often appears a resource without a history, perpetually novel and promising futuristic abundance. This overlooks a long episode of ‘low-modernist’ solar research in and for the global South. Focusing especially on India and detouring through Mexico, two important arenas for early solar experimentation, this article traces an alternative history of solar technologies as austere everyday fixes for developing countries. In parallel with…
State Capitalism in India
Despite three decades of gradual liberalization, state intervention in the Indian economy remains extensive but substantively different from the old central planning. The state has moved away from the direct ownership model in many industrial sectors. Nonetheless, large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) still dominate key sectors such as energy and infrastructure, and the state continues to intervene heavily in many other sectors using its control o…
New Developmentalism and its Discontents
Regimes around the world are experimenting with combinations of economic liberalization and revived state‐activist strategies, producing ‘new developmentalist’ hybrids. This article suggests that a distinctive variant of new developmentalism is emerging in India. Its paradigmatic example crystallized in Gujarat, before and during Narendra Modi's tenure as Chief Minister (2001–14), and was taken national during Modi's first term as India's Prime M…
The Asian Anthropocene
Much scholarship extrapolates global narratives of the Anthropocene from the "fossil capitalism" of European imperial powers. This analysis deploys the alternative lens of grid electricity-the great macro-technology of the twentieth century-to reevaluate the dynamics of the Anthropocene outside the Anglozone. Histories of Asian electrification refute the notion of any simple relationship between colonialism and fossil capitalism. Instead, they po…
Rethinking public institutions in India
With a few notable exceptions, India’s formal public institutions have attracted relatively little systematic attention. The edited collection Rethinking public institutions in India, along with it
Feeling Modern
The foundation of history's recent ‘emotional turn’ is that emotions matter in shaping individual and social motivations. Their importance is not just instrumental: against the explanatory grain of much scholarship since the nineteenth century, the history of emotions recognises that humans are not purely rational “economic subjects in trousers and skirts”— or, as it may be, dhoti s and sari s
Reinventing state capitalism in India
Despite three decades of liberalization, the public sector’s contribution to the Indian economy remains crucial but underappreciated. Particularly striking is the resilience of central public sector enterprises. The best of these have been reinvented: retrofitted for the market era, exposed to competition and endowed with at least the trappings of corporate governance. Elsewhere in the world, such state-market hybrids have been seen as characteri…
The politics of electricity reform
Dissipated energy
This article presents the Indian electricity sector as a case study of the evasion of responsibility in public policy. India's electricity policy repeatedly fails to meet its own targets and is universally lambasted as inadequate. The state appears aware of many of the reasons for these failures, yet policies have consistently failed to make effective corrections. Part of the explanation for this institutional and policy stasis lies in the pervas…
The Asian Anthropocene
Much scholarship extrapolates global narratives of the Anthropocene from the "fossil capitalism" of European imperial powers. This analysis deploys the alternative lens of grid electricity-the great macro-technology of the twentieth century-to reevaluate the dynamics of the Anthropocene outside the Anglozone. Histories of Asian electrification refute the notion of any simple relationship between colonialism and fossil capitalism. Instead, they po…
The politics of electricity reform
Dissipated energy
This article presents the Indian electricity sector as a case study of the evasion of responsibility in public policy. India's electricity policy repeatedly fails to meet its own targets and is universally lambasted as inadequate. The state appears aware of many of the reasons for these failures, yet policies have consistently failed to make effective corrections. Part of the explanation for this institutional and policy stasis lies in the pervas…
Feeling Modern
The foundation of history's recent ‘emotional turn’ is that emotions matter in shaping individual and social motivations. Their importance is not just instrumental: against the explanatory grain of much scholarship since the nineteenth century, the history of emotions recognises that humans are not purely rational “economic subjects in trousers and skirts”— or, as it may be, dhoti s and sari s
New Developmentalism and its Discontents
Regimes around the world are experimenting with combinations of economic liberalization and revived state‐activist strategies, producing ‘new developmentalist’ hybrids. This article suggests that a distinctive variant of new developmentalism is emerging in India. Its paradigmatic example crystallized in Gujarat, before and during Narendra Modi's tenure as Chief Minister (2001–14), and was taken national during Modi's first term as India's Prime M…
Reinventing state capitalism in India
Despite three decades of liberalization, the public sector’s contribution to the Indian economy remains crucial but underappreciated. Particularly striking is the resilience of central public sector enterprises. The best of these have been reinvented: retrofitted for the market era, exposed to competition and endowed with at least the trappings of corporate governance. Elsewhere in the world, such state-market hybrids have been seen as characteri…
Towards an Energetics of Class
From Iran and Mozambique to France’s Gilets jaunes , consumer energy protests are ubiquitous today. Little historical scholarship has so far explored such “fuel riots,” the problematic moniker bestowed by contemporary policy scholars. This article argues for disaggregating the homogenous crowd of so-called rioters, instead analyzing why particular socioeconomic groups persistently take to the streets. To do this, it sketches an energy-centered ap…
The poor woman’s energy
Solar energy often appears a resource without a history, perpetually novel and promising futuristic abundance. This overlooks a long episode of ‘low-modernist’ solar research in and for the global South. Focusing especially on India and detouring through Mexico, two important arenas for early solar experimentation, this article traces an alternative history of solar technologies as austere everyday fixes for developing countries. In parallel with…
Dissipated energy
This article presents the Indian electricity sector as a case study of the evasion of responsibility in public policy. India's electricity policy repeatedly fails to meet its own targets and is universally lambasted as inadequate. The state appears aware of many of the reasons for these failures, yet policies have consistently failed to make effective corrections. Part of the explanation for this institutional and policy stasis lies in the pervas…
Feeling Modern
The foundation of history's recent ‘emotional turn’ is that emotions matter in shaping individual and social motivations. Their importance is not just instrumental: against the explanatory grain of much scholarship since the nineteenth century, the history of emotions recognises that humans are not purely rational “economic subjects in trousers and skirts”— or, as it may be, dhoti s and sari s
Reinventing state capitalism in India
Despite three decades of liberalization, the public sector’s contribution to the Indian economy remains crucial but underappreciated. Particularly striking is the resilience of central public sector enterprises. The best of these have been reinvented: retrofitted for the market era, exposed to competition and endowed with at least the trappings of corporate governance. Elsewhere in the world, such state-market hybrids have been seen as characteri…
The politics of electricity reform
Rethinking public institutions in India
With a few notable exceptions, India’s formal public institutions have attracted relatively little systematic attention. The edited collection Rethinking public institutions in India, along with it
The Asian Anthropocene
Much scholarship extrapolates global narratives of the Anthropocene from the "fossil capitalism" of European imperial powers. This analysis deploys the alternative lens of grid electricity-the great macro-technology of the twentieth century-to reevaluate the dynamics of the Anthropocene outside the Anglozone. Histories of Asian electrification refute the notion of any simple relationship between colonialism and fossil capitalism. Instead, they po…
State Capitalism in India
Despite three decades of gradual liberalization, state intervention in the Indian economy remains extensive but substantively different from the old central planning. The state has moved away from the direct ownership model in many industrial sectors. Nonetheless, large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) still dominate key sectors such as energy and infrastructure, and the state continues to intervene heavily in many other sectors using its control o…
New Developmentalism and its Discontents
Regimes around the world are experimenting with combinations of economic liberalization and revived state‐activist strategies, producing ‘new developmentalist’ hybrids. This article suggests that a distinctive variant of new developmentalism is emerging in India. Its paradigmatic example crystallized in Gujarat, before and during Narendra Modi's tenure as Chief Minister (2001–14), and was taken national during Modi's first term as India's Prime M…
India’s Oligarchic State Capitalism
Almost nine years into Narendra Modi’s premiership, there is little sign of an ideological commitment to the free market at the apex of the Indian state. Instead, this article characterizes India’s developmental model as a form of state capitalism, structured by the government’s direct influence on economic relationships. The Modi government took office in the midst of a legitimacy crisis generated by the state-dominated financial system. In resp…
The poor woman’s energy
Solar energy often appears a resource without a history, perpetually novel and promising futuristic abundance. This overlooks a long episode of ‘low-modernist’ solar research in and for the global South. Focusing especially on India and detouring through Mexico, two important arenas for early solar experimentation, this article traces an alternative history of solar technologies as austere everyday fixes for developing countries. In parallel with…
Towards an Energetics of Class
From Iran and Mozambique to France’s Gilets jaunes , consumer energy protests are ubiquitous today. Little historical scholarship has so far explored such “fuel riots,” the problematic moniker bestowed by contemporary policy scholars. This article argues for disaggregating the homogenous crowd of so-called rioters, instead analyzing why particular socioeconomic groups persistently take to the streets. To do this, it sketches an energy-centered ap…
Late Acceleration
The energy crisis of the early 1970s briefly opened up a radically new horizon of energetic possibilities that played out differently around the world. For India, that energy crisis did not begin with the famous Arab oil embargo of 1973. Instead, like many poor oil-importing nations, it experienced the first oil shock as merely one component of a broader climate-food-energy emergency that reverberated throughout the political system. This crisis …
Low-carbon histories for zero-carbon futures
Climate crisis has made the transition from carbon-rich to low-carbon energy systems an existential necessity for the future of our planet. This article sets out how greater attention to low-carbon energy history, currently a neglected component of modern energy development, should comprise an essential part of building a zero-carbon future. We argue for the usefulness of low-carbon as a capacious term that foregrounds the historic and ongoing re…
Dams and the Deep Earth
On 11 December 1967, a large earthquake devastated the village of Koynanagar in Maharashtra, western India. Many blamed the new Koyna hydroelectric dam nearby. Prompting international inquests, Koyna became perhaps the world's most famous case of reservoir-induced seismicity, a novel type of earthquake triggered by human activities. We use the dam's history to explore the emergent consciousness of human geophysical agency that characterizes the A…
The Solidarity Economy
Political science (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Economy (5 works) · Market economy (5 works) · Capitalism (4 works) · Economic system (4 works) · Indian Economic and Social Development (4 works)