Trevor Birkenholtz
Biographic Data
| ID | 213737 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Trevor Birkenholtz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Trevor |
| FAMILY NAME | Birkenholtz |
| SIGNATURE | BIRKENHOLTZ T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6125-0335 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 405 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Tracking the sun: Exposing India’s solar dispossessions
Utility-scale solar development in India has dispossessed peasants of land and livelihoods. Smallholders alienated from land have not been equitably remunerated, rehabilitated, nor offered employment at new solar parks. Yet it remains unclear which modalities of dispossession are used across solar sites. Drawing on mixed methods fieldwork from the Gujarat Solar Park and the Kurnool Solar Park, this study advances research on the processes of land…
Re-conceptualizing climate maladaptation: Complementing social-ecological interactions with relational socionatures
Climate maladaptation is often studied using an “interactional ontology.” • “Relational ontologies” deepen the nature, causes, and redressal of maladaptation. • Maladaptation is constituted through dynamic material and discursive relations. • A case from Maharashtra, India demonstrates the necessity of relational approaches. Cases of climate maladaptation are increasingly documented. Its identification and redressal has become a priority for rese…
Geographies of big water infrastructure: Contemporary insights and future research opportunities
Largescale "big" water infrastructure is once again at the forefront of the global developmentalist agenda and is receiving attendant scholarly attention. Given this parallel growth, now is time to take stock of current scholarly contributions and explore opportunities for future research. In this paper, I review recent developments and insights gained from research on big water infrastructure, and water infrastructure studies, generally, to high…
Infrastructuring drip irrigation: The gendered assembly of farmers, laborers and state subsidy programs
This paper examines the relationship between the diffusion of drip irrigation technology, state subsidy programs to encourage its adoption by farmers, and gendered labor dynamics. Drip irrigation is promoted globally as a water conserving agricultural innovation that enhances water-use and productive efficiency by increasing yields with less water, while freeing up "saved" water for other uses. India leads the world in its rate of expansion and i…
The relationship between household structures and everyday adaptation and livelihood strategies in northwestern Pakistan
The interactions between household size, capital, and adaptation to social-ecological change has been widely studied; however, little is known about the differences in everyday adaptation to social-ecological change across household structures. Joint family households are increasing in contexts where the nuclear family had previously been the norm, and remains a prevalent structure throughout the world. Thus, it is important to understand how the…
Social influence shapes adaptive water governance: Empirical evidence from northwestern Pakistan
Social-ecological change has placed unprecedented stress on water resources throughout the world. This has driven water users to employ a diverse range of adaptation strategies and necessitates new governance structures, such as adaptive water governance (AWG), which have the capacity to manage resources in the midst of uncertainty and complexity. As such, AWG has the potential to support household adaptation strategies; however, little empirical…
Introduction to themed issue: Ignorance and uncertainty in environmental decision-making
Uncertain Waters: Participatory groundwater modelling in Chicago’s suburbs
Photons vs. firewood: Female (dis)empowerment by solar power in India
Renewable energy transitions are accelerating in the Global South. Yet many large-scale renewable energy infrastructures are developed on public lands with unknown impacts on commons access and usage. A prime example of this is the Gujarat Solar Park (GSP) in India, which is one of the world’s largest solar photovoltaic facilities. The GSP is situated on 2,669 acres of previously common property, which has historically been used by female pastora…
The sun and the scythe: Energy Dispossessions and the Agrarian Question of Labor in Solar Parks
Green grabbing is accelerating throughout the Global South to facilitate climate change mitigation. This paper illuminates the discursive and extra-economic means through which the state dispossesses agropastoralists of both land and energy to develop solar parks in semi-arid rural India. We advance the empirical and theoretical aspects of energy dispossessions, with implications for the agrarian question of labor. Using data obtained from mixed …
Commentary: STS of the Underground
Geographer Trevor Birkenholtz draws out major themes across the articles in the thematic collection "Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation," with reference to cartographic and model production and representation, particularly in the ways that they render the landscapes partially knowable and contestable
Dispossessing irrigators: Water grabbing, supply-side growth and farmer resistance in India
On the Network, off the Map: Developing Intervillage and Intragender Differentiation in Rural Water Supply
Despite decades of water-supply development programs in the Global South, their effect on gendered access to water remains both unclear and contradictory. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining the expansion of a rural water-supply network aimed at reducing household water scarcity in the arid zone of Rajasthan, India. Specifically, the Indira Gandhi Canal was conceived and constructed during the green revolution to 'green the Thar Desert'…
Network political ecology: Method and theory in climate change vulnerability and adaptation research
This paper argues for the development of ‘network political ecology’, drawing on the insights from regional political ecology and recent advancements in network theories of scale, to meet the challenges of investigating the meso-scale problem of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. ‘Network political ecology’, attentive to scale as socio-ecologically produced and grounded in a regional resource use system, is one such approach that fil…
Full-Cost Recovery: Producing Differentiated Water Collection Practices and Responses to Centralized Water Networks in Jaipur, India
This paper examines the political ecological effects of the expansion of an urban centralized water-supply network and the transformation of it into a full-cost-recovery system in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. It draws on data collected through a 2007 household survey of six Jaipur neighborhoods stratified by class; follow-up household interviews in 2007 and 2009; and interviews with public water supply managers and private water tanker vendors in bo…
Agricultural intensification and changes in cultivated areas, 1970–2005
Does the intensification of agriculture reduce cultivated areas and, in so doing, spare some lands by concentrating production on other lands? Such sparing is important for many reasons, among them the enhanced abilities of released lands to sequester carbon and provide other environmental services. Difficulties measuring the extent of spared land make it impossible to investigate fully the hypothesized causal chain from agricultural intensificat…
Irrigated Landscapes, Produced Scarcity, and Adaptive Social Institutions in Rajasthan, India
This article employs an actor–network (ANT) and materialist approach to examine the changing relations among nature, society, and technology in dynamic groundwater-irrigated landscapes. Drawing on a case study from Rajasthan, India, it merges these frameworks to advance our understanding of the role that tubewell irrigation technologies play, through their associations with other objects, in altering existing social power relationships, environme…
Groundwater governmentality: Hegemony and technologies of resistance in Rajasthan's (India) groundwater governance
Globally, decentralisation has become the dominant paradigm for environmental governance. This paper explores the linkages between green governmentality approaches to subjectivity and Gramscian notions of hegemony to examine recent efforts in Rajasthan, India to decentralise groundwater governance through targeted formal regulations and outreach activities, such as water awareness campaigns (Jal Abhiyaan). The latter seeks to alter the beliefs an…
Contesting expertise: The politics of environmental knowledge in northern Indian groundwater practices
Tubewell Capitalism: Groundwater Development and Agrarian Change in Gujarat . By Navroz K. Dubash
Turfgrass revolution: Measuring the expansion of the American lawn
Lawns and Toxins
Groundwater governmentality: Hegemony and technologies of resistance in Rajasthan's (India) groundwater governance
Globally, decentralisation has become the dominant paradigm for environmental governance. This paper explores the linkages between green governmentality approaches to subjectivity and Gramscian notions of hegemony to examine recent efforts in Rajasthan, India to decentralise groundwater governance through targeted formal regulations and outreach activities, such as water awareness campaigns (Jal Abhiyaan). The latter seeks to alter the beliefs an…
The sun and the scythe: Energy Dispossessions and the Agrarian Question of Labor in Solar Parks
Green grabbing is accelerating throughout the Global South to facilitate climate change mitigation. This paper illuminates the discursive and extra-economic means through which the state dispossesses agropastoralists of both land and energy to develop solar parks in semi-arid rural India. We advance the empirical and theoretical aspects of energy dispossessions, with implications for the agrarian question of labor. Using data obtained from mixed …
Contesting expertise: The politics of environmental knowledge in northern Indian groundwater practices
Network political ecology: Method and theory in climate change vulnerability and adaptation research
This paper argues for the development of ‘network political ecology’, drawing on the insights from regional political ecology and recent advancements in network theories of scale, to meet the challenges of investigating the meso-scale problem of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. ‘Network political ecology’, attentive to scale as socio-ecologically produced and grounded in a regional resource use system, is one such approach that fil…
Photons vs. firewood: Female (dis)empowerment by solar power in India
Renewable energy transitions are accelerating in the Global South. Yet many large-scale renewable energy infrastructures are developed on public lands with unknown impacts on commons access and usage. A prime example of this is the Gujarat Solar Park (GSP) in India, which is one of the world’s largest solar photovoltaic facilities. The GSP is situated on 2,669 acres of previously common property, which has historically been used by female pastora…
On the Network, off the Map: Developing Intervillage and Intragender Differentiation in Rural Water Supply
Despite decades of water-supply development programs in the Global South, their effect on gendered access to water remains both unclear and contradictory. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining the expansion of a rural water-supply network aimed at reducing household water scarcity in the arid zone of Rajasthan, India. Specifically, the Indira Gandhi Canal was conceived and constructed during the green revolution to 'green the Thar Desert'…
Lawns and Toxins
Dispossessing irrigators: Water grabbing, supply-side growth and farmer resistance in India
Irrigated Landscapes, Produced Scarcity, and Adaptive Social Institutions in Rajasthan, India
This article employs an actor–network (ANT) and materialist approach to examine the changing relations among nature, society, and technology in dynamic groundwater-irrigated landscapes. Drawing on a case study from Rajasthan, India, it merges these frameworks to advance our understanding of the role that tubewell irrigation technologies play, through their associations with other objects, in altering existing social power relationships, environme…
Turfgrass revolution: Measuring the expansion of the American lawn
Full-Cost Recovery: Producing Differentiated Water Collection Practices and Responses to Centralized Water Networks in Jaipur, India
This paper examines the political ecological effects of the expansion of an urban centralized water-supply network and the transformation of it into a full-cost-recovery system in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. It draws on data collected through a 2007 household survey of six Jaipur neighborhoods stratified by class; follow-up household interviews in 2007 and 2009; and interviews with public water supply managers and private water tanker vendors in bo…
Tracking the sun: Exposing India’s solar dispossessions
Utility-scale solar development in India has dispossessed peasants of land and livelihoods. Smallholders alienated from land have not been equitably remunerated, rehabilitated, nor offered employment at new solar parks. Yet it remains unclear which modalities of dispossession are used across solar sites. Drawing on mixed methods fieldwork from the Gujarat Solar Park and the Kurnool Solar Park, this study advances research on the processes of land…
Introduction to themed issue: Ignorance and uncertainty in environmental decision-making
The relationship between household structures and everyday adaptation and livelihood strategies in northwestern Pakistan
The interactions between household size, capital, and adaptation to social-ecological change has been widely studied; however, little is known about the differences in everyday adaptation to social-ecological change across household structures. Joint family households are increasing in contexts where the nuclear family had previously been the norm, and remains a prevalent structure throughout the world. Thus, it is important to understand how the…
Geographies of big water infrastructure: Contemporary insights and future research opportunities
Largescale "big" water infrastructure is once again at the forefront of the global developmentalist agenda and is receiving attendant scholarly attention. Given this parallel growth, now is time to take stock of current scholarly contributions and explore opportunities for future research. In this paper, I review recent developments and insights gained from research on big water infrastructure, and water infrastructure studies, generally, to high…
Infrastructuring drip irrigation: The gendered assembly of farmers, laborers and state subsidy programs
This paper examines the relationship between the diffusion of drip irrigation technology, state subsidy programs to encourage its adoption by farmers, and gendered labor dynamics. Drip irrigation is promoted globally as a water conserving agricultural innovation that enhances water-use and productive efficiency by increasing yields with less water, while freeing up "saved" water for other uses. India leads the world in its rate of expansion and i…
Social influence shapes adaptive water governance: Empirical evidence from northwestern Pakistan
Social-ecological change has placed unprecedented stress on water resources throughout the world. This has driven water users to employ a diverse range of adaptation strategies and necessitates new governance structures, such as adaptive water governance (AWG), which have the capacity to manage resources in the midst of uncertainty and complexity. As such, AWG has the potential to support household adaptation strategies; however, little empirical…
Uncertain Waters: Participatory groundwater modelling in Chicago’s suburbs
Lawns and Toxins
Turfgrass revolution: Measuring the expansion of the American lawn
Tubewell Capitalism: Groundwater Development and Agrarian Change in Gujarat . By Navroz K. Dubash
Contesting expertise: The politics of environmental knowledge in northern Indian groundwater practices
Agricultural intensification and changes in cultivated areas, 1970–2005
Does the intensification of agriculture reduce cultivated areas and, in so doing, spare some lands by concentrating production on other lands? Such sparing is important for many reasons, among them the enhanced abilities of released lands to sequester carbon and provide other environmental services. Difficulties measuring the extent of spared land make it impossible to investigate fully the hypothesized causal chain from agricultural intensificat…
Irrigated Landscapes, Produced Scarcity, and Adaptive Social Institutions in Rajasthan, India
This article employs an actor–network (ANT) and materialist approach to examine the changing relations among nature, society, and technology in dynamic groundwater-irrigated landscapes. Drawing on a case study from Rajasthan, India, it merges these frameworks to advance our understanding of the role that tubewell irrigation technologies play, through their associations with other objects, in altering existing social power relationships, environme…
Groundwater governmentality: Hegemony and technologies of resistance in Rajasthan's (India) groundwater governance
Globally, decentralisation has become the dominant paradigm for environmental governance. This paper explores the linkages between green governmentality approaches to subjectivity and Gramscian notions of hegemony to examine recent efforts in Rajasthan, India to decentralise groundwater governance through targeted formal regulations and outreach activities, such as water awareness campaigns (Jal Abhiyaan). The latter seeks to alter the beliefs an…
Full-Cost Recovery: Producing Differentiated Water Collection Practices and Responses to Centralized Water Networks in Jaipur, India
This paper examines the political ecological effects of the expansion of an urban centralized water-supply network and the transformation of it into a full-cost-recovery system in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. It draws on data collected through a 2007 household survey of six Jaipur neighborhoods stratified by class; follow-up household interviews in 2007 and 2009; and interviews with public water supply managers and private water tanker vendors in bo…
Network political ecology: Method and theory in climate change vulnerability and adaptation research
This paper argues for the development of ‘network political ecology’, drawing on the insights from regional political ecology and recent advancements in network theories of scale, to meet the challenges of investigating the meso-scale problem of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. ‘Network political ecology’, attentive to scale as socio-ecologically produced and grounded in a regional resource use system, is one such approach that fil…
On the Network, off the Map: Developing Intervillage and Intragender Differentiation in Rural Water Supply
Despite decades of water-supply development programs in the Global South, their effect on gendered access to water remains both unclear and contradictory. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining the expansion of a rural water-supply network aimed at reducing household water scarcity in the arid zone of Rajasthan, India. Specifically, the Indira Gandhi Canal was conceived and constructed during the green revolution to 'green the Thar Desert'…
Dispossessing irrigators: Water grabbing, supply-side growth and farmer resistance in India
Commentary: STS of the Underground
Geographer Trevor Birkenholtz draws out major themes across the articles in the thematic collection "Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation," with reference to cartographic and model production and representation, particularly in the ways that they render the landscapes partially knowable and contestable
The sun and the scythe: Energy Dispossessions and the Agrarian Question of Labor in Solar Parks
Green grabbing is accelerating throughout the Global South to facilitate climate change mitigation. This paper illuminates the discursive and extra-economic means through which the state dispossesses agropastoralists of both land and energy to develop solar parks in semi-arid rural India. We advance the empirical and theoretical aspects of energy dispossessions, with implications for the agrarian question of labor. Using data obtained from mixed …
Photons vs. firewood: Female (dis)empowerment by solar power in India
Renewable energy transitions are accelerating in the Global South. Yet many large-scale renewable energy infrastructures are developed on public lands with unknown impacts on commons access and usage. A prime example of this is the Gujarat Solar Park (GSP) in India, which is one of the world’s largest solar photovoltaic facilities. The GSP is situated on 2,669 acres of previously common property, which has historically been used by female pastora…
Introduction to themed issue: Ignorance and uncertainty in environmental decision-making
Uncertain Waters: Participatory groundwater modelling in Chicago’s suburbs
Social influence shapes adaptive water governance: Empirical evidence from northwestern Pakistan
Social-ecological change has placed unprecedented stress on water resources throughout the world. This has driven water users to employ a diverse range of adaptation strategies and necessitates new governance structures, such as adaptive water governance (AWG), which have the capacity to manage resources in the midst of uncertainty and complexity. As such, AWG has the potential to support household adaptation strategies; however, little empirical…
Geographies of big water infrastructure: Contemporary insights and future research opportunities
Largescale "big" water infrastructure is once again at the forefront of the global developmentalist agenda and is receiving attendant scholarly attention. Given this parallel growth, now is time to take stock of current scholarly contributions and explore opportunities for future research. In this paper, I review recent developments and insights gained from research on big water infrastructure, and water infrastructure studies, generally, to high…
Infrastructuring drip irrigation: The gendered assembly of farmers, laborers and state subsidy programs
This paper examines the relationship between the diffusion of drip irrigation technology, state subsidy programs to encourage its adoption by farmers, and gendered labor dynamics. Drip irrigation is promoted globally as a water conserving agricultural innovation that enhances water-use and productive efficiency by increasing yields with less water, while freeing up "saved" water for other uses. India leads the world in its rate of expansion and i…
The relationship between household structures and everyday adaptation and livelihood strategies in northwestern Pakistan
The interactions between household size, capital, and adaptation to social-ecological change has been widely studied; however, little is known about the differences in everyday adaptation to social-ecological change across household structures. Joint family households are increasing in contexts where the nuclear family had previously been the norm, and remains a prevalent structure throughout the world. Thus, it is important to understand how the…
Tracking the sun: Exposing India’s solar dispossessions
Utility-scale solar development in India has dispossessed peasants of land and livelihoods. Smallholders alienated from land have not been equitably remunerated, rehabilitated, nor offered employment at new solar parks. Yet it remains unclear which modalities of dispossession are used across solar sites. Drawing on mixed methods fieldwork from the Gujarat Solar Park and the Kurnool Solar Park, this study advances research on the processes of land…
Re-conceptualizing climate maladaptation: Complementing social-ecological interactions with relational socionatures
Climate maladaptation is often studied using an “interactional ontology.” • “Relational ontologies” deepen the nature, causes, and redressal of maladaptation. • Maladaptation is constituted through dynamic material and discursive relations. • A case from Maharashtra, India demonstrates the necessity of relational approaches. Cases of climate maladaptation are increasingly documented. Its identification and redressal has become a priority for rese…
Political science (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Geography (14 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (14 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Ecology (9 works) · Agriculture (8 works) · Business (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Environmental Science (7 works)