Debarati Sen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3587451 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Debarati Sen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Debarati |
| FAMILY NAME | Sen |
| SIGNATURE | SEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Houston |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9595-6018 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
What fuels a plantation
What types of entangled material, relational, and affective infrastructures are revealed by researching trade in raksi (alcohol/moonshine) to sustain oneself and dreams of a good life in living tea plantations of Darjeeling? In engaging this question, I draw on two decades of longitudinal feminist ethnography and history of contemporary Darjeeling to underscore how regenerative possibilities are nurtured within zones of infrastructural abandonmen…
Gastrofeminism
Gastrofeminism traces the centrality of food within diverse feminist narratives of agency and resistance. This manifesto introduces the theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological scope of Gastrofeminism to rethink feminist genealogies, legacies, and new embodiments of a radical future. It calls for a reckoning of both established and emerging feminist engagements with food, consumption, and culinary practices. This introduction underscores conj…
Decentering Food Pedagogies
In this collaborative essay, five gastrofeminists from various disciplines, mainly literature, anthropology, sociology, ethnic studies, and diverse locations of Global South and Global North, share four collaborative experiments built around two axioms: to integrate experiences of students as gendered and racialized subjects in their experiential learning irrespective of disciplinary boundaries, and to integrate critical feminist scholarship that…
Crisis, Contestation, and Farmer Identity
Agricultural Expertise, Market Connections, and Rural Futures
In the face of rapid neoliberal globalization and climate change, agricultural communities across the globe have demonstrated creative ways to adapt and build resilience. Many of the articles collected in this volume are based on ethnographic research conducted in regions deemed peripheral from the standpoint of national and global markets—the Aysén region in Chile, the Parry Sound District in Ontario, rural Oaxacan villages impacted by labor out…
Finding Hope in Food Systems During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The pandemic is here to stay, and it has tested our endurance mechanisms, especially when it comes to food access and provision. This special issue edited by Dr. Caela O’Connell, titled “More than a Disaster: Creativity in Growing, Distributing, and Accessing Food During COVID-19,” highlights how food distribution and food-related networks responded to the challenge of procurement and distribution during the onset and unfolding of the pandemic. T…
Subnational Enterprise
This article posits that gendered militarized labour, women’s everyday entrepreneurialism and political mobilizations around subnational autonomy are intricately linked. To understand the relationship between these entities, one needs to zero in on the generational dynamics of women’s collective engagement in upholding the martial identity of Gorkhas, and the consequences of such preoccupation on the legibility of Gorkha subjects vis-à-vis the In…
Shyamoli and the unknown male
This article explores the spectrum of violence inflicted and endured by marginalized young people in Kolkata. An unknown youth (possibly a male acquaintance encountered in the first research site in the bustees, or slum communities of Kolkata) and a young girl Shyamoli (the central character in the fictional piece set in a small town or moforshol on the outskirts of Kolkata) present a picture of the ordinary and everyday gendered and class violen…
Women’s Collectives and Social Transformations in South Asia
This introduction to the special issue lays out the importance of studying women’s collectives in South Asia. We argue in this issue that it is particularly important to examine collectives in this moment because transformations in South Asian women’s lives are increasingly described in individual terms in state policy and international development discourses. The emphasis on individual empowerment alone, however, effaces the subtle negotiations …
Anthropological Perspectives on Anti-Immigrant Policies and Food System Precarity in the Trump Era
As we go to print with this issue at the end of October 2020, the November 3rd presidential election and the indeterminate end of the COVID-19 pandemic weigh heavily on our minds. The results of this election and decisions about how to deal with the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic will affect us all for years to come. In a moment when essential workers are honored as heroes, perhaps the most essential workers in our labor system-immigra…
Crisis, Disruption, and Renewal
At the time we are writing this, the world is focused on fighting an unprecedented global pandemic following the spread of COVID-19. Many have been advised to work from home, and “social distancing” policies prohibit face-to-face interactions or social gatherings of more than ten. The articles in this issue reflect the creative and collaborative ways that anthropologists, including archaeologists, study how people experience and adapt to rapid or…
Fempreneurs or organic tea farmers? Entrepreneurialism, resilience and alternative agriculture in Darjeeling, India
In this article I underscore how women organic tea farmers build economic resilience through dual enactments as "organic farmers" and as "entrepreneurs." In substantiating both, women question the limited optics through which Fair Trade type sustainability ventures measure their work for a tea cooperative, as well poorly recognizing their entrepreneurial work in their households and community. Women are deeply aware of the politics of Fair Trade …
Everyday Sustainability
Everyday Sustainability takes readers to ground zero of market-based sustainability initiatives—Darjeeling, India—where Fair Trade ostensibly promises gender justice to minority Nepali women engaged in organic tea production. These women tea farmers and plantation workers have distinct entrepreneurial strategies and everyday practices of social justice that at times dovetail with and at other times rub against the tenets of the emerging global mo…
Everyday Sustainability
Illuminates the contradictions that emerge within conscious capitalism initiatives that are designed to empower women. Honorable Mention, 2019 Michelle Z. Rosaldo Prize presented by the Association for Feminist Anthropology Winner of the 2018 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize presented by the National Women's Studies Association Winner of the 2018 Global Development Studies Book Award presented by the Global Development Studies Section of the Interna…
Affective Solidarities
A bstract The popularity of fair trade products has engendered new possibilities for consumer citizens in the global North to demonstrate solidarity with producers in the global South. Fair trade enthusiasts not only buy labelled products as an act of solidarity with producers in Darjeeling’s tea plantations; but also extend their affective solidarity by voluntarily visiting certified production sites to witness how fair trade affects workers’ li…
Narratives of risk and poor rural women’s (dis)-engagements with microcredit-based development in Eastern India
Microcredit has come under severe academic criticism in recent years, but the diversity of local practices and discourses that respond to and critique microcredit is still under-examined. By exploring emergent entrepreneurial practices and strategic loan avoidance in Darjeeling, India, expressed locally in narratives of “risk,” this article emphasizes the counter-hegemonic aspects of local engagements with microcredit. We contend that women are n…
Fair Trade vs. Swaccha Vyāpār
Views on Policy, Human Rights Forum
VIEWS ON POLICY: “Anthropology and Development Policy: Engaging the Other at Home” by Edward R Carr Pam Putenney is contributing editor of “Views on Policy,” the AAA Committee on Public Policy column in Anthropology News. HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM: “Trade‐Based Human Rights Interventions: Can They Promote Collective empowerment of Workers in the Global South?” by Debarati Sen Gretchen E Schafft is contributing editor of “Human Rights Forum,” the AAA Com…
Fair Trade and Fair Trade Certifi cation of Food and Agricultural Commodities
The global circulation of food and agricultural commodities is increasingly influenced by the ethical choices of Western consumers and activists who want to see a socially and environmentally sustainable trade regime in place. These desires have culminated in the formation of an elaborate system of rules, which govern the physical and social conditions of food production and circulation, reflected in transnational ethical regimes such as fair tra…
Third World Environmental Justice
This special issue relates the key analytical constructs of environmental justice scholarship – distributive justice, procedural justice and environmental racism – to a series of Third World case studies. It calls attention to the need to theorize both distributive burdens and benefits; treat the relative salience of race as a category of differentiation as an empirical question; and examine new avenues of procedural justice that have opened up t…
Third World Environmental Justice
This special issue relates the key analytical constructs of environmental justice scholarship – distributive justice, procedural justice and environmental racism – to a series of Third World case studies. It calls attention to the need to theorize both distributive burdens and benefits; treat the relative salience of race as a category of differentiation as an empirical question; and examine new avenues of procedural justice that have opened up t…
Narratives of risk and poor rural women’s (dis)-engagements with microcredit-based development in Eastern India
Microcredit has come under severe academic criticism in recent years, but the diversity of local practices and discourses that respond to and critique microcredit is still under-examined. By exploring emergent entrepreneurial practices and strategic loan avoidance in Darjeeling, India, expressed locally in narratives of “risk,” this article emphasizes the counter-hegemonic aspects of local engagements with microcredit. We contend that women are n…
Fempreneurs or organic tea farmers? Entrepreneurialism, resilience and alternative agriculture in Darjeeling, India
In this article I underscore how women organic tea farmers build economic resilience through dual enactments as "organic farmers" and as "entrepreneurs." In substantiating both, women question the limited optics through which Fair Trade type sustainability ventures measure their work for a tea cooperative, as well poorly recognizing their entrepreneurial work in their households and community. Women are deeply aware of the politics of Fair Trade …
Fair Trade and Fair Trade Certifi cation of Food and Agricultural Commodities
The global circulation of food and agricultural commodities is increasingly influenced by the ethical choices of Western consumers and activists who want to see a socially and environmentally sustainable trade regime in place. These desires have culminated in the formation of an elaborate system of rules, which govern the physical and social conditions of food production and circulation, reflected in transnational ethical regimes such as fair tra…
Crisis, Contestation, and Farmer Identity
Finding Hope in Food Systems During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The pandemic is here to stay, and it has tested our endurance mechanisms, especially when it comes to food access and provision. This special issue edited by Dr. Caela O’Connell, titled “More than a Disaster: Creativity in Growing, Distributing, and Accessing Food During COVID-19,” highlights how food distribution and food-related networks responded to the challenge of procurement and distribution during the onset and unfolding of the pandemic. T…
Subnational Enterprise
This article posits that gendered militarized labour, women’s everyday entrepreneurialism and political mobilizations around subnational autonomy are intricately linked. To understand the relationship between these entities, one needs to zero in on the generational dynamics of women’s collective engagement in upholding the martial identity of Gorkhas, and the consequences of such preoccupation on the legibility of Gorkha subjects vis-à-vis the In…
Women’s Collectives and Social Transformations in South Asia
This introduction to the special issue lays out the importance of studying women’s collectives in South Asia. We argue in this issue that it is particularly important to examine collectives in this moment because transformations in South Asian women’s lives are increasingly described in individual terms in state policy and international development discourses. The emphasis on individual empowerment alone, however, effaces the subtle negotiations …
Fair Trade vs. Swaccha Vyāpār
Third World Environmental Justice
This special issue relates the key analytical constructs of environmental justice scholarship – distributive justice, procedural justice and environmental racism – to a series of Third World case studies. It calls attention to the need to theorize both distributive burdens and benefits; treat the relative salience of race as a category of differentiation as an empirical question; and examine new avenues of procedural justice that have opened up t…
Views on Policy, Human Rights Forum
VIEWS ON POLICY: “Anthropology and Development Policy: Engaging the Other at Home” by Edward R Carr Pam Putenney is contributing editor of “Views on Policy,” the AAA Committee on Public Policy column in Anthropology News. HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM: “Trade‐Based Human Rights Interventions: Can They Promote Collective empowerment of Workers in the Global South?” by Debarati Sen Gretchen E Schafft is contributing editor of “Human Rights Forum,” the AAA Com…
Fair Trade and Fair Trade Certifi cation of Food and Agricultural Commodities
The global circulation of food and agricultural commodities is increasingly influenced by the ethical choices of Western consumers and activists who want to see a socially and environmentally sustainable trade regime in place. These desires have culminated in the formation of an elaborate system of rules, which govern the physical and social conditions of food production and circulation, reflected in transnational ethical regimes such as fair tra…
Fair Trade vs. Swaccha Vyāpār
Narratives of risk and poor rural women’s (dis)-engagements with microcredit-based development in Eastern India
Microcredit has come under severe academic criticism in recent years, but the diversity of local practices and discourses that respond to and critique microcredit is still under-examined. By exploring emergent entrepreneurial practices and strategic loan avoidance in Darjeeling, India, expressed locally in narratives of “risk,” this article emphasizes the counter-hegemonic aspects of local engagements with microcredit. We contend that women are n…
Affective Solidarities
A bstract The popularity of fair trade products has engendered new possibilities for consumer citizens in the global North to demonstrate solidarity with producers in the global South. Fair trade enthusiasts not only buy labelled products as an act of solidarity with producers in Darjeeling’s tea plantations; but also extend their affective solidarity by voluntarily visiting certified production sites to witness how fair trade affects workers’ li…
Everyday Sustainability
Everyday Sustainability takes readers to ground zero of market-based sustainability initiatives—Darjeeling, India—where Fair Trade ostensibly promises gender justice to minority Nepali women engaged in organic tea production. These women tea farmers and plantation workers have distinct entrepreneurial strategies and everyday practices of social justice that at times dovetail with and at other times rub against the tenets of the emerging global mo…
Everyday Sustainability
Illuminates the contradictions that emerge within conscious capitalism initiatives that are designed to empower women. Honorable Mention, 2019 Michelle Z. Rosaldo Prize presented by the Association for Feminist Anthropology Winner of the 2018 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize presented by the National Women's Studies Association Winner of the 2018 Global Development Studies Book Award presented by the Global Development Studies Section of the Interna…
Fempreneurs or organic tea farmers? Entrepreneurialism, resilience and alternative agriculture in Darjeeling, India
In this article I underscore how women organic tea farmers build economic resilience through dual enactments as "organic farmers" and as "entrepreneurs." In substantiating both, women question the limited optics through which Fair Trade type sustainability ventures measure their work for a tea cooperative, as well poorly recognizing their entrepreneurial work in their households and community. Women are deeply aware of the politics of Fair Trade …
Subnational Enterprise
This article posits that gendered militarized labour, women’s everyday entrepreneurialism and political mobilizations around subnational autonomy are intricately linked. To understand the relationship between these entities, one needs to zero in on the generational dynamics of women’s collective engagement in upholding the martial identity of Gorkhas, and the consequences of such preoccupation on the legibility of Gorkha subjects vis-à-vis the In…
Shyamoli and the unknown male
This article explores the spectrum of violence inflicted and endured by marginalized young people in Kolkata. An unknown youth (possibly a male acquaintance encountered in the first research site in the bustees, or slum communities of Kolkata) and a young girl Shyamoli (the central character in the fictional piece set in a small town or moforshol on the outskirts of Kolkata) present a picture of the ordinary and everyday gendered and class violen…
Women’s Collectives and Social Transformations in South Asia
This introduction to the special issue lays out the importance of studying women’s collectives in South Asia. We argue in this issue that it is particularly important to examine collectives in this moment because transformations in South Asian women’s lives are increasingly described in individual terms in state policy and international development discourses. The emphasis on individual empowerment alone, however, effaces the subtle negotiations …
Anthropological Perspectives on Anti-Immigrant Policies and Food System Precarity in the Trump Era
As we go to print with this issue at the end of October 2020, the November 3rd presidential election and the indeterminate end of the COVID-19 pandemic weigh heavily on our minds. The results of this election and decisions about how to deal with the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic will affect us all for years to come. In a moment when essential workers are honored as heroes, perhaps the most essential workers in our labor system-immigra…
Crisis, Disruption, and Renewal
At the time we are writing this, the world is focused on fighting an unprecedented global pandemic following the spread of COVID-19. Many have been advised to work from home, and “social distancing” policies prohibit face-to-face interactions or social gatherings of more than ten. The articles in this issue reflect the creative and collaborative ways that anthropologists, including archaeologists, study how people experience and adapt to rapid or…
Agricultural Expertise, Market Connections, and Rural Futures
In the face of rapid neoliberal globalization and climate change, agricultural communities across the globe have demonstrated creative ways to adapt and build resilience. Many of the articles collected in this volume are based on ethnographic research conducted in regions deemed peripheral from the standpoint of national and global markets—the Aysén region in Chile, the Parry Sound District in Ontario, rural Oaxacan villages impacted by labor out…
Finding Hope in Food Systems During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The pandemic is here to stay, and it has tested our endurance mechanisms, especially when it comes to food access and provision. This special issue edited by Dr. Caela O’Connell, titled “More than a Disaster: Creativity in Growing, Distributing, and Accessing Food During COVID-19,” highlights how food distribution and food-related networks responded to the challenge of procurement and distribution during the onset and unfolding of the pandemic. T…
Crisis, Contestation, and Farmer Identity
Gastrofeminism
Gastrofeminism traces the centrality of food within diverse feminist narratives of agency and resistance. This manifesto introduces the theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological scope of Gastrofeminism to rethink feminist genealogies, legacies, and new embodiments of a radical future. It calls for a reckoning of both established and emerging feminist engagements with food, consumption, and culinary practices. This introduction underscores conj…
Decentering Food Pedagogies
In this collaborative essay, five gastrofeminists from various disciplines, mainly literature, anthropology, sociology, ethnic studies, and diverse locations of Global South and Global North, share four collaborative experiments built around two axioms: to integrate experiences of students as gendered and racialized subjects in their experiential learning irrespective of disciplinary boundaries, and to integrate critical feminist scholarship that…
What fuels a plantation
What types of entangled material, relational, and affective infrastructures are revealed by researching trade in raksi (alcohol/moonshine) to sustain oneself and dreams of a good life in living tea plantations of Darjeeling? In engaging this question, I draw on two decades of longitudinal feminist ethnography and history of contemporary Darjeeling to underscore how regenerative possibilities are nurtured within zones of infrastructural abandonmen…
Political science (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Agriculture (4 works)