Towards a Political Ecology of Household Energy Transitions in India
Fellowship Year:
2016
Degree:
PhD
Research Country:
India
Research Continent:
Asia
Partner Organizations:
Jagriti
Abstract:
The purpose of my research is to better understand the puzzles surrounding household energy transitions in rural India. While researchers, aid organizations, development experts, and government officials have come to an agreement on the egregious health, environmental, and gender impacts of traditional cooking activities, the purported beneficiaries of cookstove programs – poor rural households - have not embraced the solutions being given to them, leading to numerous failed cookstove programs. I conducted a multi-sited ethnography to unravel the mysteries of household energy transitions in rural India, and closely and critically examine the technologies and efforts to promote them in the local socio-political context in which they are deployed. I found a vast array of actors working on household energy in India – motivated by different concerns and priorities such as climate change, deforestation, gender empowerment, or the promotion of a clean energy industry in India. My research will enhance the discussions surrounding clean energy access to the rural poor, by providing fine-grained ethnographic information about what rural households in a particular site in India think about household energy, and contextualize and compare their needs with the discourses mobilized by government agencies, international aid organizations, policy advocates, and academic researchers.
As one of nearly 20 students whose international research projects are being funded this summer by the F&ES-based Tropical Resources Institute (TRI), ...