Amita Baviskar is a sociologist who studies the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India. Her books, In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley and Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi, use ethnographic methods to bring to life critical issues around resource rights, popular resistance, and discourses of environmentalism.
Baviskar teaches Environmental Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at Ashoka University. She was awarded the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research, and the 2010 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences. Her forthcoming book looks at heat, dust, and rain and how our experience of these elements has altered because of urban and industrial growth. An Indian Anthropocene braids together intimate accounts of feelings and memories, sociological analyses of occupational and lifestyle changes, and scientific data on global warming and pollution to study climate change in India.