Rajiv Rawat’s Portfolio

On this page I have assembled a tentative list of my major papers, presentations, and popular essays fom the last decade. Moreover since 2006, I have served as a semi-regular columnist for the Garhwal Post for which a list of articles has likewise been compiled. My blog entries are however scattered over several sites, and only those written under my own name are included under the menu navigation in the righthand sidebar.

Papers

• Uttarakhand’s Awakening: Collected Articles (1997-2002)
  A collection of articles, news dispatches, and commentaries I authored during the course of the Uttarakhand Movement.
• Sustainable Mountain Development (Fall 2002)
  An introductory piece on the unique challenges presented by mountain environments to human development.
• Governance and Citizen Intervention in Urban Planning Processes of Dehradun, India (Fall 2002)
  A look at the myriad challenges facing India’s cities using my birth place as a case study.
• A Historical Review of Geographic Studies in the Trans Himalayas (Fall 2004)
  Another introductory piece on the various ways scholars have studied the Trans Himalayas.
• Contemporary Environmentalism in the Indian Context (Spring 2005)
  A look at the political milieu in which the Indian environmental movement is maturing.
• Capital City Relocation: Global-Local Perspectives in the Search for an Alternative Modernity (Spring 2005)
  A highly theoretical piece on the cultural politics of uneven development, using the Gairsain-Dehradun controversy as a case study.
• Marx on British Rule in India: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Fall 2005)
  A review of Marx’s seminal articles on the British Raj before and after the Revolt of 1857, and how subsequent scholars have critiqued or drawn on his work to analyse the Indian predicament.

Book Reviews

• 2006. Review of Archana Prasad’s Environmentalism and the Left : Contemporary Debates and Future Agendas in Tribal Areas. Journal of Peasant Studies 33(1) : 140-143.
• 2005. Review of Mridula Mukherjee’s Peasants in India’s Non-Violent Revolution: Practice and Theory. Journal of Peasant Studies 32(2) : 384-387.

Conference Presentations

• 2006. Capital City Relocation and the Quest for Alternative Development. Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (Chicago, Illinois, March 8 ).
• 2005. Geographical Factors in the Political Development of a Himalayan State. Annual Meeting of the Ontario Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers (Ottawa, Ontario, October 29).
• 2005. From Chipko to Jhapto Cheeno: New Movements for Environmental Justice in the Indian Himalayas. Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers (London, Ontario, May 31-June 4).
• 2004. Prospects for Trans-Himalayan Research Amidst Warming Bilaterial Relations between India and China. Annual Meeting of the Ontario Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers (Waterloo, Ontario, October 30).
• 2003. (w/ Bosak, K.) Local Control and the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve. Sustainable Mountain Communities Conference (Banff, Alberta, June 14-18).
• 2001. (editor) Seminar Guide. 3rd Annual Convention of the Uttaranchal Association of North America (Boston, Mass., August 4-5).
• 2001. (contributor). Process of Rapid Globalisation: Repercussions for Fragile Mountain Areas and Mountain Communities, ICIMOD Electronic Conference (Kathmandu, Nepal, May 4-May 28).

Abstract of Master’s Thesis (July 2004)

Chipko’s Quiet Legacy: Forest Rights, Women’s Empowerment, People’s Institutions, and New Urban Struggles in Uttarakhand, India

Since the emergence of Chipko in the early 1970s, much has been written about this unique environmental movement that once caught the imagination of environmentalists, scholars, and journalists alike. As a largely rural struggle of women peasant farmers to reclaim and protect village forests in the Uttarakhand region of India, Chipko seemed to represent at once a new phase of the global environmental movement and a resurgence of the age-old conflict between people and the state over community resources. However, while much of the academic literature has focused on interpreting Chipko through various disciplinary and ideological lenses and engaging in often acrimonious debates over the character and composition of the movement, surprisingly little attention has been paid to its quiet legacy as a catalyzing force for environmental action, local democracy, and social change. Since Chipko, Uttarakhand has witnessed a veritable explosion of creative and groundbreaking responses to the Himalayan region’s numerous environmental and social problems. Community forest management, women’s empowerment, and civil society institutions have especially witnessed three decades of rapid change and advancement. Each in turn has encountered serious obstacles and controversies at the local, national, and even international levels. As such, this paper will attempt to delve into the broader historic and contemporary contexts of these Chipko themes, while moving beyond the movement’s traditional rural orientation to the associated environmental and political transformations taking place in urban centres.

Popular

• 2005. Film Review: The Rising: The Ballad of Mangal Pandey. Z Magazine October.
• 2002. On the Basic Decency of the American People. What’s Up (Boston), October-November.
• 2002. The Beast Awakens in India, Peaceworks, June.
• 1998. AIDS and Asian Americans. Asian American Resource Workshop Newsletter, Summer.
• 1997. Lessons from the Rainforest: Learning from the Penan. Ursus. 7(2): 9-11.
• 1996. Himalayan Women: Grassroots environmental activism. Ursus. 7(1): 8-13.
• 1995. Return of Determinism? Pseudoscience of “The Bell Curve”. Cornell Science & Technology Magazine. 3:10-13.
• 1994. Nature as Laboratory: Interview with Dr. Thomas Eisner. Cornell Science & Technology Magazine. 1:10-12.
• 1994. “Are You My Mother?” Yellow Warbler & Brown-headed Cowbird Interactions. Ursus. 5:10-14.
• 1994. The Decline of Woodland Caribou in North America. Ursus. 4:3-6.