My work fits within the fields of environmental anthropology and the critical anthropology of development. I am particularly interested in struggles over resource use and management in South Asia –with a focus on the Himalaya – and in Australia. Two main threads bring together the specific topics that I have examined. The first is the cultural and religious politics that shape resource management decisions (as well as the conflicts that result). The second is the challenge of inclusive and culturally sensitive resource use.  These threads often lead me to work with social movements and to write into the field of social movement studies. While I have in the past predominantly looked at these issues in rural areas, I am increasingly focusing on urban zones (and the urban metabolism of rural resources).

The Cultural Politics of Resource Management

The contributions I have made to scholarship on the cultural politics of resource use draws from ethnographic data and anthropological concepts to examine the diverse meanings and values associated with water that charge resource conflict as well as the ways that water access can inform human emotions, senses of self, and notions of belonging. Since cultural politics involve the processes enacted when social actors contest dominant meanings and practices, I have examined the nuances of human-water relationships while investigating the criticisms of dam opponents and the complaints of villagers who lament the privatisation of groundwater for the benefit of the soda beverage industry. My scholarship overlaps with studies in religion and ecology, a field in which I also contribute by exploring topics such as Hindu responses to glacial melt and other climate change impacts evident in the Himalaya. In Australia, my work in this field extends its focus on cultural politics to examine the colonial and 'decolonial' approaches to water that impact contemporary Indigenous and settler water rights.

Inclusive and Culturally Sensitive Resource Management

If current patterns of imbalanced water management and development practices persist, millions of people will suffer from a lack of access to basic resources. My work contributes to insights on the behavioural patterns that impact environmental change and policy while illuminating how people contest hierarchies of access and control when it comes to resource allocation decisions.  This work includes critical discussion of the role that anthropologists can play in fostering participatory, policy-relevant research. My approach has a keen gender analysis and my work focuses on explaining the difficulties that women experience to be seen and heard in environmental and development policy debates. The emphasis I have placed on the gendered and socio-economic dimensions of water inequity attracts invitations to submit to special volumes on the topic of women and water. My expertise is also in demand for interdisciplinary discussions of policy relevance.