Academic interests
- Criminal Political Economies, Land Mafia, Processes of Criminalization
- Political Economy, Anthropology of Economy, Land Dispossession, Social Movements
- South Asia, India, Italy
- Political Ecology, Maritime Economies, Environmental Anthropology, Toxicity and Waste in Wetland Environments
Background
Chiara Arnavas is a PhD Candidate at the University of Oslo. Her research interests lie at the intersection between criminal political economies and political ecologies. Her work examines the emergence of South Asian criminal networks of land mafia in relation to larger processes of climate change, projects of urban sustainable development, land dispossession, and social inequalities of class, caste, gender, and religion. Her dissertation, provisionally titled Coerced into Mafia. Crime and Muslim Criminalization in India explores the everyday lives of land mafiosi in Kolkata in the Indian state of West Bengal, and how Muslim dispossessed farmers navigate the risks, discriminations and opportunities connected with wider mafia networks.