The article "Climate Change, Gender and Rural development: Making sense of coping strategies in the Shivalik Hills" is published in the special issue of "Conversations on the Anthropocene and Climate Change" in the journal of Contributions to Indian Sociology. You can check out the article from here.
The article offers an ethnographic view on how environmental and climate change (or, the ‘total and interrelated system of soil, vegetation, land, air and water’ (p. 393, 2022) affect gendered trajectories from a small village in North India. This article suggests new strategies to approach rural development that can empower both individuals qua individuals and young couples who live in joint families in a time of great change, pressed to the point by the climate change and development paradigm. As the local environs change rapidly beneath their feet, the situation is further aggravated by equally rapid changes to the social environment, combined with traditional practices of land entitlement. As young men increasingly engage in blue-collar factory jobs, women must take on the additional tasks of managing the land and livestock on top of their household responsibilities. As all struggle to cope with the changes in expectations and coping strategies, the new and first generation of educated women feels most constrained by the traditional expectations of womanhood, dreaming of moving away from the burden of keeping the small landholdings running. A new generation of young rural Indians with their own dreams and ambitions are pressing on for new and revised manners to think about development in rural India.