Arun Agrawal was born in Forbesganj,[1]Bihar, India, where he grew up in a middle-class family. Eventually he moved to Patna to live with an aunt, so that he could attend a better school.[2]
Agrawal received his BA in History from the University of Delhi in 1983. He received an MBA in Development Administration and Public Policy from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1985.
Moving to the United States, he received his Ph.D. in political science from Duke University in 1992.[2][9]
His Ph.D. work involved following Indian shepherds in the Himalayas to better understand how those communities managed commonly held resources.[2]
In 2022, Agrawal was chosen to be a co-chair of the Transformative Change Assessment for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Transformative Change Assessment will address "the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, the determinants of transformative change, and options for achieving the 2050 vision for biodiversity".[12][13]
Publications
Agrawal's work has been published in journals such as Science, Conservation Biology, World Development, and PNAS.[3] In a publication in Nature, Agrawal explores the positive side of disaster in his case study of a 1998 hurricane in Honduras. According to Agrawal, natural disasters like this set the stage for alternative social trajectories.[14]
Books
Agrawal's best known book is Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects, published in 2005.[15]
Previously published books included Greener Pastures: Politics, Markets, and Community Among a Migrant Pastoral People, (1999)[16] and Decentralization in Nepal: A Comparative Analysis (1998).[7]
Reviews
"Arun Agrawal (in Environmentality) provides a most lucid account of the people-government- forest interplay in the 20th century Kumaon Himalayas in this book.... Arun Agrawal addresses these fascinating questions on the basis, not only of archival research, but significantly, on the strength of extensive long-term fieldwork."—The Hindu[17]
"This book (Environmentality) aims to promote Arun Agrawal's own neologism - "environmentality" ... This book, too, has hidden its worthwhile arguments in thickets of verbal profusion, which make it hard to see the teak for the forest."--The Times Higher Education[18]
Books edited
2001: Agrarian Environments: Resources, Representations and Rule in India. Duke University Press, Durham, ISBN0-8223-2555-1
2001: Social Nature: Resources, Representations and Rule in India. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, ISBN0-19-565460-9
2001: Communities and the Environment: Ethnicity, Gender, and the State in Community-Based Conservation. Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, ISBN0-8135-2914-X
2003: Regional Modernities: The Cultural Politics of Development in India. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, ISBN0-8047-4415-7
