Shaila Seshia Galvin
Advisors: Michael Dove and Kalyanakrishnan SivaramakrishnanResearch
My research explores the conjunction of a commercially-oriented development strategy with the formation of regional identity through the promotion and practice of organic agriculture in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand in the central Himalaya. I study how farmers, whose agriculture the state claims is ‘organic by default’, juggle their own farming practices with institutionally defined organic production methods. I further consider how such practices, and the agricultural products that are their result, invoke and are in turn invoked by socially and historically constructed expressions of regional identity. By analyzing the multi-faceted productions of what is known as the ‘Organic Uttarakhand’ initiative, my research aims to highlight the tensions and paradoxes forged through locally situated yet globally ambitious processes of identity formation and institutional practice.
