Gayatri Menon
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Sociology of Development
- Political Sociology
- Modernity
- Urban Sociology
- Political Economy
- Ethnography
- Feminist Theory and Historical Sociology
Biography
Gayatri Menon works on the political economy of development, focusing on urbanization, displacement, and questions of home. She has taught at the graduate and post-graduate levels for several years, first at Cornell University and subsequently at Franklin and Marshall College, offering courses in political sociology and on theories, politics and practices of development. She also has extensive experience in the NGO sector, having worked on rural livelihoods and indebtedness in Maharashtra, on agricultural practices and politics in Garhwal, on land tenure and housing rights with a global network of women’s groups, and has served on the board of Aangan Trust for over ten years.
She has published her research in peer-reviewed journals, developed issue briefs, and co-edited Accumulating Insecurity: Violence and Dispossession in the making of everyday life. She is currently working on a book on the lives and histories of pavement dwellers in Mumbai.
Courses
The Global Context of Development
This course examines the meanings and history of the process known as globalization, locating the present moment in a longer history of capitalism, colonialism and neo-colonial governance.
Gender and Development
What is it about being a woman or a man that particularly heightens our risks of being affected by certain issues/problems?
Qualitative Research Inquiry in Development Practice
Training in qualitative research and analysis to enhance skills and confidence to produce and analyse qualitative evidence.
Theories and Histories of Development
Histories and theories of development across contexts, tracing changes in the meaning of the practice of development.
Sociology of Modern India
Sociological approaches to modern India.
Publications and Writings
- 2014 – ‘Land Tenure and Disasters: Strengthening and Clarifying Land Rights in Disaster Risk Reduction and Post-Disaster Programming,’ with Cynthia Caron and Lauren Kuritz. USAID Issue Brief.
- 2013 — ‘Citizens and ‘Squatters’: the contested subject of public policy in neoliberal Mumbai,’ in a special issue on ethics and social policy in Ethics and Social Welfare 7:2, pp.155 – 169
- 2012 — ‘Slums in India.’ The New Oxford Companion to Economics in India. Edited by Kaushik Basu. New Delhi: Oxford University Press
- 2011 — Accumulating Insecurity: Violence and Dispossession in the making of everyday life, edited with Shelley Feldman and Charles Geisler, University of Georgia Press
- 2010 — ‘Recoveries of Space and Subjectivity in the Shadow of Violence: the Clandestine Politics of Pavement Dwellers in Mumbai ’ in Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change, edited by Philip McMichael. Routledge