Publications & Resources

Our faculty, students and researchers work together everyday to contribute to a better world by grappling with urgent problems we are facing in India. We conduct rigorous work to produce high quality learning resources and publications to contribute to public discourse and social change. Here, we feature a sample from our work for everyone to access. You can explore featured resources, policies, and the latest publications from the University. 

To explore all the work of our University, please visit our publications repository.

  • Article

    Published
    Authors

    Abstract

    Culture-specific knowledge plays an important role in shaping environmental conservation. Yet we lack a holistic and contemporary understanding of how such local cultural systems interface(d) with ecologies, especially in the fast-growing cities of the Global South which face profound environmental challenges. In this paper, we explore nature-based cultural systems embedded in folk-songs to understand situated social-ecological histories of human-inhabited peri-urban landscapes in the city of Bengaluru in South India. Drawing on empirical observations from the city, we trace local imageries of erstwhile lake-based social systems through folk-songs, mythologies and oral narratives. We demonstrate how many of these cultural narratives, largely embedded within symbolic linkages to the lake ecology, continue to manifest themselves as folk expressions in the city, despite the fact that most of the lakes have been polluted or are managed via restrictions that prohibit village residents from accessing them as they once did for agriculture, livelihoods and domestic use. The songs are also rich reminders of socialities, which, despite being divisive and hierarchical to a large extent, were symbolically and materially embedded in nature.

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    Published
    Authors
    • School of Education

    Abstract

    An immigrant, who worked in an American machine shop, acquired polite standard spoken English by reading romance novels in an 18-week adult extensive-reading English as a Spoken Language (ESL) class. Full time employment in the machine shop and once-a-week class discussions provided the only places where the student was routinely exposed to spoken English.

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