Changing Hearths and Minds in Rural India

The cooking technologies, fuels, and practices of low income families in the Global South have long been an active site for development interventions. I focus on clean cooking energy technologies promoted to low-income families in rural India and intended to facilitate an energy transition in their kitchens for a variety of health, environmental and social benefits. “Clean cooking”, it is hoped, will empower women, improve their health, and mitigate global climate change. This talk is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in India, and long term research studying engineers and scientists conducting transnational field research to generate insights on household energy transitions, and the health and social impacts of air pollution, and climate change. In addition to 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in India in collaboration with community-based organizations, I draw upon my role as a social scientist and participant-observer in a randomized control trial (RCT) on cookstove adoption and air pollution carried out by a consortium of researchers in the US and Canada. My research extends beyond critically studying the technologies and programs designed to facilitate clean energy transitions to also include the politics of knowledge involved in conducting transnational research with historically marginalized communities for informing and facilitating global energy transitions. This talk is an excerpt from my book manuscript in progress.

Deepti Chatti, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice at Humboldt State University in California, USA. An engineer turned ethnographer, Deepti draws on her interdisciplinary training to analyze clean energy access and exposures to air pollution in historically marginalized communities in India and the United States. Deepti has several ongoing projects in collaboration with communities directly affected by tenuous energy access and climate change impacts, and is currently working on a book manuscript based on long term research carried out in India between 2013-19. Deepti received her PhD and MPhil in Environmental Studies from Yale University with a certificate in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, an MS in Environmental Engineering and Science from Stanford University, and a BE in Civil Engineering from Osmania University. Prior to her current work in academia, Deepti worked for several years in public policy research in India, and as an engineer in California helping cities and counties.