Amid mounting concern about the environmental impact of agriculture, and burgeoning interest in sustainably produced food, the launch of Becoming Organic: Nature and Agriculture in the Indian Himalaya explores the social and bureaucratic life of organic quality. 

The launch will consider how organic can be understood not only as a physical property of land and its produce, but as something that is historically and socially produced and assembled within relationships that link farmers, soil, animals, and crops along with state authorities, private corporations, and new intermediaries across changing agrarian landscapes in India and beyond.

About the Author

Shaila Seshia Galvin is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research examines intersecting processes of agrarian and environmental change. Her abiding interests in this intersection have led her to focus particularly on how emerging practices of sustainability — from organic agriculture to climate change mitigation — become bureaucratized and standardized, and with what implications for human-environment relations more broadly. Shaila is an Associate Professor in Anthropology and Sociology (ANSO) and Faculty Associate with the Centre for
International Environmental Studies (CIES) at the Graduate Institute, Geneva.

Following the book presentation, Shaila Seshia Galvin will be joined for a panel discussion with:

• Susanna Hecht, UCLA Center for Brazilian Studies Director and Professor, International History and Politics, the Graduate Institute, Geneva

• Radhika Govindrajan, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington

• Patricia Spyer, Department Chair & Professor, Anthropology and Sociology and Faculty Associate, Albert Hirshman Centre on Democracy, the Graduate Institute, Geneva (moderator).

The panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A session.