Skip to the content | Change text size

Haripriya Rangan

Picture of Haripriya Rangan

Senior Lecturer

I am interested in issues that address regional sustainability and resilience from the perspectives of economic geography, development, and political ecology.

RESEARCH

Research interests:

Ongoing Research

1. The political ecology of plant exchanges around the Indian Ocean: My current research with Dr. Christian Kull on plant exchanges around the Indian Ocean engages in a comparative analysis of how introduced acacia species have fared in four sites: the highlands of Madagascar, the highlands of Mpumalanga Province in South Africa, the highlands in southern India, and the outback of northern Australia.  In this research, we focus on: 1) the reasons for the introduction of the species; 2) how these introduced species have been diffused and dispersed across the landscape; and 3) how different social groups and institutions regard the presence of these introduced species in these
landscapes.  The research project is funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council.

2. The social geographies of marketplace trade:  A large proportion of people in the world are involved in small-scale trade and businesses that support the everyday life of regions.  Despite their crucial role in creating livelihood networks and marketplace trade within and across regions, most policy makers view these ‘informal sector’ actors and their economic activities as peripheral to the growth of national economies.  I am working on a monograph that rethinks the concept of ‘informal economy’ as regionalised social geographies of marketplace trade, and shows how this alternative concept can provide a richer understanding of how these ‘businesses of everyday life’ of regions contribute to different processes and patterns of regional economic growth and resilience.

3. Commons resource management and the geography of the medicinal plant trade in South Africa: My research in South Africa focuses on two aspects of natural resource management: first, how post-apartheid reforms in rural areas affect people whose livelihoods depend on harvesting commons resources for subsistence or sale; and second, how the economic geography of trade in commons resources influences the ways in which these are subject to conservation and management.  My empirical research on the economic geography of the medicinal plant trade in South Africa has included fieldwork in the provinces of Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo, and in the two largest urban centres for the medicinal plant trade, Johannesburg and Durban.

Research Supervision:

I supervise research students working on a wide range of topics relating to development issues, environmental and natural resources management in various regions of the world.

Doctoral Students

MA Research Students
(Co-supervision with Dr. C. Kull)

Honours research students at Monash University

TEACHING

RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

Books

Rangan, H. 2000. Of Myths and Movements: Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History, London: Verso Press. (also published by Oxford University Press, Delhi, India)

Friedmann, J. and Rangan, H. 1993. In Defense of Livelihood: Comparative Studies in Environmental Action, edited with John Friedmann, Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.

Articles

Please Email me for copies (electronic or paper versions) of the articles you cannot get from your library.

Rangan, H. and Kull, C. What makes ecology ‘political’?  Rethinking ‘scale’ in political ecology through plant movements, revised and resubmitted to Progress in Human Geography (Nov 2007)

Kull, C. and Rangan, H. Acacia exchanges: Wattles, thorn trees and the study of plant movements, Geoforum. In press.

Rangan, H.Development’ in Question, in Kevin Cox, Jennifer Robinson, and Murray Low eds. The Handbook of Political Geography. London: Sage. In press.

Kull, C., Tassin, J. and Rangan, H. 2007. Multifunctional, scrubby, and invasive forest? Wattles in the highlands of Madagascar. Mountain Research and Development 27(3): 224-231.

Rangan, H. 2004. From Chipko to Uttaranchal: The Environment of Protest and Development in the Indian Himalaya”, in R. Peet and M. Watts eds. Liberation Ecologies, Second Edition. London: Routledge.

Rangan, H. and Gilmartin, M. 2002. Gender, Traditional Authority, and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa. Development and Change. 33 (4): 633-658.

Rangan, H. 2001. The Muti Trade: South Africa’s Indigenous Medicines”, Diversity. 2 (6): 16-25.

Rangan, H. and Lane, M. 2001. Indigenous Peoples and Forest Management: Comparative Analysis of Institutional Approaches in Australia and India”, Society and Natural Resources, Vol.14 (2): 145-160.

Rangan, H. 2000. The Political Ecology of Sustainability and Forest Management: Reflections on Contemporary Theories and Material Practices”, in F.P. Gale and R.M. M’Gonigle eds. Nature, Production, Power: Towards and Ecological Political Economy. pp.121-140. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Rangan, H. 2000. State Economic Policies and Changing Regional Landscapes in the Uttarakhand Himalaya”, in A. Agarwal and K. Sivaramakrishnan eds. Agrarian Environments: Resources, Representation, and Rule in India. pp. 23-46. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

Rangan, H. 1999.Bitter-Sweet Liaisons in a Contentious Democracy: Radical Planning through State Agency in Postcolonial India”, Plurimondi, Vol. 1 (2): 47-66.

Rangan, H. 1997. Indian Environmentalism and the Question of the State: Problems and Prospects for Sustainable Development”, Environment and Planning (A), 29 (12): 2129-2143.

Rangan, H. 1997. Property vs. Control: The State and Forest Management in the Indian Himalaya”, Development and Change, 28 (1): 71-94.

Rangan, H. 1996. From Chipko to Uttaranchal: Development, Environment, and Social Protest in the Garhwal Himalayas”, in R. Peet and M.J. Watts eds. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, pp. 205-226. London: Routledge.

Rangan, H. 1995. Contested Boundaries: State Policies, Forest Classifications, and Deforestation in the Garhwal Himalayas”, Antipode,  27 (4): 343-362.

Rangan, H. 1993. Romancing the Environment: Popular Environmental Action in the Garhwal Himalayas”, in J. Friedmann and H. Rangan (eds.), In Defense of Livelihoods: Comparative Studies in Environmental Action, pp. 155-181. Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.

Rangan, H. 1990. Hadija: Three Stories, Emergences: Journal for the Study of Composite Cultures, 1 (2): 46-48.

PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT

1999 - 2001 Lecturer, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Australia
1997-99 Lecturer, School of Social Sciences and Planning, RMIT, Australia.
1995-97 Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Kentucky
1994 Visiting Lecturer, Social Policy Programme, University of Durban-Westville, South Africa
1994 Postdoctoral Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of California- Berkeley
1992-93 Graduate Teaching Associate, Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California-Los Angeles
1986-89 Transportation Planning Assistant, Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), Los Angeles.
1984-85 Architect-Planner, Vastushilpa Foundation, Ahmedabad, India.
1983-84 Planning Consultant, CEPT Study Cell, Ahmedabad, India.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
  Board of Directors, Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, 2005-
Associate Director, Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, 2002 - present
Book Series Editorial Board, Institute of Postcolonial Studies, 2001- present
Editorial Board, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2001-2006


Room Number: S121, Menzies Building
Telephone Number: +61-3-9905 5300
Fax Number: +61-3-9905 2948
Haripriya.Rangan@arts.monash.edu.au

 

GES Home

About Us

For Students

News and Events