Nikhil Anand
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Biography
PhD (Anthropology), Stanford University, 2011.
MESc (Environmental Science), Yale University, 2004.
BA (Biology), Reed College, 1998.
My research interests include political ecology, political economy and state formation; infrastructure and technology; urban studies, democracy and citizenship; South Asia (particularly India).
Research
My first book length manuscript, Infrapolitics: The Social Life of Water in Mumbai, is based on two years of ethnographic research in Mumbai, India. Framed by anxious debates about urbanization in the south on one hand, and disappearing water resources on the other, the book is an ethnographic account of how water is moved to and through the cities of Mumbai, and accessed by those living in the its settlements. I show how, to get water, settlers need to assemble their hydraulic infrastructure not only by mobilizing pumps, pipes, and plumbers, but also city engineers, politicians, friends and family. By drawing attention to these social and material infrastructures, the book describes how the city’s public works work, and illustrates how politically marginalized residents access water despite the exclusions of states and markets.
In 2008, I collaborated with an arts collective, CAMP, and two youth groups, Aagaz and Aakansha to produce Ek Dozen Paani (One Dozen Waters), a series of twelve short films. The films have been made with the members of the youth groups shooting on their own, bringing their footage into a collective pool, and writing over images in analytical, diarisitic or essay styles. Taken together, the twelve stories speak of water’s time and place, of leaky systems and subterranean flows, of struggle and/over imagination.
Publications
Anand, N. 2012. Municipal Disconnect: On Abject Water and its Urban Infrastructures. Ethnography 13(4) 487-509.
Anand, N. 2011. Pressure: The PoliTechnics of Water Supply in Mumbai. Cultural Anthropology 26(4) 542-563.
Anand, N. and Rademacher A. 2011. Housing in the Urban Age: Inequality and Aspiration in Mumbai. Antipode 43(5):1748-1772.
Anand, N. 2006. Disconnecting Experience: Making World Class Roads in Mumbai. Economic and Political Weekly 41:3422-3429.
Anand, N. 2006. Planning Networks: Processing India's Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. Conservation and Society 4(3): 471-487.