Dr. Pratyusha Basu
Dr. Pratyusha Basu is an Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Texas-El Paso. She has a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Iowa, Iowa City and an M.A. in Geography/Regional Development and Planning from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (India). Her research focuses on rural economies, rural to urban transitions, and gender identities in the Global South and her main field sites are India and Kenya. Specific topics include women’s work in small-scale dairy development, rural displacements, urban environments, social movements, and animal geographies. She mainly utilizes qualitative and ethnographic methods in her research. Dr. Basu’s book, Villages, Women, and the Success of Dairy Cooperatives in India, is an ethnographic analysis of how changing gender and class relations have enabled the adoption of crossbred dairy cattle in rural India. Her research has been published in a variety of journals, including Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Professional Geographer, and Environmental Research Letters. She was also the recipient of a Fulbright Research Award which funded her fieldwork on small-scale dairying in Kenya.
UTEP Faculty Profile
Selected Publications
Books
Basu, Pratyusha and Scholten, Bruce. eds. 2013. Technological and Social Dimensions of the Green Revolution: Connecting Pasts and Futures. Routledge.
Basu, Pratyusha. 2009. Villages, Women, and the Success of Dairy Cooperatives in India: Making Place for Rural Development. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.
Book Chapters
Basu, Pratyusha and Klepek, James. 2015. Geographies and Histories of the Green Revolution: From Global Flows to Place-Based Experiences. In Guy Robinson and Doris Carson (eds.), Handbook on the Globalisation of Agriculture, pp.237-254. Edward Elgar.
Basu, Pratyusha. 2012. Aftermath of Dams and Displacement in India’s Narmada River Valley: Linking Compensation Policies with Experiences of Resettlement. In Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt (eds.) Rethinking Displacement: Asia-Pacific Perspectives, pp.95-114. Ashgate.
Journal Articles
Basu, Pratyusha and Chakraborty, Jayajit. 2016. Environmental justice implications of industrial hazardous waste generation in India: a national scale analysis. Environmental Research Letters, 11(12) 125001.
Basu, Pratyusha and Scholten, Bruce. 2012. Crop-Livestock Systems in Rural Development: Linking India’s Green and White Revolutions. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp.175-191.
Basu, Pratyusha and Chakraborty, Jayajit. 2011. New Technologies, Old Divides: Linking Internet Access to Social and Locational Characteristics of U.S. Farms. GeoJournal, Vol. 76, No. 5, Oct, pp.469-481.
Basu, Pratyusha. 2009. Success and Failure of Crossbred Cows in India: A Place-Based Approach to Rural Development. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 99, No. 4, Oct, pp.746-766.
Basu, Pratyusha and Chakraborty, Jayajit. 2008. Land, Labor, and Rural Development: Analyzing Participation in India’s Village Dairy Cooperatives. Professional Geographer, Vol. 60, No. 3, Aug, pp.299-313.