Background
Transitioning out of the course’s Capitalocene unit, lab groups were instructed to begin thinking about other significant environmental influences. As we’ve explored in weeks past, the Anthropocene’s broad (and arguably vague) “human activity” or “anthropos” and the “capital” of the Capitalocene provide robust frameworks that guide thinking, questioning and research about the environment. This left our class wondering, what other environmental drivers are waiting to become frameworks? As my lab partner, Margot, and I prepare for a semester abroad in India in the fall of 2019, we decided that situating our research there could prime our thinking about the country’s unique environmental drivers.
Originating in ancient India and transformed by ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, the caste system in India is the basis of education and job reservations in India today (Wikipedia). Based on conclusions we drew from our investigation of the Capitalocene, we have a hunch that social stratification in general, and caste in particular influences Indians’ environments. Following this hunch, we coined “The Castecene” as a frame for situated environmental study in India. With the Castecene we hope to offer an alternative frame for environmental research that can spur questions that aren’t asked under other situated or more general preexisting frameworks.
Procedure
Our group began our research for key literature on Google Scholar. When selecting sources we considered the source’s type, number of citations, year of publication, and, of course, relevance to our framing question and situated context. We also used the databases on our school library’s website to get access to some of the sources we found. As previously discussed, our framing question relates social class and environment, and our situated context is India. As we collected sources we used Zotero, a cloud-based research platform to store our sources an an easily accessible online library. Zotero allowed us to keep our sources straight by utilizing tags to distinguish between framing and focus sources. A crucial part of our research process was determining how each article or book will help us address the main questions. These brief descriptions are in the abstract field underneath what the author has written about their work.
Results & Discussion
Our research identified a couple major themes and discourses surrounding the answer to our question. Some of these include—how the middle class approaches environmental issues in India and how it differs from the other classes, how Western ideas about environmentalism are different than those present in India and how the social environment of India is a huge aspect of determining the physical environment. These major situated themes tie in with our framing research regarding the ties between class and environment.
Because we are headed to India, we have the opportunity to evaluate our Castecene framework in our situated context and look forward to doing so.
Grace Anderson 