KABERI DUTTA
Kaberi Dutta is an anthropologist with two decades of experience in the fields of health and environment in South Asia. Her current research focuses on human-animal conflict in the Indian Sundarbans and Western Ghats, examining the impact of development and conservation policies in shaping these conflicts. After a successful 12-year career in the development sector, she is now pursuing doctoral research, bringing extensive expertise in both academic and policy-oriented research. Kaberi has collaborated with leading global organisations, including Population Services International and UNAIDS, as well as with government institutions and grassroots organisations in India.
Doctoral Research
Can Ecological Rituals Reinvent Sustainability Science?
The project examines the potential of ecological rituals and deities, such as Bonbibi in the Indian Sundarbans and Waghoba in western India, to offer alternative frameworks for biodiversity conservation and sustainability. Unlike exclusionary Western approaches, such as fortress conservation, which enforce rigid boundaries between humans and ecosystems by isolating protected areas, these eco-localised deities mediate human-animal conflicts and regulate shared access to forest commons through culturally embedded codes of conduct. Bonbibi, for instance, transcends religious boundaries to govern interactions with Royal Bengal Tigers, while Waghoba facilitates coexistence with leopards at forest margins. Both deities inscribe sustainable practices into daily life, offering culturally specific yet adaptable models of ecosystem management.
The research critically interrogates how such non-Western, ritualised approaches to environmental governance can inform global sustainability paradigms. It seeks to create a transcultural knowledge regime by integrating local ecological practices with Western scientific methodologies, addressing key questions about the co-creation of nature, the codification of conservation in lived practices, and the potential for hybrid frameworks to sustain the global commons within planetary boundaries.
Select Publication
- Ghosh, A., & Dutta, K. (2024). Health threats of climate change: From intersectional analysis to justice-based radicalism. Ecology and Society, 29(2).
- Ghosh, A., Sen, A., Dutta, K., & Ghosh, P. (2022). Falling “fortresses”: Unlocking governance entanglements and shifting knowledge paradigms to counter climate change threats in biodiversity conservation. Environmental Management, 69(2), 305–322.
- Dutta, K. (2020). Under Her Vigil: When a Goddess Guards the Forest. In A. Ghosh (Ed.), Tides of Life: Surviving Between the Margins (pp. 59–69). India Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Govt of India. ISBN: 978-81-942224-1-5.
- Dutta, K. (2016). Puffed Rice to Potato Chips: Malnutrition and Changing Food Culture in Rural India. Health and Society in South Asia Series, 13.