Carol E. Henderson, Ph.D.

Title: Faculty Associate

Tel: 973-353-5078
Office: Hill Hall 607
email: Chenderson96@aol.com

Education

Ph.D., Columbia University, Department of Anthropology

Research Interests

My initial research in India looked at how people farm and raise livestock
(cattle, camels, sheep and goats) in Rajasthan's Thar desert, especially
during droughts. This research outlined a strategy of agro-pastoralism
(combining animal rearing and growing crops) and migration to cities for
work. I also examined the ways religious, economic, and environmental
factors intertwined in the management of India's "sacred cows." Research on
sheep and wool production in Rajasthan and the former Soviet state,
Kyrgyzstan highlighted rapid economic and political change and its
ramifications for local community responses and resistance, social
inequality and poverty, within a political and historical ecology framework.

Current Research Projects

I have become interested in the ways in which economic development is
affecting the "rural-urban" balance in India, and the ways in which changing
settlement pattern (landscapes, built environments, homes, roads) reflect
this and changes in people's assertions about themselves and the cultural
models that they use to account for themselves. I am interested in how these
changes have had an impact on social cooperation and social conflict. I am
working on two edited volumes, one related to Rajasthan and tourism's impact on local communities and the representation of India, and a second, on terror and violence, looking at its institutionalization in cross-cultural
perspective. I am currently completing a book-length manuscript
Post-Colonial Agrarian Discontents based on my research that examines the
impact of globalization, economic liberalization, and new technologies on
farming communities in India.

Culture and Customs of India (Greenwood Press, 2002)

"Resource Use, Drought, and Desertification: Adaptive Strategies, the
Community, and Economic Stratification." In Desertification, Drought and
Development, R. Hoja and R. Joshi, eds. (Jaipur: Rawat, 1999), Pp. 120-1332.

"The Great Cow Explosion in Rajasthan, India: Institutions, Landscape and
Livestock in Historical Ecology Perspective." In Advances in Historical
Ecology. W. Balee, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), Pp.
349-375

"Famines and Droughts in Arid Western Rajasthan: Desert Cultivators and the Problem of Periodic Resource Stress) In The Idea of Rajasthan, K.
Schomer, J. Erdman and D. Lodrick (eds.). (Manohar: New Delhi, 1994), Vol. 2, Pp 1-29.