Bio-bibliography

UK/India

Bina Agarwal

2017 Balzan Prize for Gender Studies

For challenging established premises in economics and the social sciences by using an innovative gender perspective; for enhancing the visibility and empowerment of rural women in the Global South; for opening new intellectual and political pathways in key areas of gender and development.

Biographical and Bibliographical Data

Bina Agarwal, born in 1951, is an Indian citizen.
Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, School for Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, UK, Bina Agarwal is a Fellow of the Indian Association for Agricultural Economics, Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, Italy, and Officer of the Order of Agricultural Merit of the Government of France. She earned a BA (Hons) in Economics from the University of Delhi in 1970; another BA in Economics (the Economics Tripos) from the University of Cambridge in 1972; and an MA from the University of Cambridge in 1977. In 1978 she completed her PhD from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.
Prior to joining the University of Manchester in 2012, she worked at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University (where she continues to be affiliated), as Associate Professor of Economics (1981-88), Professor of Economics (1988-2012), and Head of the Population Research Center (1996-98, 2002-04, 2009-12). From 1972 to 1974 she was Research Associate on the Planning Commission and Ford Foundation Growth Center Project for Regional Planning at the Council for Social Development, Delhi.
Bina Agarwal has held distinguished teaching and research positions at many universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Minnesota, IDS (Sussex), and the New York University School of Law. She was Harvard’s first Daniel Ingalls Visiting Professor and later a Research Fellow at the Ash Institute, Kennedy School of Government as well as a fellow of Radcliffe’s Bunting Institute at Harvard.
She has also been President of the International Society for Ecological Economics; Vice-President of the International Economic Association; President of the International Association for Feminist Economics; on the Board of the Global Development Network; and one of the twenty-one members of the Commission for the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. She has served on the UN Committee for Development Policy (New York) and UNRISD (Geneva), and holds honorary doctorates from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands and the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

Bina Agarwal has authored some ninety academic papers and some twenty general essays. Among her books we would mention:

Gender Challenges. A three volume compendium of the author’s selected es- says, Oxford University Press 2016.
Vol. 1: Agriculture, Technology and Food Security;
Vol. 2: Property, Family and the State;
Vol. 3: Environmental Change and Collective Action.
Gender and Green Governance, Oxford University Press 2010, Indian edition 2010.
Psychology, Rationality and Economic Behaviour: Challenging Standard As- sumptions, London, Palgrave 2005, Indian edition 2008, Editors: Bina Agarwal and Alessandro Vercelli.
Capabilities, Freedom and Equality: Amartya Sen’s Work from a Gender Per- spective, Delhi: Oxford University Press 2006. Also published (without Sen’s original writings) under the title Amartya Sen’s Work and Ideas: A Gender perspective, London, Routledge 2005. Editors: Bina Agarwal, Jane Humphries and Ingrid Robeyns.
A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, Cambridge Uni- versity Press 1994. CUP South Asian edition 1995. Reprinted 1996, 1998.
Women and Work in the World Economy, London, Macmillan Press 1991. Editors: Nancy Folbre, Barbara Bergmann, Bina Agarwal and Maria Floro.
Women, Poverty and Ideology in Asia: Contradictory Pressures, Uneasy Resolutions, London, Macmillan Press 1989. Editors: Haleh Afshar and Bina Agarwal.
Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia, London, Zed Books; Delhi, Kali for Women 1988; reprinted in paperback 1990. Editor: Bina Agarwal.
Cold Hearths and Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World, Lon- don, Zed Books; Delhi, Allied Publishers; Maryland, Riverdale Publishers 1986. Reprinted 1988.
Mechanisation in Indian Agriculture, Delhi, Allied Publishers 1983; reprinted 1986.

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