Aninhalli Vasavi facts for kids

Prof. Aninhalli R. Vasavi, also known as A.R. Vasavi, is a social anthropologist and researcher from Bengaluru, India. A social anthropologist studies how people live in different societies and cultures. She is interested in farming, Indian society, and education.

She earned her Master's degrees in Sociology from the University of Delhi. Later, she received her PhD in Social Anthropology from Michigan State University in the USA in 1993. Her PhD research was about culture and drought in Bijapur, India. She has worked at important places like the Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad and the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Bengaluru. At NIAS, she worked for 14 years and was even the Dean of Social Sciences for a year.

About Her Life and Work

Prof. Vasavi studied Sociology at Stella Maris College, Chennai. She then continued her studies at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Her PhD in Social Anthropology was from Michigan State University, USA.

From 1997 to 2011, she was a faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore. She also taught at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode and was a visiting professor at Tufts University in the USA.

Today, she works with the Punarchith Collective. This is a special learning place for young people in rural areas of Chamarajanagar, Karnataka.

Prof. Vasavi also helped start and is an active member of the Centre for Research and Education in Social Transformation (CREST). This institute in Kozhikode, Kerala, helps students from scheduled castes and tribes get a good education.

In 2011, Prof. Vasavi left NIAS. She wanted to focus on her own research and develop Punarchith. This organization helps provide alternative learning opportunities.

Her Academic Contributions

Prof. Vasavi has done important research in four main areas.

Farming and Environment

She has made big contributions to understanding how farming and culture are connected to the environment. Her book "Harbingers of Rain" (1999) looked at how people in farming communities deal with droughts. This work helps us understand the relationship between people, land, and nature.

Education Studies

Her research on primary education is very insightful. She studies how schools, teachers, and children are connected to their culture and how they fit into the school system. She developed the idea of 'school differentiation'. This idea explains how different schools might work in different ways. Her ideas have been used in reports for international groups and the governments of India, Karnataka, and Rajasthan.

Information Technology (IT)

Prof. Vasavi has also studied the IT (Information Technology) industry in India. She co-edited a book called "In an outpost of the global economy" (2008). This book explores the culture and economy of the IT profession. She was also the executive producer for a series of three documentaries about the IT industry in Bengaluru, called "Coding Culture" (2006).

Connecting Ideas

Prof. Vasavi is known as a "public intellectual." This means she shares her knowledge and ideas with many people. She has helped connect writers who write in the Kannada language with social science ideas from the Western world. She edited books like "The Inner Mirror: Kannada Writings on Society and Culture" (2009), which was also published in Kannada as "Volagannadi" (2011).