Abstract
Programme
Welcome and introduction
Arve Hansen, Researcher, SUM, University of Oslo
Lecture
Manisha Anantharaman, Assistant Professor, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CNRS), Sciences Po
Comments
Tanja Winther, Professor and Director of Include - Research centre for socially inclusive energy transitions, University of Oslo
Discussion
About the speaker
Dr. Manisha Anantharaman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Center de Sociologie des Organisations (CNRS), Sciences Po in France. Her interdisciplinary research explores inequality and injustice in sustainability transitions through ethnographic and participatory methods. As a critical scholar, she pays specific attention to how “sustainability” initiatives—be it municipal recycling schemes, green space development, or global circular economy transition plans—reinforce or dismantle different manifestations of race, class, gender, and caste-based oppression. She has published two books connecting environmental justice, sustainability, and development: “Recycling Class: The contradictions of inclusion in urban sustainability” (MIT Press, 2024) and a co-edited volume “The Circular Economy and the Global South” (Routledge, UK, 2019). Her current research projects include a Belmont Forum/US National Science Foundation funded project studying Digitalization and Sustainable Consumption. Her research outputs have been published in Urban Studies, Journal of Cleaner Production, and the Journal of Consumer Culture. Beyond research, Manisha is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House’s Environment and Society Center, through which she serves as an expert consultant for organizations such as the UN Environment Program.
She completed her PhD at the University of California Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management (2015), where she was a Berkeley Connect Fellow. Before this, she was an Inlaks Scholar at the University of Oxford studying mathematics and biology.
Hal Wilhite Memorial Lecture
The Hal Wilhite Memorial Lecture is organised annually in memory of our dear colleague Professor Harold L. Wilhite. Hal is best known as an anthropologist, but always with a strong interdisciplinary orientation. At the Centre for Development the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo, he led groundbreaking research on sustainable consumption and energy.
Hal’s research has had a great impact internationally. His numerous publications based on fieldwork in Asia, Latin America and Norway, are widely read. Hal insisted on the importance of understanding human action in its social and economic context. He was particularly critical towards the idea of a green transition which did not involve reducing consumption, and considered a low carbon society impossible to realise in a growth-oriented economy. He was deeply passionate about environmental issues, and lived according to his own high standards regarding sustainable consumption.
Organizers
The Hal Wilhite memorial lecture is organized by Centre for Development and the Environment and Include - Research centre for socially inclusive energy transitions at UiO.