Inequality and social-environmental justice
We study inequalities to understand where they come from, who benefits, and how inequality is maintained and legitimated.
Our world is extremely unequal, more so than it has ever been before. Many privileged people see the world as a place of unlimited connection and possibility, making use of myriad national and international opportunities for work, leisure, and (tourist and other) interactions with nature and other people. The majority of the world’s population, however, lives in a world of strict borders, boundaries and a deep lack of possibilities.
At SDC, we study such inequalities to understand where they come from, who benefits, and how inequality is maintained and legitimated. In doing so, we pay specific attention to how possibilities and boundaries shift between the local and the global, the urban and rural, the powerful and marginalized and between crisis and normality. These possibilities and boundaries are studied at levels of the practical, material reality and around knowledge and science, in order to understand their consequences for the processes and structures of development and change.
Our projects
Peri-Commons
Peri-urban land and water commons in the Global North and South (Peri-Commons)
This project examines how peri-urban commons support socio-ecological resilience while also being sites of conflict in both the Global North and South. These multifunctional spaces provide services such as flood protection, food production, and biodiversity, but face pressures from urbanization and privatization. The research explores processes of decommoning and recommoning, and how these are governed through collective action. Contact - Sumit Vij
Peri-Commons
Peri-urban land and water commons in the Global North and South (Peri-Commons)
This project examines how peri-urban commons support socio-ecological resilience while also being sites of conflict in both the Global North and South. These multifunctional spaces provide services such as flood protection, food production, and biodiversity, but face pressures from urbanization and privatization. The research explores processes of decommoning and recommoning, and how these are governed through collective action. Contact - Sumit Vij
Trans-Path-Plan
Water Transformation Pathways Planning (Trans-Path-Plan)
This project explores how transformative changes in water governance can address unsustainable and unequal outcomes. It focuses on issues such as transboundary cooperation, wetland restoration, and circular water use in agriculture. By building an international network, the project supports participatory research and helps researchers and policymakers actively shape more sustainable water futures. Contact - Sumit Vij
SAFE4ALL
Safeguarding African Foodsheds and Ecosystems for all Actors across Local, regional, and international Levels to manage migration (SAFE4ALL)
This project strengthens food security and climate resilience by addressing gender inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa. It identifies gaps in policy-making related to food security, disaster governance, and migration, with attention to peri-urban dynamics. Promoting gender-sensitive climate services in Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe supports policies that empower women as key agents of change. Contact - Sumit Vij
POPULAR
Politics of the Periphery in Urban Latin America: Reconceptualising Politics from the Margins (POPULAR)
The anthropological research project POPULAR develops a theory of politics that reconceptualises periphery-state relationships from the vantage point of the urban periphery. It approaches periphery-state interactions as a politics of the periphery, a diverse politics grounded in everyday experiences of discrimination, exclusion, and marginalisation. With a PI, three PhD candidates and two Postdocs, POPULAR conducts ethnographic research on these politics around housing and infrastructure interventions in low-income neighbourhoods in Medellín (Colombia), Havana (Cuba), and Recife (Brazil). Contact - Martijn Koster
Sprawling servers
Sprawling servers: Rural residents’ engagements with hyperscale data centers and promised infrastructural integration
Hyperscale data centers are rapidly spreading across rural areas. They promise to revitalize rural areas but also put pressures on the environment and existing water and electricity infrastructures. Based on comparative ethnographic research in Brazil, Fiji and the Netherlands, this project examines how rural politics shape, and are shaped by, hyperscale data centers as yet-another promissory development infrastructure. It also explores what visions for liveable rural futures look like with and beyond hyperscale data centers. Contact - Stephanie Ketterer
Contact us
Research themes
The politics of nature
How we understand nature, use or conserve it, depends on power relations that are connected to knowledge, information and heritage.
Disaster and conflict during crisis
We study the lives, livelihoods and environments of people affected by disasters, hazards, and conflicts, including their politics, foundations, and aftermaths.
Inequality and social-environmental justice
We study inequalities to understand where they come from, who benefits, and how inequality is maintained and legitimated.
Sociology of Development and Change
Sociology of Development and Change, led by Robert Fletcher (ad interim), focuses on structures and practices of development and change with an interest in inequality, marginalization and political agency.