Rina Agarwala

Short presentation

Rina Agarwala is an Associate Professor of Sociology.  Agarwala publishes and lectures on international development, gender, labor, social movements, migration, and Indian politics.  Her award-winning book, Informal Labor, Formal Politics and Dignified Discontent in India (Cambridge University Press, 2013), examines alternative labor movements among informal workers in India.  She is the co-editor of Whatever Happened to Class? Reflections from South Asia (Routledge Press, 2008). 

Agarwala holds a B.A. in Economics and Government from Cornell University, a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University.  She has also worked on international development and gender issues at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in China, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, and Women’s World Banking (WWB) in New York.  

Rina Agarwala is a member of the research group Knowledge, Organization and Politics at the department of Sociology.

CV

Current position 

Copenhagen University, Sociology Department, Copenhagen, Denmark
Associate Professor and International Coordinator, 2015-present

Former academic positions

Johns Hopkins University, Department of Sociology,Baltimore, MD, USA  
Associate Professor, 2014-2015
Assistant Professor, 2006-2014

Education

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA                    
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Sociology and Demography, 2006    
Areas of Specialization: International Development, Gender, Labor, Migration, Globalization, India.

Harvard University, JohnF. Kennedy School of Government, Boston, MA, USA
Master of Public Policy (MPP), 1999
Concentration in Political and Economic Development

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA      
Bachelor of Arts (BA), cum laude with honors in Economics and Government, 1995
Concentration in International Relations 

Selected publications

Books:

Agarwala, Rina. 2013. Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Winner, Outstanding Book Award, American Sociological Association (ASA), Sociology of Development Section, 2014
• Winner, Outstanding Book Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), Global Division, 2014
• Winner, Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Book Publication, Johns Hopkins University, 2014
• Honorable Mention, Distinguished Scholarly Work Award, ASA, Labor and Labor Movement’s Section, 2014 

Herring, Ronald and Rina Agarwala (eds.) 2008.  Whatever Happened to Class? Reflections from South Asia. London: Routledge Press. 

Refereed Articles/Book Chapters: 

Agarwala, Rina. Forthcoming. “A New 21st Century Social Contract: Self-Employed Workers’ Movements in Garments and Trash Collection.” International Labor and Working Class History.

Agarwala, Rina (with Jennifer Jihye Chun). Forthcoming. “Activism and Organization in the Global Era.” Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment, eds. Stephen Edgell, Heidi Gottfried, Edward Granter.

Agarwala, Rina. 2015. “Divine Development: Transnational Religious Organizations in the US and India.” International Migration Review (available on-line).  Print version forthcoming.

Agarwala, Rina. 2015. “Tapping the Indian Diaspora for Indian Development,” in The State and the Grassroots: Immigrant Transnational Organizations in Four Continents. Alejandro Portes and Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (eds). Berghahn Press. New York. Pp. 84-110. 

Agarwala, Rina. 2014. “Informal Workers’ Struggles in Eight Countries,” in Brown Journal of World Affairs. Vol. XX, Issue 11, Spring/Summer, pp. 251-263. 

Agarwala, Rina. 2013. “A Second Marriage? An Intersection of Marxism and Feminism among India’s Informal Workers.” Handbook on Gender in South Asia. Leela Fernandes (ed). UK: Routledge.

Agarwala, Rina.  2012. "The State and Labor in Transnational Activism: The Case of India."  Journal of Industrial Relations. Vol. 54, Issue 4.  

Agarwala, Rina and Emmanuel Teitelbaum.  2010.  “Trends in Funding for Dissertation Field Research: Why So Little Support for Political Science and Sociology?” Political Science and Politics. April, pp. 283-293. *Featured in Inside Higher Ed: http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/02/field

Book Reviews:

Agarwala, Rina. Forthcoming. “Power, Policy, and Protest: The Politics of India's Special Economic Zones” (edited by Rob Jenkins, Loraine Kennedy, and Partha Mukhopadhyay. Labor History. 

Agarwala, Rina. July 2014. “Global Unions, Local Power: The Spirit of Transnational Labor Organizing,” (by Jamie McCallum). American Journal of Sociology.

Agarwala, Rina. 2013. “Decolonizing Democracy: Transforming the Social Contract in India,” (by Christine Keating). Perspectives on Politics. 

Agarwala, Rina. 2012. "Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity, and Class in India," (by Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum). American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 117, No. 4. 

Agarwala, Rina. 2011. “Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship, and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment,” (by Leah Vosko). Contemporary Sociology  40.6  (Nov 2011): 760-762.