Biography

Lars Aaberg is an associate professor at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), O. P. Jindal Global University (JGU), where he teaches anthropology and sociology. His academic interests lie in economic anthropology and feminist theory, focusing on the use of ethnographic theory and practice as tools for interrogating the relationships between development, citizenship, and global capitalism.

Professor Aaberg’s research is united by an interest in understanding institutional projects that aim to empower minorities, utilizing ethnography to capture the everyday realities of efforts to extend gender citizenship. His first ethnographic project examined the Kudumbashree initiative in Kerala, a program designed to foster women’s empowerment through a range of services and resources, including housing formalization and the extension of micro-credit. This work involved extensive fieldwork in an urban settlement undergoing housing upgradation, tracking how residents navigated the resources made available, or not, through the program.

His more recent work, which forms the basis of an in-progress monograph, takes an ethnographic approach to the study of what is often glossed as “corporate citizenship” or “corporate social responsibility.” This research explores the complex entanglements that emerge when global corporations claim to provide a social good through community engagement initiatives. Focusing on experiments in gender empowerment initiated by multinational firms in Bangalore’s offshore information technology sector, Professor Aaberg examines the everyday lives and perspectives of local community stakeholders encountering these corporate ethical projects.

Professor Aaberg has previously taught at SOAS University of London (Politics; Gender Studies), University College London (Anthropology), and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Anthropology; Geography), where he was Highly Commended for a Class Teaching Award.

His writing has been published in Economy & Society, Gender, Work & Organization, and Gender, Place & Culture, as well as in the co-edited volume, Queer and Trans Life: Anthropological Futures (Berghahn Books, European Association of Social Anthropologists Series).