Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Prof. Ritambhara Hebbar

Professor
Mumbai Campus,
Chairperson, Centre for Study of Developing Societies, School of Development Studies

Qualification

M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. (Delhi)

Contact

rhebbar[at]tiss[dot]ac[dot]in

Phone no: 022-25525329

Email: rhebbar@tiss.ac.in

Ritambhara Hebbar is a Professor at the School of Development Studies, Mumbai. She has over twenty years of experience in teaching and has taught both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels at Delhi University, SNDT Women's University, and TISS, Mumbai. She has specialised and written regularly on tribes in India, specifically on culture, the movement for self-rule, women and land rights, and tribal governance. Her book Ecology, Equality and Freedom: Engagement with Self-Rule in Jharkhand, Earthworm Books (2011) is an ethnographic study of the self-rule movement and a village in Jharkhand. She has also coauthored and coedited a book titled Towards a New Sociology in India, Orient Blackswan (2016).

She is the director and scenarist of a documentary film 'Gudna' (Tattoo; Engraving) on Adivasi artists who were a part of the annual festival 'Lokrang' organised by the Madhya Pradesh government in Bhopal in 2020. The film is an interaction with these artists where they reflect on how their changing socio-economic conditions are challenging and influencing their creative sensibility and expression. The film is part of the ongoing collaboration with ENAP Institute, Quebec and in partnership with the Quebec Office, Mumbai. She also curated 12 lectures on the Indigenous peoples of Quebec (October-November 2020) and Tribal and Adivasi peoples in India (February- March 2021) along with ENAP Institute, Quebec and the Quebec Office in Mumbai. She is an adjunct researcher at the Observatoire des administrations publiques autochtones (Observatory of Indigenous Public Administrations), ENAP, Quebec. https://obsapa.org/equipe-de-recherche-5/

She is a part of various academic committees and bodies. She is an Editorial Advisory Board member of the Journal of Adivasi and Indigenous Studies (online), Chaibasa, Jharkhand. She is an executive committee member of the international journal Asian Ethnicity, listed in Routledge Anthropological journals. She has served as Dean of the School of Development Studies, TISS, Mumbai, from 2018-2021. She is an external member of the Institutional Review Board, IIT Powai (Mumbai), and an IRB member of TISS, Mumbai. She is also the IC Presiding Officer in TISS, Mumbai.

She has been researching and writing on tribes of South India for the past few years to comprehend the nature of anthropological and sociological research on them and the contemporary situation of tribes in the region. As part of her larger research interest in the sociology of mobility, social institutions and change in India, she has also researched and written about security guards and other migrants in Mumbai.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Books/Journal

Coauthor and Coeditor (with Mahuya Bandyopadhyay), Towards a New Sociology in India. Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2016.
Ecology, Equality and Freedom: Engagement with Self-Rule in Jharkhand, Mumbai: Earthworm Books, 2011.
Editor, Special Issue on Tribes in Contemporary India, Sociological Bulletin, 73 (4), 2024.

Select Articles/Papers

Editors' Introduction. Tribes in Contemporary India. Sociological Bulletin, 73 (4): 361-371.
Tribe-Caste Dynamics in South India. Sociological Bulletin, 73 (4): 420-430.
Migration, Village Sociality, and Mistrust. Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 13 (1): 68–81, 2023.
Instrumental Rationality and the Tribal Question. Seminar, 765 (18-22), 2023.
Undoing Historical Injustice? Critical Reflections on India's Forest Rights Act, 2006, Social Change, 52(4), 491–504, 2022.
The Journey from 'Backwardness' to 'Poverty'- Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in South India. IIC Quarterly, Volume 48, Numbers 3 & 4, Winter 2021–Spring 2022.
Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve: Reflections from the Field. Sociological Bulletin, 67(3) 1–15, 2018.
Reframing the Debate: The Tribal Question and Contemporaneity in Savyasaachi, ed, Intractable conflicts in Contemporary India: Narratives and social movements, London & Delhi: Routledge, 2018.
Migrants, Vigilants and Violence: A Study of Security Guards in Mumbai. In Ranabir Samaddar Ed, Cities, Rural Migrants and the Urban Poor: Issues of Violence and Social Justice, Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2018.
Is there a New Sociology in India? Reflections on Altered Realities, New Field Sites and Methodological Challenges. In M. Bandyopadhyay and R. Hebbar (Eds.), Towards a New Sociology in India, Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2016.
Tribal and Marginalized communities. In Yojana (Min. of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. of India), January Issue, 2014.
Questioning Development or sustaining it? A Case Study from Jharkhand in R. B. Patil, ed, Sustainable Development. Local Issues vis-à-vis Global Agendas. Rawat Publications, 2013.
Human Security and the Case of Farmers' Suicides in India: An Exploration. In C. Banpasirichote, Doneys, Hayes and Sengupta (Eds.), Mainstreaming Human Security: Asian Perspective, Chula Global Network in Collaboration with International Development Studies Programme, Chulalongkorn University, 2012.
Women Rights and the Question of Culture: The Ho Tribe of Jharkhand. In B. Barik, P. Kumar and U. Sarode (Eds.), Gender and Human Rights Narrative on Macro-Micro Realities, Jaipur: Rawat Publication, 2010.
Framing the Development Debate: The Case of Farmers' Suicide in India. In C. Sengupta and S. Corbridge (Eds.), Democracy, Development and Decentralisation in India: Continuing Debates, New Delhi: Routledge India, 2010.
The Category 'Rural' Revisited: A Dalit Perspective from a Village in Maharashtra. In Imtiaz Ahmad and S. Bhushan (Eds.), Dalit Assertion in Society, Literature and History, Orient Blackswan, Delhi, 2010.
Tribal Autonomy and Life Support Systems. In Eleonora Barbieri-Masini, Ed, Quality of Human Resources: Gender and Indigenous Peoples. Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, UNESCO, 2009.
Forest Bill 2005 and Tribal Areas: Case of Jharkhand, Economic and Political Weekly, 2006, 41 (48), 4952-4956.
Homecoming: Ho Women, Work and Land Rights in Jharkhand. Sociological Bulletin, Jan-Apr 2005, Vol 54 No. 1, pp 18-39.
Homecoming in the Forest. In Savyasaachi, Ed, Between the Earth and the Sky, Penguin Publications, Delhi, 2005.
Adivasis Of India And Development Strategy- Policy Working Paper in Progress (with Lawrence Surendra and Kikkeri Narayan). HIVOS, India, 2004.
Social Institutions and Development Challenges (with Sarthi Acharya). Economic and Political Weekly, 2003 (Aug 9-15), Volume XXXVIII, 32: 3343-46.
Shifting Contours of Rural Social Institutions: A Sociological Reflection. IASSI (Indian Association of Social Science Institutions) Quarterly, 2003 (Jan-June), Vol. 21, 3 & 4: 57-67.
Eternal and Ephemeral: The Significance of Myth and Ritual Among The Ho, 40-9 pp. In Padmaja Sen, Ed, Changing Tribal Life: A Socio-Philosophical Perspective, Concept Publications, Delhi, 2003.
An Experiment with Self-Rule: A Case Study of a Ho Village. Social Action. 2002 (April-June), Vol. 52, 2:134-49.
From Resistance to Governance, Seminar, 2003 (April), No. 524, Pp 40-5.

In 2019, she was part of an action project, sponsored by L & T Hydrocarbon Engineering Ltd, for women domestic workers in Mumbai, which involved holding capacity-building and advocacy workshops for the research participants to interact with the community service providers.

She was the Project Director of a knowledge partnership 'Aspirational Chatra', between TISS Observatory for Knowledge Partnerships and Aspirational Districts (TOKPAD) and the Deputy Commissioner's Office, Chatra, Jharkhand, to implement Niti Aayog's Aspirational District Programme to improve the socio-economic status of districts across India (March 2019- August 2020).

She is also working on two book projects (edited), one international and another national publication.

Her broad areas of research and writing are Social Institutions and Development Experiences; Rurality, Rural Society and Social Change; Tribal Studies; and Sociology and Social Anthropology in India. She teaches on related themes such as Understanding Indian society, tribes in the contemporary world (focusing on tribal anthropology and cross-cultural perspective on tribes); tribes in India, introduction to qualitative research and advanced qualitative research methods, methodological issues in development research, social exclusion in India, environment and society, anthropology and development.