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Dr Ben Campbell's Outputs (34)

Biogas in Nepal: bringing social contexts of energy innovation into view (2024)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B., & Suji, M. Biogas in Nepal: bringing social contexts of energy innovation into view. In B. Campbell, M. Cameron, & T. Subba (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Himalayas: Environments, Development, Wellbeings. Routledge

Domestic biogas digesters spread rapidly in Nepal from the 1990s as a renewable energy technology that reduced pressure on extracting fuelwood from forests. Very little social science research exists on this energy development story, and the chapter... Read More about Biogas in Nepal: bringing social contexts of energy innovation into view.

Sustainability: a Critical, Comparative and Relational Approach (2024)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (in press). Sustainability: a Critical, Comparative and Relational Approach. In Is the Concept of Sustainability Misleading?. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg

Sustainability was born in “a messy mutualistic politics of care”, but has come to be dominated by economists’ and engineers’ solutions (Stirling 2019:19). Anthropologists’ disciplinary orientation to cultural difference has led in directions of bett... Read More about Sustainability: a Critical, Comparative and Relational Approach.

Challenging perceptions of socio-cultural rejection of a taboo technology: Narratives of imagined transitions to domestic toilet-linked biogas in India (2022)
Journal Article
Boyd Williams, N., Quilliam, R. S., Campbell, B., Raha, D., Baruah, D. C., Clarke, M. L., …Dickie, J. (2022). Challenging perceptions of socio-cultural rejection of a taboo technology: Narratives of imagined transitions to domestic toilet-linked biogas in India. Energy Research and Social Science, 92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102802

Domestic toilet-linked anaerobic digesters (TLADs) recycle organic waste materials, including human excreta (HE), into a clean gaseous fuel and fertiliser product. Socio-cultural resistance is often used to explain local resistance towards TLADs due... Read More about Challenging perceptions of socio-cultural rejection of a taboo technology: Narratives of imagined transitions to domestic toilet-linked biogas in India.

Taboos, toilets and biogas: Socio-technical pathways to acceptance of a sustainable household technology (2021)
Journal Article
Boyd Williams, N., Quilliam, R. S., Campbell, B., Ghatani, R., & Dickie, J. (2022). Taboos, toilets and biogas: Socio-technical pathways to acceptance of a sustainable household technology. Energy Research and Social Science, 86, Article 102448. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102448

Toilet-linked anaerobic digesters (TLADs) can provide users with a clean gaseous fuel and a fertiliser product as well as offer waste management services. Socio-cultural resistance towards domestic TLADs, due to the use of human excreta as a feedstoc... Read More about Taboos, toilets and biogas: Socio-technical pathways to acceptance of a sustainable household technology.

Low Carbon Energy Democracy in the Global South? (2021)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B., Cloke, J., & Brown, E. (2021). Low Carbon Energy Democracy in the Global South?. In A. M. Feldpausch-Parker, D. Endres, T. R. Peterson, & S. L. Gomez (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Energy Democracy. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429402302

Social science tools and practitioner experiences help to understand relations of democratic processes to low carbon energy transitions in the Global South. This requires interrogating Euro-centric assumptions about participation, national developmen... Read More about Low Carbon Energy Democracy in the Global South?.

Communicative Orders in Collision and Collusion with Natural Resource Management Regimes in Nepal (2019)
Journal Article
Campbell, B. (2020). Communicative Orders in Collision and Collusion with Natural Resource Management Regimes in Nepal. Ethnos, 85(1), 79-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1574854

Successive policy agendas in Nepal have mobilised the notion of the natural environment through crisis scenarios of deforestation and soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and latterly climate change. This article discusses ethnographic work on struggles... Read More about Communicative Orders in Collision and Collusion with Natural Resource Management Regimes in Nepal.

Biodiversity, Livelihoods and Struggles over Sustainability in Nepal (2018)
Journal Article
Campbell, B. (2018). Biodiversity, Livelihoods and Struggles over Sustainability in Nepal. Landscape Research, 43(8), 1056-1067. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2018.1503241

Nepal’s impoverished mountain communities benefited after the 1950s through Swiss-style cheese-making from yak-cow hybrids. This relieved the drop in economic opportunities after Chinese occupation of Tibet. Income-generating transhumant dairy pastor... Read More about Biodiversity, Livelihoods and Struggles over Sustainability in Nepal.

Moral Ecologies of Subsistence and Labour in a Migration-affected Community of Nepal (2018)
Journal Article
Campbell, B. (2018). Moral Ecologies of Subsistence and Labour in a Migration-affected Community of Nepal. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24(S1), 151-165. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12805

Labour migration from subsistence households in Tamang‐speaking communities of Northern Nepal heralds their transition from an agrarian to a remittance economy. This migration entails the abandonment of subsistence labour processes that once wove hou... Read More about Moral Ecologies of Subsistence and Labour in a Migration-affected Community of Nepal.

Low carbon energy and international development: from research impact to policymaking (2017)
Journal Article
Brown, E., Campbell, B., Cloke, J., To, L. S., Turner, B., & Wray, A. (2018). Low carbon energy and international development: from research impact to policymaking. Contemporary Social Science, 13(1), 112-127. https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2017.1417627

Few areas of international development research have seen as much transformation over recent years as those relating to energy access and low carbon transitions. New policy initiatives, technological innovations and business models have radically tra... Read More about Low carbon energy and international development: from research impact to policymaking.

Encountering Climate Change: dialogues of human and non-human relationships within Tamang moral ecology and climate policy discourses (2017)
Journal Article
Campbell, B. (2017). Encountering Climate Change: dialogues of human and non-human relationships within Tamang moral ecology and climate policy discourses. European bulletin of Himalayan research, 49, 59-87

Climate change is fast becoming a dominant narrative for contemporary understandings of Himalayan societies, and the concerns for the wellbeing of communities situated in varying degrees of vulnerability to extreme climate events. This article questi... Read More about Encountering Climate Change: dialogues of human and non-human relationships within Tamang moral ecology and climate policy discourses.

Communities of Energy (2016)
Journal Article
Campbell, B., Cloke, J., & Brown, E. (2016). Communities of Energy. Economic Anthropology, 3(1), 133-144. https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12050

The call for social science to engage with energy infrastructures and users to enable low-carbon transitions that benefit the poor in the Global South is welcome, but its urgency risks epistemic distortion. The theme of “community” in the social stud... Read More about Communities of Energy.

Fields of Working Knowledge (2014)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (2014). Fields of Working Knowledge. In S. K. Chaudhuri, & S. S. Chaudhuri (Eds.), Fieldwork in South Asia : memories, moments, and experiences (106-121). SAGE Publications

Low-carbon yak cheese: transition to biogas in a Himalayan socio-technical niche (2013)
Journal Article
Campbell, B., & Sallis, P. (2013). Low-carbon yak cheese: transition to biogas in a Himalayan socio-technical niche. Interface Focus, 3(1), Article 20120052. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2012.0052

This study looks at how potential for resilient low-carbon solutions can be understood and enhanced in the diverse environmental, economic and socio-political contexts in which actual scenarios of energy needs and diverse development pathways take sh... Read More about Low-carbon yak cheese: transition to biogas in a Himalayan socio-technical niche.

How Biotechnology Makes Human Kinship with Wildlife Visible (2010)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (2010). How Biotechnology Makes Human Kinship with Wildlife Visible. In M. Bolton, & C. Degnen (Eds.), Animals and Science: from colonial encounters to the biotech industry (196-219). Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Subjectivity and Governance in the Himalayan Environment. (2010)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (2010). Subjectivity and Governance in the Himalayan Environment. In M. Lecomte-Tilouine (Ed.), An Exploration of the Categories of Nature and Culture in Asia and the Himalayas (156-189). Social Science Press

Rhetorical Routes for Development: a road project in Nepal. (2010)
Journal Article
Campbell, B. (2010). Rhetorical Routes for Development: a road project in Nepal. Contemporary South Asia, 18(3), 267-279. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2010.501099

Rhetoric is adopted in this paper as a lens to look at the claims made by a road-building project in a region of Nepal characterised by ‘remoteness’ and underdevelopment. The notion that the road connecting to the infrastructure on the Chinese side o... Read More about Rhetorical Routes for Development: a road project in Nepal..

Beyond cultural models of the environment: linking subjectivities of dwelling and power (2010)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (2010). Beyond cultural models of the environment: linking subjectivities of dwelling and power. In A. Guneratne (Ed.), Culture and the environment in the Himalaya (186-203). Routledge

For many decades the idea of ‘cultural model of the environment’ was a valuable tool for anthropologists and other social scientists to contest the bio-physical realism of natural scientists. If we were to understand how diverse human groups interact... Read More about Beyond cultural models of the environment: linking subjectivities of dwelling and power.

Fields of Post-human Kinship (2009)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (2009). Fields of Post-human Kinship. In J. Edwards, & C. Salazar (Eds.), European kinship in the age of biotechnology (162-178). Berghahn Journals

Racialization, Genes and the Reinventions of Nation in Europe (2007)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (2007). Racialization, Genes and the Reinventions of Nation in Europe. In P. Wade (Ed.), Race, ethnicity and nation: perspectives from kinship and genetics (95-124). Berghahn Journals

Across Europe the possibilities of new reproductive technologies have been responded to by national ethical regulatory regimes in markedly different ways. This study moves genetic debates onto a comparative and historical plane, by looking specifical... Read More about Racialization, Genes and the Reinventions of Nation in Europe.

Changing Protection Policies and Ethnographies of Environmental Engagement (2005)
Journal Article
Campbell, B. (2005). Changing Protection Policies and Ethnographies of Environmental Engagement. Conservation & Society, 3(2), 280-322

Attempts to protect nature by control of human intervention in areas demarcated for biodiversity have given rise to difficult questions of practicality and social justice. This introduction to a set of studies by anthropologists on the relationship b... Read More about Changing Protection Policies and Ethnographies of Environmental Engagement.

Biotechnology and the Public Voices of Market Reason in the British Debate on GMOs. Biotecnologia i veus públiques de raons de mercat en el debat britànic sobre organismes genèticament modificats (OGM) (2005)
Journal Article
Campbell, B. (2005). Biotechnology and the Public Voices of Market Reason in the British Debate on GMOs. Biotecnologia i veus públiques de raons de mercat en el debat britànic sobre organismes genèticament modificats (OGM). Revista d'etnologia de Catalunya (Internet), 27, 24-39

The UK GM debate of 2003-2004 demonstrates how difficult genetic modification was to contain as one that could be controlled and directed by expert advice. This article focuses on aspects of the public debate and governance as they were reported and... Read More about Biotechnology and the Public Voices of Market Reason in the British Debate on GMOs. Biotecnologia i veus públiques de raons de mercat en el debat britànic sobre organismes genèticament modificats (OGM).

Indigenous views on the Terms of Participation in the Development of Biodiversity Conservation in Nepal (2004)
Book Chapter
Campbell, B. (2004). Indigenous views on the Terms of Participation in the Development of Biodiversity Conservation in Nepal. In A. Bicker, P. Sillitoe, & J. Pottier (Eds.), Investigating local knowledge : new directions, new approaches (149-168). Ashgate Publishing

This chapter addresses the vogue for using indigenous knowledge in development projects. It discusses the diversity in forms of knowledge spoken of by Tamang villagers, noting which kinds of knowledge are perceived as more, and which as less amenable... Read More about Indigenous views on the Terms of Participation in the Development of Biodiversity Conservation in Nepal.