The University of Arizona Press
Date: Friday, March 7, 2025
Time: 12 p.m., CST
Where: Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA and via livestream
Meena Khandelwal, author of Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India, will speak at the Iowa City Public Library on “Climate Change, Gender and Biomass Cookstoves in India.” The event is sponsored by the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) and presented in partnership with The University of Iowa Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. The event is free and open to the public and will also be available via livestream. Doors open at 11 a.m., and lunch will be provided. Please RSVP here for in-person event by March 5, 2025.
About the book:
Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles argues that the supposedly obsolete chulha persists because it offers women control over the tools needed to feed their families. Their continued use of old stoves alongside the new is not a failure to embrace new technologies but instead a strategy to maximize flexibility and autonomy. The chulha is neither the villain nor hero of this story. It produces particulate matter that harms people’s bodies, leaves soot on utensils and walls, and accelerates glacial melting and atmospheric warming. Yet it also depends on renewable biomass fuel and supports women’s autonomy as a local, do-it-yourself technology.
Meena Khandelwal employs critical social theory and reflections from fieldwork to bring together research from a range of fields, including history, geography, anthropology, energy and environmental studies, public health, and science and technology studies (STS). In so doing she not only demystifies multidisciplinary research but also highlights the messy reality of actual behavior.
