Nikhil Deb
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Contact Information
- Office: Bldg. 47, Rm. 12Q
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Phone: 805-756-1761
- E-mail: ndeb@calpoly.edu
- Website: nikhildeb.com
Research Foci
- Political Economy
- Development and Environment (Climate Change)
- Theory
- Global South
- Comparative Sociology
- Movement Resistance
- Extended Case Study
About Nikhil Deb
Nikhil Deb is Assistant Professor of Sociology at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Shahjalal University (Bangladesh) and Murray State University. He studies how political and economic activities typically favor some human groups at the expense of other currently living or future human groups and the environment. Specifically, he examines whether the transition to neoliberalism in the Global South has contributed to environmental and social problems in marginalized locales, with particular attention to India and Bangladesh, the country of his origin. While his research in India shows how the neoliberal turn in Indian governance played a crucial role in the production of many lingering consequences – and resistance to it— evident in the 1984 Bhopal catastrophe in Bhopal, India, his research in Bangladesh examines how neoliberal development projects reproduce the vulnerability of many land-depended communities. His research is primarily fieldwork-driven.
Education
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Tennessee
M.A., Sociology, Ohio University
M.S.S., Sociology, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh
Selected Publications
Edited Volumes
Deb, Nikhil, Manjusha Nair, and Glenn Muschert, eds. 2024/Forthcoming. Social Justice in the Global South. Elgar.
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
Deb, Nikhil and Louise Seamster. Accepted. “Socioenvironmental Injustice across the Global Divide: Slow Violence and Institutional Betrayal in Bhopal and Flint.” Sociology of Development.
Deb, Nikhil and Avijit Chakrabarty. 2023. “Green Potential in the Global South: The Phulbari Movement in Bangladesh." In Green Crime in the Global South: Essays on Southern Green Criminology, edited by David Rodríguez Goyes. Palgrave.
Deb, Nikhil. 2023/forthcoming. “The Path to Neoliberalism: Investigating Bangladesh's Political Economic Transformation.” In Social Transformation in Bangladesh: Pathways, Challengesand the Way Forward, edited by Shahidur Rahman and Md. Masud-All Kamal. Routledge.
Deb, Nikhil. 2023/Forthcoming. “Bhopal Disaster.” In Encyclopedia of Technological Hazards and Disasters in the Social Sciences, edited by Duane A. Gill, Liesel A. Ritchie, and Nnenia Campbell. Elgar.
Deb, Nikhil. 2021. "Slow Violence and the Gas Peddit in Neoliberal India." Social Problems.
Deb, Nikhil. 2020. “Law and Corporate Malfeasance in Neoliberal India.” Critical Sociology 46(7-8): 1157-1171.
Deb, Nikhil. 2018. “The Fukushima Disaster and the Framing of Nuclear Energy in India.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 17(4):473-495.
Deb, Nikhil. 2020. “Corporate Capitalism, Environmental Damage, and the Rule of Law: The Magurchara Gas Explosion in Bangladesh.” Pp. 367-381 in the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology, edited by Nigel South and Avi Brisman. Routledge.
Deb, Nikhil and Maya Rao. 2020. “The Pandemic and the Invisible Poor of the Global South: Slum Dwellers in Mumbai, India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh.” Pp. 51-60 in Social Problems in the Age of COVID-19: Global Perspectives, edited by Glenn Muschert et al. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
Courses Taught
SOC 218: International Political Economy
SOC 222: Classical Sociological Theory
SOC 305: Social Movements
SOC 110: Comparative Societies