Faculty

Ron Herring has taught at Cornell University since 1991. He has worked mostly in and on South Asia, in fields of agrarian political economy and agrarian reform; ethnicity and conflict; political ecology and development; and social conflicts around science and genetic engineering. He has served as Chair of Cornell’s Department of Government and Acting Director of the Title VI National Resource Center for South Asia, and Director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, as the John S. Knight Chair of International Relations. He was a founding faculty member and subsequently Director/Convener of Development, Governance and Nature at Cornell. He is faculty advisor to ASHA-Cornell, a student group working for and with under-privileged children in India.

Before Cornell, Herring was Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and held visiting positions at the Universities of Chicago, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. He has been Editor of Comparative Political Studies, and remains on its editorial board, as on the boards of Contemporary South Asia, Critical Asian Studies and the Journal of Development Studies. He has worked on various committees and boards of Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies, the American Institute of Indian Studies, Association for Asian Studies and MacArthur Foundation among others.

Herring’s earliest academic interests were with land relations; Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia (Yale University Press/Oxford University Press) won the Edgar Graham Prize (London 1986). Recent work has included connections between economic development and ethnicity -- e.g. Carrots, Sticks and Ethnic Conflict: Rethinking Development Assistance (University of Michigan Press, edited with Milton Esman) and politics of genetically engineered organisms [editor of a special issue of Journal of Development Studies Vol 43 (1), 2007 subsequently published with Routledge (Oxford) as Transgenics and the Poor: Biotechnology in Development Studies [2007; paper 2008]. He edited, with Rina Agarwala, a special issue of Critical Asian Studies: Resurrecting Class, Vol 38 (4) 2006. With additions, this work has been published in book form as Whatever Happened to Class: Reflections from a Subcontinent [Routledge UK 2008; Lexington US 2008 (paper); Daanish India 2008 (paper)].

Ron currently leads, with Ken Roberts, the 2006-2009 theme project at Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences: Contentious Knowledge: Science, Social Science and Social Movements.

Courses Taught

Govt 131 Introduction to Comparative Politics

Govt 429 Politics of Science

Govt 430 Biotechnology and Development

Govt 731 Political Ecology of Development

Govt 351/735 Politics of South Asia

Recent Publications

Contesting the “Great Transformation”: Local Struggles with the Market in South India

Restoring Agency to Class: Puzzles from the Subcontinent

Naturalising Transgenics: Official Seeds, Loose Seeds and Risk in the Decision Matrix of Gujarati Cotton Farmers

Stealth Seeds: Bioproperty, Biosafety, Biopolitics

The Genomics Revolution and Development Studies: Science, Poverty and Politics

Opp“sition to transgenic technologies: ideology, interests and collective action frames

Why Did "Operation Cremate Monsanto” Fail? Science and Class in India’s Great Terminator-Tehcnology Hoax

Whose numbers count? Probing discrepant evidence on transgenic cotton in the Warangal district of India

Whatever Happened to Class? Reflections from South Asia [book jacket]