Aparna Sundar
Phone: 6602
Office: JOR721A
E-mail: asundarpolitics.ryerson.ca

Aparna Sundar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University, a member of the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Ryerson and an affiliate of the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement.  She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and an MA from McGill University, both in Political Science, a BA (Hons) in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a BA (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Delhi, India.

Aparna's training has been in the areas of comparative politics, international development and postcolonial politics, and political economy.  Her current research interests are broadly in the areas of: social movements in the Global South, civil war in South Asia, working-class immigrant organizing in Toronto, and political ecology.  Ongoing projects include:  the revision of her doctoral dissertation entitled Capitalist Transformation and the Evolution of Civil Society in a South Indian Fishery for publication by Oxford University Press, India; a collaborative research project funded by the Centre for Labour Management Relations at Ryerson entitled An Immigrant All Over Again? Recession, Plant Closures, and (Older) Racialized Immigrant Workers; and the co-editing of a book volume entitled Civilians and Citizenship: Ethnographic and Political Economy Perspectives on Civil War in South Asia.

Aparna has worked as an organizer with the National Fishworkers’ Forum, India, and as a coordinator with the Toronto Social Forum.  She has also been involved in social justice work with community organizations and social movements in India and Canada for several years.  She is currently a member of the Editorial Committee of Between the Lines publishers.

Aparna teaches PA 8201, Citizen-Oriented Governance and Globalization; POL 507, Power, Change and Technology; POG 225, Global Governance; POG 431, Power, Hegemony and Resistance; and POG 426, Contemporary Global Conflicts.

Peer-reviewed publications:

  • “The Crisis in the Fishery: Canada in Global Context.” In Critical Perspectives in Food Studies, ed. Mustafa Koç, Jennifer Sumner and Tony Winson, 171-185.  Toronto: Oxford University Press, forthcoming August 2012.
  • “Alternatives to Crisis: Social Movements in Global Fisheries Governance.” Human Geography 5:2 (2012): forthcoming.
  • “Thinking beyond Secularism: The Catholic Church and Political Practice in Rural South India.”  South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (April 2012): 1-18.
  • “‘The Habits of the Political Heart’: Recovering Politics from Governmentality” (with Nandini Sundar).  In Reframing Democracy and Agency: Interrogating Political Society, ed. Ajay Gudavarthy, 269-288.  London: Anthem Press, 2012.
  • “Making a ‘Global’ City: Racialization, Precariousness and Regulation in the Toronto Taxi Industry.” In Immigration & Settlement: Challenges, Experiences and Opportunities in Global and Local Contexts, ed. Harald Bauder, 109-128.  Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
  • “Civilians and Citizenship: Perspectives on Civil War in South Asia.” Economic and Political Weekly XLV:18 (01 May 2010): 37-42.
  • “The South Asia Left Democratic Alliance (SALDA): The Dilemmas of a Transnational Left.” In Organizing the Transnational: The Experience of Asian, Caribbean and Latin American Migrants in Canada, ed. Luin Goldring and Sailaja Krishnamurti, 206 - 214. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.
  • "Sea Changes: Organizing Around the Fishery in a South Indian Community." In Street-Level Democracy: Political Settings at the Margins of Global Power, ed. Jonathan Barker with Anne-Marie Cwikowski, et al., 79-114. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1999.

Other research and publications:

  • Review of The Other Side of Terror: An Anthology of Writings on Terrorism in South Asia, ed. Nivedita Majumdar.  Against the Current (May/June 2010): 39-41.
  • Toronto Taxi Drivers: Ambassadors of the City - A Report on Working Conditions (with Sara Abraham and Dale Whitmore). Toronto:  January 2008.
  • “Echoes of the 1930s: Today’s Hotel Workers Lead the Struggle to ‘Upgrade’ the Service Economy” (with Sedef Arat-Koç and Bryan Evans).  Relay: A Socialist Project Review (Jan.-Feb. 2007): 16-17. [Reprinted by MRzine (On-line Monthly Review), March 15, 2007]
  • Review of Conversations: A Trialogue on Power, Intervention and Organization in Fisheries by Aliou Sall, Michael Belliveau, and Nalini Nayak.  Samudra Report 34 (March 2003): 41-45.
  • "Marine Resources," in Marketing the Earth: The World Bank and Sustainable Development.  Halifax Initiative, Canada and Friends of the Earth, USA (2002): 31-35.